Putting the 'park' in parking lot; Toronto, ON, Canada; 3/4/09

Putting the ‘park’ in parking lot Eye Weekly - Toronto,ON,Canada
Though those making proposals didn’t realize it at the time, it turns out that converting at least part of the Queen and Soho parking lot into a park proper is a tangible possibility. Thanks to the indefatigable Freedom of Information–request skills of IllegalSigns.ca’s Rami Tabello (because what else would an anti-billboard activist do in his spare time but track down illegal parking lots), we now know that the city actually owns a section of the parking lot. The strip of parking spaces that runs along the eastern side of the lot is, in fact, a large boulevard leased to the lot for their parking purposes (an agreement called an “encroachment”). Back in the 1960s, when the original building was demolished, more parking was seen as a welcome addition, so it made sense for the city to lease the strip of land when the property owner eventually decided to opt for a vertically unambitious development.