If the arts make our lives richer, Willowdale will be getting much wealthier next year with the construction of a new arts park just east of Yonge Street.

The new park, between Hillcrest and Princess avenues, will be ideally located close to Toronto Centre for the Arts, Mel Lastman Square and three local schools for the performing arts, Earl Haig, Claude Watson and Cardinal Carter.

What will it look like? A lot of creative thought still needs to go into the design, but we know there will be space for permanent features, temporary exhibits and a small pavilion with a seating area from which to view small performances.

A preliminary public meeting took place in late October, and the project will now move forward with a design team overseeing it.
Current timelines call for the design work of the park to be completed by spring, with construction starting, and hopefully finishing, in 2014.

Getting new parkland in our community isn’t easy. We have to put it together lot by lot, with the money coming from contributions required from developers. With the arts park, it took almost 15 years before we had enough land to meet with the community about the design.

This process all takes place as I begin meetings with neighbourhoods across the ward on how to maximize the use of local parks and ask what prominent features we should be looking at in key locations.

A meeting with the Edithvale community is set for this month, and meetings in other neighbourhoods will continue over the winter.