Token Park is a new waterfront park to be built behind the new tall buildings on a waterfront lot formerly known as Block D.
As part of the agreement between the developer (Homestead Landholdings) and the City, a park is to be provided for public use.
Recent related news
July 6 2010
Shorts:
KINGSTONIST on Token Park.
METALCRAFT MARINE just splashed a 69-foot red fireboat equipped with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) defenses. It's destined for Jacksonville but you'll be seeing its sea trials here in Kingston Harbour over the next few months.
The rather windy OPTIMIST NORTH AMERICANS, which wrapped last Sunday, was swept by Americans including two brothers, Christopher and Duncan Williford, who finnished top-two in the very strong 196-boat fleet. How strong? The top Canadian was 35th.
PHOTOS from the World Robotic Sailing Championships, which went under-the-radar in Kingston this Spring.
June 24 2010
HIGH MUCKY-MUCKS set to unveil Token Park on Monday.
Presumably there will be much collegial back-slapping amongst those who've done a great job recently ruining Kingston's waterfront.
More details on the whole Token Park waterfront accessibility and functionality downgrade.
November 20 2009
HERE YOU ARE LOOKING southwest from a vantage upstairs at the Radisson Hotel. Click here for a much larger version of this photo.
What you see in the middle-distance is the tumble-stone breakwall of Confederation Basin. In the right-foreground is part of the 250 meters of new tumble-stone shoreline around Block-D's Token Park.
In the past this 250m of Block-D perimeter was a corrugated metal seawall where boats could tie-up. It was a pretty good place for boat-passenger dropoffs and pickups when the marina's docks were packed in the summertime. It was a fine venue for model-boat racing. It has been said that many late-summer-night skinny-dips took place there in the hours between closing-time and dawn.
This was, in short, usable shoreline which is in very short supply around here. But that was then.
Let history show that, in the Harvey Rosen era, the City of Kingston transformed this once-usable protected shoreline into severe inaccessible shoreline. Which begs the question: why? All this is on calm waters that are amply protected by the massive Confederation Basin breakwall.
This is another waterfront loss in Kingston, one of many that have recently occurred because of the raving lunatics who lead and manage this unfortunate city.
Thanks to Joanna Bull for the photo.
November 15 2009
THIS is scandalous. Get a load of this:
At the next Council meeting, senior city managers Cynthia Beach and Lanie Hurdle (remember the wonderful, wonderful LVEC project?) want to add $200,000 to the budget for Token Park to cover some glaring planning oversights. Like lighting, and accessibility.
To finance this, these people want to filch $55,000 from the city's waterfront improvement account, $55,000 from the cycling and pathway account, and $90,000 remaining in the City Park splash-pad account.
Because, you know, we're up-to-our-eyeballs in recreational infrastructure here in Kingston.
August 4 2009
TOKEN PARK DETAILS have been published.
Note the tumble-rock perimiter. No connection to water whatsoever. Why???
All this sits behind the massive Confederation Basin tumble-rock breakwall already! A breakwall behind a breakwall; Brilliant!
The effing idiots who have screwed-up our waterfront for decades haven't learned a damn thing.
Read more on Token Park.
May 16 2009
THE SITE PLAN FOR TOKEN PARK goes before the City Planning Committee on Thursday night.
Highlights:
- No shoreline access. It's tumble-rock shoreline. Like we don't have enough of that.
- No jetty access. The Confedration Basin breakwall remains a birds-only place.
- A spot reserved for a marina building which makes no sense at all.
Related: Token Park news archive.
March 23 2009
ON TUESDAY'S COUNCIL AGENDA is the City Marinas Sustainable Strategy and Business Plan whose weeks-delayed public release was thoroughly botched last month following its truly bizarre August 2006 inception as a suspiciously narrowly-circulated RFI.
(Hey, you have to agree: it's a great way to run a railroad.)
FINALLY, for perhaps the first time in the seemingly endless Harvey Rosen era, Kingston waterfront takes a step that's NOT downright stupid, or ridiculously over-hyped, or shamefully stalled, or dirigiste, or laughably incomplete, or botched, or totally wasted, or commandeered by a raving bo-bo or otherwise seriously retrograde.
