Inside the Rise of Toronto’s Harbourfront
From industrial port to livable cultural center, the Canadian city’s lakeside neighborhood has seen a stunning transformation—and the changes keep coming
The Harbourfront in Toronto
A hundred years ago, Toronto’s Harbourfront was a bustling and dirty port full of noise and industrial activity. Ships hauling cargo frequented a landscape of huge wooden wharves and smokestack chimneys overlooking Lake Ontario. Although Toronto surpassed Montreal as Canada’s leading city in the 1970s, its industrial decline meant this waterfront district needed new purpose, starting an ambitious process of transformation into an area for recreation and culture. A renovated quay opened as the Harbourfront Centre in 1982, which remains a leading venue for festivals, performances, film screenings and exhibitions to this day.
Over the years, several waves of investment have reshaped the area from a barren landscape to a pleasant, green and magnetic destination, helping the lake to become a much bigger part of Toronto’s daily life. More than 100 acres of parkland and public spaces lining the water are being created—by Waterfront Toronto, a public-private partnership established in 2001—and around 20 mixed-use developments are currently planned or proposed in the area, in the latest chapter for Canada’s most dynamic real estate market. The metamorphosis includes a batch of skyscrapers that will redefine the skyline—literally changing the face of the city.
Toronto Music Garden.
Many leading designers have already contributed to turning Harbourfront into a leafy leisure and lifestyle destination. Landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy collaborated with world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma to create the verdant Toronto Music Garden. Dutch landscape architecture firm West 8 reconnected the chopped-up waterfront wharves, adding charming promenades and parks, rippling timber decks, graceful boardwalks and petite piers for pleasure boats. Parallel to this restored waterfront is a world-class civic corridor that, on sunny days, zips with cyclists and pedestrians.
West 8 designed the generous 18 kilometer-long Water’s Edge Promenade, a granite walkway planted with native maple trees, and a wooden boardwalk cantilevered over the water which is flanked by two parks. To the east is Sugar Beach: named after the adjacent Redpath Sugar Refinery, this is one of several parks designed by Montreal-based Claude Cormier + Associés (CCxA). The two-acre site was transformed from a parking lot into a sandy urban beach and features pink sun umbrellas, always in high demand on a hot summer’s day, and raised vantage spots to watch what’s happening on the lake.
A playful timber deck designed by West 8
Elsewhere along the waterfront, the firm also designed HtO urban beach, decorated with grassy hills and a sandy beach, dotted with playful editions of the iconic Canadian “Muskoka” lounge chairs. More recently, the firm opened Love Park, where an off-ramp of the nearby expressway once stood. This ambitious vision of taking obsolete infrastructure, redesigning it and opening up its full potential echoes the spirit found all over the neighborhood. Bringing positivity right after the pandemic, Love Park centers on a whimsical heart-shaped pond that’s ringed by mosaics and studded by bronze animal sculptures.
In the summers, the whole city flocks to the cool lakefront breezes, and this series of outdoor spaces hosts family picnics and gatherings, night markets, as well as the literary, film and performance festivals that Toronto is celebrated for—including the Toronto Waterfront Festival and its fleet of tall ships.
Sugar Beach by Claude Cormier + Associés (CCxA)
One of the cornerstones of the waterfront’s cultural activity is The Power Plant, originally a 1920s coal-burning powerhouse that reopened in 1987 as a public gallery dedicated to contemporary art. It has presented more than 100 exhibitions since, including a program of commissions of new work by leading artists, and hosts Toronto’s annual arts gala, the Power Ball. The Power Plant is also at the heart of the Toronto Biennial of Art, a celebration of contemporary art that takes over the city.
But it’s not just parks and culture: Harbourfront is also becoming a fine dining destination. A particular highlight is Don Alfonso 1890, which found a new home in 2022 on top of the 38-story Westin Harbour Castle hotel. Celebrated as one of the best Italian restaurants in the world outside of Italy, it is the only North American restaurant by three-time Michelin-starred chef Alfonso Iaccarino, one of the originators of the farm-to-table movement. Decorated in pale, muted tones, the restaurant design centers on the panoramic views of the city and lake through floor-to-ceiling windows.
The Power Plant art gallery, as part of the Harbourfront Centre
New restaurants such as these—as well as homes and cultural spaces—will continue to emerge along Harbourfront. The next focus of development is an area called Quayside, with a vision for a sustainable and mixed-use neighborhood emerging just past Sugar Beach. It will turn a pocket of low-rise offices, parking lots and industrial remnants into a livable district with diverse amenities and high-rise towers. There are set to be more than 4,000 new apartments, with a two-acre “community forest” running through the complex, alongside a multi-use arts venue.
Quayside will be fully electrically powered, built with sustainability and extreme weather resilience as first principles, and feature a Community Care Hub promoting physical and mental wellbeing for residents, including daycare, seniors’ services and medical services. The area is abuzz with plans for more developments, including a new rapid transit line which, once built, will make this newest part of Harbourfront an even more appealing place to live.
This article was originally published in Sotheby’s International Realty Extraordinary Living Blog in January 2025
