| Trillium Park | |
| Photo Width: | 275 |
| Map: | Canada Toronto |
| Type: | Public Park |
| Location: | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Coords: | 43.63°N -79.4096°W |
| Area: | 7.5acres |
| Open: | June 19, 2017 |
| Website: | Trillium Park and William G. Davis Trail |
Trillium Park is a park in Toronto owned and operated by the Government of Ontario. Various Ontario landscapes inspired the park design. The William G. Davis Trail passes through the park connecting it to the Martin Goodman Trail.
Trillium Park is part of a revitalization plan for Ontario Place. In 1971, Ontario Premier Bill Davis opened Ontario Place, which operated a season of events and entertainment annually from May to October. Ontario Place closed in 2012 after annual attendance fell from 2.5 million to 300,000. In 2012, the province appointed John Tory (who later became mayor of Toronto) to come up with ideas to revive the Ontario Place site. He recommended "Condos on the west island, a hotel or resort, corporate headquarters or educational research institute on no more than 15 per cent of the prime waterfront site" - ideas that resulted in a public backlash. In 2014, the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport developed its own ideas for a "culture, discovery and innovation hub" with a "Blue Park" to include the Cinesphere and its elevated pods, a "Canal District", a "Celebration Common" and a park and trail. As of July 2017, only the latter two - Trillium Park and the William G. Davis Trail - were implemented with any further development yet to be defined.
The park was developed through a consortium. The construction company Urbacon was the project lead. Landscape architecture firm LANDinc was the design lead in collaboration with West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture. The project was managed by Infrastructure Ontario and was sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. The project took three and half years to complete of which construction took over two years.
Trillium Park was built on the site of a former parking lot at a cost of million. To guard against high lake water levels, the site of the park was raised using 52,000 cubic metres of soil. To prevent erosion, there were repairs to nearly of the shoreline.
Park construction used building and plant materials from across the province. Almost 1,200 Ontario trees were planted in the park including red oak, red pine, and sugar maple marker trees supplied by nurseries within the province. About 28,000 shrubs and perennials were planted including highbush cranberry, wild ginger and St. John's Wort. The park's bluff feature used 1,700 tonnes of Muskoka granite stone from a quarry in Huntsville, the largest stone weighing 52 tons. 140 individual granite slabs from Northern Ontario were used to complete the bluff's granite wall.
According to LANDinc, Trillium Park was created as an urban forest providing a natural-looking landscape with native tree and shrub species. The park consists of trails, rolling landforms, rock outcrops and pebble beaches, and offers views of the city and Lake Ontario.
The major features of the park are as follows:
Other park features are: