In 2007, Waterfront Toronto assembled three renowned landscape architecture firms to participate in the Jarvis Slip Design Competition.

The purpose of the competition was to encourage fresh and innovative ideas for how to create a signature urban park at the foot of Lower Jarvis Street. Located just east of the Jarvis Slip across from the Redpath Sugar

Refinery, the site for the park was at the time a surface parking lot at the water’s edge. The competition’s main goals were to transform the parking lot into a public space that would anchor the new community of East Bayfront and provide all Torontonians with a flexible and dynamic waterfront gathering space.

Waterfront Toronto invited Janet Rosenberg + Associates; Claude Cormier Architectes Paysagistes and West 8 + DTAH to participate in the Jarvis Slip Design Competition. The teams represented a range of different landscape and urban design philosophies and presented submissions that were bold, innovative and fascinating.

The competition included an extensive public consultation process with stakeholders and a week-long public exhibition at Toronto’s Metro Hall. With input from the public consultation, a four-member jury made up of prominent architect and design professionals unanimously selected the “Sugar Beach” submission by Montreal's Claude Cormier Architectes Paysagistes as the winner.

The jury said it was the most effective design in addressing the principles set fourth in the design criteria. The jury also appreciated the design’s establishment of a larger, greater system of beach designs throughout Toronto’s waterfront.