On that day he celebrated one of life’s biggest milestone.
He helped make a difference in his community.
In just three years, Tovey and the residents of Lakeview have accomplished something deemed impossible only a few years ago – stopping a gas-fired power plant on the former lands of the Lakeview Generating Station.
This area in the southeastern part of Mississauga, larger than Exhibition Place and big enough to accommodate a couple of Donlands or Distillery Districts plus a Chicago Pier, might now be home to Mississauga's next completely planned, medium-density community.
Following 105 years of the worst kind of pollution from smoking factories and a giant “dirty-power” plant, there was something very special about the next day sunrise for Lakeview residents.
Had their dream really becoming reality?
Yes, said Ontario’s Energy Minister, George Smitherman. As the MPP from Toronto Centre, he had to make the announcement on a little hill near Lake Ontario shores, overlooking the old site of the Lakeview Generating Station.
He was positive about it, launching his news: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to announce that Lakeview’s future in electricity generation is OVER.” He pointed out that the site had been ideal for a gas-fired power plant but that the ministry has decided to give it up.
No sweeter message could have reached the ears of Tovey (pronounced toe-vee), who held back his emotions. His ideas for developing a people’s waterfront on nearly 500 acres of available land had the provincial gas-plant scheme hanging in the balance. But the grand ideas are not just Tovey’s. “They’re from the minds of Lakeview’s residents,” he said.
Tovey took on Lakeview Ratepayers as president less than four years ago and has collected throngs of waterfront supporters including City Hall councillors Carmen Corbasson and Carolyn Parrish, the Mayor, landscape planner John Danahy, Mississauga South’s MPP Charles Sousa, the city’s planning department and now, it seems, the Energy minister.
Familiar with ongoing controversies over Toronto’s future waterfront, many people have boohooed the prospects. An aquarium? A football stadium? University campus? A ferry and cruise-ship terminal and a Fisherman’s Wharf with cafes on the pier overlooking a charter-boat basin in summer and three-acre skating rink in winter? An “Arsenal Park” to commemorate armament output during two World Wars? A new mixed-use community for 10,000 to 20,000 and major tourist facilities, and maybe even an opera house? Not in my lifetime!
There are many ideas along these lines. Tovey and his planning colleague, Danahy, have been presenting them to meetings and committees in municipal offices and elsewhere. No thought of where the developers and investments will come from. “Are you kidding? Lakeview has prime waterfront and now is off the power-plant list. They’re calling us,” said Tovey, who over the past two years has waxed urban planner, researcher, local diplomat, debater, lobbyist and public speaker.
No major developers are buying up land in Lakeview as yet for the organized mixed-use community, but Northam Realty Advisors of Toronto have shown interest over the past two years and purchased about 17 acres of industrial property in the village.
The Ontario government – aside from separate decisions made by Ontario Municipal Board on individual projects – will use its Places to Grow regulations to force medium density along the Lakeshore corridor and do it with a set of Smart Growth guidelines that stipulate employment growth and the use of existing infrastructure such as streets, public transit, municipal services and hydro.
Tovey and Danahy have covered a lot of the research and preliminaries of building an urban community from scratch, and will have a busy year ahead, judging from their excitement over the no-power-plant decision. He and Danahy will soon be in discussions with the Municipal Affairs and Housing ministry about Smart Growth planning principals, and with the city’s planning director Ed Sajecki.
“We can move forward now,” said Danahy, rubbing palms together with big smiles at the prospect of what lies directly ahead and in his own bailiwick. “We’re going to have what Jim calls ‘lap’ meetings with all of the stakeholders, and with city and regional advisory committees who have to complete their district plans.
“The important stakeholders are the Ratepayers of Lakeview’s own legacy, all 24,000 of them, and I think we’ll be renaming our association to ‘Lakeview Citizens’ Group’ or something along that line. Another is Ontario Power Generation, with whom vehicles have to be set up for purchase or transfer of the 60-hectare OPG site.
“The important task is keeping the momentum going on the kind of committee involvement we’ve been getting thus far, on economic prospects, and on government liaison. Other stakeholders include employment entities, some of the bigger landowners, parkland authorities, and companies operating in industrial buildings. The city is another major stakeholder, if only through ownership of infrastructure and transit facilities.
“We’re actually starting to organize our future stakeholders at this point, and we want this to be completely a win-win exercise for all parties including the residents.”
Any proposal of this size involves a plethora of issues, and advisory committees need models to help resolve them. Or models need advisory committees to turn them into reality. One of these is on Danahy’s laptop computer, where he can flip or scrub whole blocks of condominiums into or out of the model in the flashing of an eye. Another model he mentions belongs to the “Waterfront Toronto” project now under way by a group of landowning investors.
Opening up the lakefront could not be done with a government power plant plunked into a key corner of a city of 750,000 standing beside another city of 3 million.
MOE shows signs of becoming beneficent. In his announcement, Mr. Smitherman said Lakeview is forever off the power-plant list, but complained that it had been hand-picked as the perfect spot for a gas plant, then said his government is “writing the asset down” in the interests of helping to “grow the future of Ontario’s waterfronts”.
Mayor Hazel McCallion not so quietly warned the Energy minister about possible opposition to building Lakeview’s gas project in Clarkson, citing a two-year-old air-shed assessment that was not positive.