This bucks the unmistakable trend:
THAT the recommendation for the relocation of the Coast Guard at Portsmouth Olympic Harbour be exempted from the above clauses, and that it be referred back to staff for review and reconsideration in light of the community concerns raised within correspondence and through a delegation to the Committee on behalf of the Portsmouth Villagers Community Association.
Hallelujah.
Related: Anne Milina Outlook Point, the waterfront park that stands to be clobbered by said Coast Guard relocation.
February 14 2009
THE FEBRUARY 2009 THOUSAND ISLANDS LIFE is online. It appears to be a most excellent issue, with lots of Canadian content and great photographs throughout.
Articles include The MacNair Forty-Acre Muskie about the recently celebrated world-record catch-and-release by Dale MacNair. There's an article about The Canadian Empress, a very interesting article about Winter Island Living, and an article about Snowsqualls that explains how nearby Pulaski NY gets so thoroughly buried each winter.
Important News for Brockville breaks very recent news about a Brockville waterfront condo development landing a government-goodie in the form of a two-thirds funding of a new $18M Maritime Discovery Centre. (Incidentally, reading this, how does Kingston's Token Park sit with you now?)
June 3 2008
TOKEN PARK PROPOSAL IS A WATERFRONT DOWNGRADE, says a thoughtful reader commenting on Kingston's Disappearing Waterfront.
Here's the problem:
In prior years, the seawalls of Block D, some 200 linear meters worth, were commonly used for docking, including docking very large boats. The Block D seawall was also used for RC model boat competitions.
The current proposal for Token Park has the seawall finished with stone boulders, just like most of Kingston's waterfront.
Which begs these questions:
- Why does this shoreline, already well under cover of the Confederation Basin boulder breakwall, need to have a boulder-block finish?
- Doesn't Kingston have enough inacessible boulder seawalls already?
- Why is the City of Kingston apparently settling for the minimum-cost-to-Brit-Smith option while rendering 200m of shoreline completely inaccessible and dysfunctional?
January 24 2008
A TOKEN PARK IDEA from a reader. This is downtown Budapest, on the Danube.
At the moment, the plan for Token Park is for a large rubble-rock shoreline, which is inaccessible, ugly, and ubiquitous around here.
In addition to adding a real sense of connection to the water, steps would make Token Park a little bigger, and opens the possibility of using the large, wide-open anchorage as a staging area, or as a competition area complete with viewing stands of sorts.
January 19 2008
TOKEN PARK CONCEPT PLANS have finally been posted on the City website.
Download the Phase 1 concepts and the Phase 2 concepts.
Observation: You've got to love how this city does business.
- It plans a public meeting with no documents posted online beforehand.
- At the meeting, attendees must queue to have a brief chance to look at diagrams.
- Then attendees must sit-through the orchestrated sales-pitch.
By not posting plans before the meeting, this assures an unprepared and uninformed audience at the meeting, all the better minimize the chance of derailing pre-conceived development plans.
This is really how our waterfront got so ruined: one step at a time. That's how Block-D got stuffed with tall buildings, and that's how the rest of us ended-up with a token-park.
Here we have a "proposed marina building" with no connection whatsoever to the marina. The foot of the nearest dock, on the west-side of the Radisson Hotel, is 245 m away. The foot of the main docks, on Clarence Street, is over 520m away. That's going to be a great marina building, don't you think?
Here is detail of the juncture between Token Park and the stone breakwater that surrounds Confederation Marina. Note the utter lack of vision: there's plenty of usable space on the stone breakwater. Waterfront cities world-wide that "get it" have piers and breakwalls people can walk on. But in Kingston? Nah! Token Park is really a dog park, a place where the condo owner's pets can "go", nevermind that there's acres of great waterfront space out on the stone breakwall.
January 17 2008
ACCOUNT OF THE TOKEN PARK (BLOCK-D) PUBLIC MEETING in Thursday's Whig Standard.
Update: Here's a transcript of an item titled Block Park from CKWS-TV News.
January 9 2008
A PUBLIC MEETING ABOUT TOKEN PARK (BLOCK D) is to be held January 16, 2008, Memorial Hall, City Hall, 7 p.m.
There's nothing new on the City website other than the meeting announcement. Nonetheless,
Written comments will be received at [email protected] until Friday, Feb. 15.
Here's the only concept ever posted on the Internet.
Here's the wider context, which was never presented in the Token Park process.
