The new park at Wilson Avenue and Faywood Boulevard covers 973 square metres. That is smaller than a hockey rink and larger than a basketball court, the comparison the City of Toronto uses itself. Its first survey drew more than 880 people. Faywood Park opened at 530 Wilson Ave. on July 28, 2026. Area set the limits on what could be built, and every feature on the corner had to win its space from another feature, and the ones that lost are still part of how a Clanton Park weekend works this fall.
Five years of work for 973 square metres
The City's project page for Faywood Park sets out a long timeline for a small parcel:
- 2021: design team hired
- Spring 2022 to summer 2023: community engagement and design development
- Fall 2023 to summer 2024: detailed design
- Spring 2025: construction starts
- Summer 2026: construction complete, park opens
The engagement stage ran in three rounds, each larger or more focused than a corner lot usually gets. The first online survey ran from April 20 to May 8, 2022, and collected 499 ideas and more than 9,000 idea ratings. On May 6, 2022, project staff ran classroom workshops at Faywood Arts-Based Curriculum School with about 60 students. That afternoon, a pop-up outside the school drew about 125 people, most of them 13 or younger. The second-round survey, from January 18 to February 26, 2023, had 1,270 participants. The last round, in summer 2023, had 690.
Those numbers explain why the park looks as it does. Hundreds of people weighed in on a space that could hold only a handful of features.
What the votes decided
Where two options competed for the same spot, the margins were often wide. The City's published results from the 2023 survey show how the main choices went:
| Decision | What respondents said | What was built |
|---|---|---|
| Splash pad style | 59% preferred water jets, 31% a water tunnel | Water jets |
| Play layout | 44% preferred Option A, 38% Option B | Option A, edited |
| Café table seating | 83% liked it a little or a lot | Fixed tables, metal umbrellas |
| Picnic lawn | 83% liked it a little or a lot | Extra-large picnic tables seating eight each |
| Surface colour | Aqua blues ranked highest | Blue rubber and concrete |
"Edited" covers the most interesting change. Option A had won the layout vote, but its least popular parts were its musical and toddler features: djembe drums, a chime fence, a small spinning ball and a bouncing ball. Students in the February 2023 workshops mostly disliked the music features as well. The final design kept Option A's disk swing, fitness climber and "bamboo" climbers and replaced the drums, chimes and junior pieces with spinner bowls. Requests for more shade raised the planned tree count from 15 to 22.
The spinner bowls got their own feedback. In the July 2023 survey, five respondents asked for them to be replaced, calling them "boring, unused and too fast." The design kept two of them.
Several smaller requests also show up in the finished park. Residents asked for a drinking fountain with a dog bowl and for bike parking, and both were added, with the bike racks placed in the Faywood Boulevard right-of-way. People worried about children running toward Wilson Avenue, so the park is ringed by plantings, benches and a mid-height fence, with six set entry points.
What the lot was too small for
The table covers choices between options. The bigger choices were the requests that never became options.
At the 2022 pop-up, most participants were children, and their two most popular suggestions were a splash pad and a basketball court. Older students in the classroom workshops also put a basketball court or half court on their list. Adults in the first survey suggested basketball and skateboarding as features not already offered at nearby parks. The splash pad made it into the design. The court did not. On a site the City describes as only somewhat larger than a basketball court, a full court would have taken up most of the park.
The final 2023 survey added more requests: a slide, which 14 respondents asked for, more swings with 13, a washroom with six, a snack bar with four, and a dog off-leash area with four. The City answered the last one plainly. An off-leash area was "out of scope due to the park's limited size." The opening announcement repeats that a dogs off-leash area will not be included.
So the finished park is a set of things that fit inside a fence: a play corner, a splash pad, café tables, a climbing area and a lawn. Anything that needed real running room went elsewhere.
A splash pad with a very short first summer
The splash pad drew the strongest support of any feature. In the 2023 survey, 81 percent liked having one and 90 percent liked where it was placed. Its first season was very short.
When the park opened on July 28, the City's page said water was unavailable "due to Toronto Water work in the area until the end of August." The City's 2026 splash pad schedule ran from May 16 to September 13. Even if the water work finished on time, the most popular feature in the park would have had about two weeks of use before the citywide season ended.
That leaves the park in October with its other features. These are the café tables fixed to the ground under metal umbrellas, the bamboo climbers and fitness station meant for tweens, teens and adults, the disk swing, and the picnic tables on the lawn at the south end. Light poles run along the main path, a detail residents asked for back in 2022 so the park could be used in the evening. That matters more once the clocks go back.
Where the rest of the fall happens
The features Faywood had no room for are available a short trip away, and some of them are on this month's calendar.
For dogs, the City lists an off-leash space at Earl Bales Park, 4169 Bathurst St., and describes it as fenced.
For bigger events, Downsview Park has three dates coming up:
- Saturday, October 17, 10 to 10:45 a.m.: Storytime in the Park returns as a free program in English, followed by a French session from 11 to 11:45 a.m. Registration is required.
- Saturday, October 17, 1 to 3 p.m.: a community tree planting to add 88 trees to the park. The event page asks for one ticket per family or group.
- Sunday, October 25, 1 to 5 p.m.: Howl-O-Ween Unleashed, a free event on the Festival Terrace, with dog activities, a vendor and food market, and a beer garden. Vendors were still to be confirmed on the event page.
Downsview's Pumpkinfest, held over Thanksgiving weekend, closes at 6 p.m. today, October 12.
The tree planting on October 17 mirrors the Faywood process at a larger scale. On Wilson, requests for shade added seven trees to the design. At Downsview, 88 are going in over one afternoon.
If your route goes north to Sheppard, the City has scheduled watermain relining on Sheppard Avenue West from Bakersfield Street to Dufferin Street through November 30. The notice warns of access and parking restrictions in the work zone, possible water shutoffs and traffic delays.
Faywood Park now covers the everyday needs on that block of Wilson: a coffee at a fixed table, a quick climb, a picnic for eight. For off-leash space and large events, the nearest options listed here are on Bathurst and at Downsview.
At Adam Weiner + Associates, we follow how corners like Wilson and Faywood change across Clanton Park, from the first survey to the day a park opens. To talk about what new parks and public spaces mean for your own street, request a concierge consultation with our team.
