In Part I of this thread (immediately following), I described some of th details of the proposed layout of the station in the Recommended Plan for revitalization.

The entire project is complex and there are many issues surrounding it.  The Union Station Revitalization Public Advisory Group, of which I am a member, gave a deputation at the Executive Committee meeting on November 26.  Our proposed changes to the process now underway were not accepted by the Committee, although we hope to get more exposure for and attention to them as time goes on.

Although we support the Recommended Plan, we were concerned that:

• The implementation plan, which will now come back directly to the upcoming Council Meeting, will not be subject to public discussion before that meeting.
• There is no governance plan in place, and it appears that the City is heading down a path to managing the building directly rather than through a board such as those that manage other City properties.

Here are the texts of the deputations by our Chair, Janice Etter, and Vice-Chair, Derek Boles and a letter sent to both the Globe & Mail (in response to their story about the station) and Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Transport for Canada. Continue reading →

The Union Station Revitalization proposal, described here in another post, was approved by Toronto’s Executive Committee on Monday, November 26.  Press coverage of this event appeared in The Star and The Globe & Mail here and here.

The Union Station Revitalization Public Advisory Group (USRPAG), of which I am a member, presented a deputation to the Executive Committee which will appear in Part II of this thread.

Since the current scheme surfaced, so to speak, I have had various comments here (not all published) asking about the viability of the proposed retail concourse and the links between it and the rail concourse above.  So that readers can better understand the proposal, I have included below a number of illustrations taken from a virtual tour of the redesign scheme.

[Updated:  Views of the proposed atrium in the GO Trainshed have been added.] 

Continue reading →