The southwest corner of Hanna Avenue and Liberty Street is still a parking lot. Most of it is Green P asphalt. One corner is painted with the Love Liberty ground mural and set with planters, tables and chairs. According to blogTO's reporting, the lot had 184 spaces and brought in $1,010,952 in 2023. The City plans to turn the whole site, 4,900 square metres, over to a permanent park. That makes it a little larger than Liberty Village Park.
On October 3, five finalist teams showed their concepts at Liberty Market Building. The City's international design competition started in October 2025 and drew 26 submissions from pre-qualified teams. The teams came from Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and Copenhagen, and their concepts differ widely in tone. Each one still puts a large open gathering space in the middle of the site. Every brief started with the same lot, and every team concluded the neighbourhood needs a place for crowds, markets and performances. The real differences lie in what surrounds that middle.
What every finalist agreed on
Here is how the shared core shows up in each design, based on UrbanToronto's October 8 walkthrough:
- Ànakwad Park has a 1,200 square metre central clearing across two lawns, plus a corner pavilion set aside for performance.
- Liberty Yard has an open clearing for markets, performances and informal play.
- Liberty Village Living Room arranges its features around a central gathering space.
- Windborne Common has a central gathering and event space.
- Liberty Nature Park has a civic plaza with amphitheatre seating for markets, performances and festivals.
Washrooms come up almost as often. Four of the five descriptions name a public washroom. The fifth, Liberty Yard, includes a pavilion but the published summary does not say what is inside it. A Toronto park with a washroom and a market-sized clearing is a different place from a lawn with benches, and the teams agreed on that much.
Where the designs split
The five teams parted ways on what goes around the middle. Some lean on planting, some on built furniture, some on the site's industrial past.
| Design | Team | What surrounds the middle | Public art |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ànakwad Park | CCxA + gh3 | Wooded mounds that buffer the streets, four corner pavilions with a washroom and small retail kiosk, sheltered swinging benches, and an off-leash dog area with a pet-washing station | Caroline Monnet's work on the pavilion vaults |
| Liberty Yard | Daoust Lestage | Orderly rows of trees inspired by factory and rail yards, communal tables, quieter planted pockets, rain gardens, and water and mist for cooling and play | A branching line carved into the pavilion brickwork |
| Liberty Village Living Room | Hapa Collaborative + MJMA | A salvaged-brick "area rug," a "Mega Sofa" bench, a "Bean Bag Lawn," a planted berm with a washroom tucked beneath it, a curtain trellis and picnic seating | The Hearth, an inhabitable burnished-steel sculpture |
| Windborne Common | Nippaysage + Saucier + Perrotte | Woodland, grassland and wet meadow covering more than 60% of the park, bridges and a boardwalk, a spray terrace, and a terra cotta washroom pavilion | Ludovic Boney's Sous l'action du vent / Driven by the Wind |
| Liberty Nature Park | PMA + Henning Larsen | A winding steel boardwalk through woodland, meadow, wetland and pollinator planting, play areas, a mist fountain, and chimney-shaped pavilions with washrooms and a swift tower | Between Sky and Water, a polished-steel piece |
Looked at this way, the choice is about how the park handles the edges of a busy site. In Liberty Yard and the Living Room, the whole park works as one outdoor room for eating, working and sitting. In Windborne Common and Liberty Nature Park, most of the ground is planted, and people reach the plaza along boardwalks. Ànakwad sits in between. Its mounds screen out traffic, and its four pavilions each have a set job.
The history each team picked up
Several teams drew on the same industrial past, each in its own way. Windborne Common takes its inspiration from the Ontario Wind Engine and Pump Company, which once stood on this site. Liberty Yard bases its tree grid on factory and rail yards. The Living Room's Hearth is built from stacked forms that echo industrial tubing, and it sits on salvaged brick. Liberty Nature Park takes the chimney swift as its theme, using the bird to tie the neighbourhood's industrial buildings to habitat for wildlife. Ànakwad takes its name and rounded forms from the Anishinaabemowin word for "cloud."
If you have watched the brick warehouses along Liberty Street turn into offices and lofts, that thread may be the most useful way to compare the designs. Each one interprets the old factory district differently, and whichever wins will sit on one of its most visible corners.
Why the open middle matters now
The design competition is running alongside a larger planning file. In June 2026, City Council adopted the Liberty For All Regeneration Area Study. Among its directions, the council decision asks Economic Development and Culture and Parks and Recreation staff to look into options for bringing back the Liberty Village Farmers' Market. That is a direction to report back. No market date has been set.
Liberty Yard's clearing and Liberty Nature Park's civic plaza are both described as places for markets. The neighbourhood has a revival under study and, a few years out, a park built around space that can host one. Neither file guarantees the other.
What to do with the next few weeks
If you missed the October 3 open house, the design panels go on display in the main floor rotunda at Metro Hall on October 14 or 15, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. All five shortlisted entries can also be viewed on the City's project page. The City collected Phase 2 feedback on display boards at the open house. The event listing on Have Your Say does not mention an online feedback form or deadline, so treat this round as a chance to look rather than vote. Comments from the Community Advisory Committee and City technical reviewers will feed into an independent jury's recommendation. The jury has five members, and each takes part independently rather than on behalf of an employer.
The City's published schedule from here:
- November 2026: jury evaluation
- December 2026: winner announced and design contract started
- Spring 2027: Community Engagement Phase 3, including an online survey
- Spring to Winter 2027: detailed design
- Spring 2028: construction team hired
- Fall 2028: Park in Progress closes and construction begins
- Fall 2030: new park opens
The City says the timeline is subject to change. Earlier coverage gave other dates. Toronto Life's roundup said the winner would be named in November, and the City's own October 2025 announcement expected the park to open in 2028. The current project page sets the winner announcement for December and the opening for Fall 2030.
The pop-up stays open for now
On the current schedule, the 720 square metre Park in Progress stays open until construction starts in Fall 2028. That gives roughly two more summers before the corner is fenced off. The City describes it as seating and plantings. blogTO reported that the Love Liberty mural by local artist Elise Goodhoofd opened on June 20, 2025. The City, the Liberty Village BIA, the councillor's office and Parks, Forestry and Recreation funded it together.
Parking is the trade-off. The whole site is set to move from the Toronto Parking Authority to the City, so the remaining lot goes too. On its project page, the City says a study for the Liberty Village Public Realm Strategy found only 57% of neighbourhood parking spaces in use at peak times, and it acknowledges challenges around where future parking goes and what it costs. If you depend on the Hanna lot, you have until construction starts to plan around it.
Whichever design wins, the winner will be announced in December, a survey follows in spring, and the asphalt stays until Fall 2028.
A new park on Hanna Avenue will change how your block feels, from the view out your window to your walk to the King-Liberty bridge. If you would like to talk through how a public project like this fits your plans in Liberty Village, Selin Yasar can help. Start your tailored home search.
