The market place and the City can only absorb a limited amount of residential and commercial space each year, and flooding the market with 40,000 residential units and one million square meters of employment space in a short period of time would not be commercially viable.

Project development especially in the waterfront area is very complex and time intensive. Many people mistakenly think a project does not start until they see shovels in the ground. In fact, the pre-construction work usually takes more time than the actual construction.

We are revitalizing the waterfront and not just redeveloping it and we take a comprehensive planning approach to ensure the end result is a new blue edge where people will want to live, work, play, learn and visit.

Our projects undergo many steps before shovels actually break the ground for construction.

• A master plan is developed and designed, including planning all the necessary infrastructure to support sustainable communities. To ensure the highest caliber of design excellence, we often hold international design competitions to select our design teams. Also during the planning and design stage, all waterfront projects are reviewed at several stages by our design review panel and the projects must meet the standards of the panel.
• Rezoning and all other required approvals, including environmental approvals, must be obtained. This can be very complex work that requires years of study and analysis, plus review and approval by multiple levels of governments and often multiple departments and ministries.
• The planning and design and rezoning and approvals steps also include extensive consultation with the public and community stakeholders.

• Waterfront lands are mostly former industrial lands and land that has been created by decades of infilling Lake Ontario, and the soil must be remediated before it can be developed.
• Also much of the land does not currently have adequate servicing to support a mixture of residential and commercial use. Therefore modern services and infrastructure, such as hydro and gas lines, water mains and sewers must be installed.

Waterfront Toronto oversees the construction of services and infrastructure and constructs parks and public spaces. For the development of buildings, Waterfront Toronto works with private and public sector development partners. Land is tendered competitively and development partners are chosen based on their ability to meet and deliver on a comprehensive list of criteria.

There are currently many fully and partially funded projects at various stages of planning and construction across the waterfront.