Toronto’s Quayside project is back online, almost two years after Sidewalk Labs’ plans to develop the site were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new development will instead be delivered by a consortium led by developers Dream Unlimited and Great Gulf Group, featuring buildings by Adjaye Associates, Alison Brooks Architects, and Henning Larsen.

The 12-acre (4.9 hectare) site will contain five towers, as well as one of Canada’s largest residential mass timber buildings. Over 800 affordable housing units will be contained in the scheme, with an emphasis on family-sized units. The team behind the development also claim the project to be “Canada’s first all-electric” masterplan.

New buildings along the waterfront site will include the Western Curve Building by Alison Brooks Architects, the Timber House by Adjaye Associates, and the Overstorey by Henning Larsen. Renderings of the masterplan show the starchitect-designed buildings arranged in a linear fashion flanked by the Gardiner Expressway to the north and the city’s waterfront to the south.

The development will be anchored to the south by a 2-acre (0.8 hectare) linear “community forest” designed by landscape architects SLA, which the developers describe as a “network of car-free green spaces for residents and visitors. Above the residential mass timber buildings, meanwhile, the development will host rooftop urban farming through community gardens and greenhouses.  

The new development takes place of a previous $1.3 billion plan developed by Alphabet-backed Sidewalk Labs. Beginning in 2017, the company led a series of high design firms, including  Snøhetta, Michael Green Architecture, and Heatherwick Studio, in a deeply controversial effort to envision a wireless, data-driven, and mass timber-filled future for the city's waterfront.

In May 2020, Sidewalk Labs CEO Daniel Doctoroff confirmed the project’s cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “As unprecedented economic uncertainty has set in around the world and in the Toronto real estate market, it has become too difficult to make the 12-acre project financially viable without sacrificing core parts of the plan we had developed together with Waterfront Toronto to build a truly inclusive, sustainable community," he wrote at the time.

The revitalized Quayside joins a number of significant plans announced for Toronto in 2021. In November, Populous and OverActive Media unveiled updated plans for a performance venue in the city. In June, Safdie’s design for the ORCA mega-development in downtown Toronto came a step closer to reality, while a 66-story mixed-use tower for the city was unveiled by BDP Quadrangle in May.