Harbourfront (Toronto)

Harbourfront is a neighbourhood on the northern shore of Lake Ontario within the downtown core of the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Part of the Toronto waterfront, Harbourfront extends from Bathurst Street in the west, along Queens Quay, with its ill-defined eastern boundary being either Yonge Street or York Street. Its northern boundary is the Gardiner Expressway. Much of the district was former water lots filled in during the early 1900s to create a larger harbour district. After shipping patterns changed and the use of the Toronto harbour declined, the area was converted from industrial uses to a mixed-use district that is mostly residential and leisure.

History

Toronto's harbour has been used since the founding of Toronto for shipping and industrial purposes. The Town of York was founded to the west of the Don River, along the waterfront. When the town was founded, the water's edge was approximately where today's 'Front Street' is located. Over time, the area south of Front Street to today's water's edge south of 'Queen's Quay' was filled in with landfill, creating piers and area for industrial development.

Prior to the 1972 federal election, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced the Harbourfront project, which would expropriate the industrial port lands from York Street west to Bathurst Street, south of
Queen's Quay and convert them to a cultural and residential district for Toronto, similar to the Granville Island district in Vancouver. The federal government has converted the industrial area to an area mixed with art galleries, performance spaces, boating areas and parks. The surrounding neighbourhood, formerly industrial has been converted by private land developers into a series of condominium towers overlooking the project and Lake Ontario.

From its beginnings as "Harbourfront Corporation", a federal Crown Corporation established in 1972, Harbourfront Centre was formed on January 1, 1991 as a non-profit charitable organization with a mandate to organize and present public events and to operate a site encompassing York Quay and John Quay (south of Queens Quay West).
Since its inception, Harbourfront Centre has been used by artists that would not normally be seen in commercial venues, in an effort to foster new forms of arts and expression.

In July 2012 Waterfront Toronto began a major reconstruction of Queen's Quay West, requiring the 509 streetcar to be replaced with buses for the duration of the construction. On October 12, 2014, streetcar service resumed on 509 Harbourfront route after an absence of over two years in order to rebuild the street to a new design. With the new street design, two auto lanes south of the streetcar tracks were eliminated between Spadina Avenue and York Street in order to extend Harbourfront parkland to the edge of the streetcar tracks. The Martin Goodman Trail