What could you do with $25 million? You could build a mansion on the Bridal Path. Short the Brexit freefall. Help the homeless. Or make your mark on your city.

That’s what philanthropists Judy and Wilmot Matthews (he is an investment banker in Toronto) are doing with their $25-million donation to Project: Under Gardiner through their Matthews Foundation.

Under Gardiner is an ambitious project that will not only beautify the lost, almost invisible lands under the Gardiner Expressway, from Strachan to Spadina Avenues, but also animate them.

The new park is part of an emerging downtown neighbourhood, bordered on the north by historic Fort York and on the south by new condos and lakefront parks. The project will replace parking lots and a dusty no man’s land beneath the Gardiner with landscaped seating areas and pathways, music events, a skating trail, theatre, pop-up food stands, perhaps hanging gardens and art – plenty of art. The park will be all New York City style, High Line Park pizzazz, except down low and under the concrete expressway arches, stretching for 1.75 kilometres over four hectares. Think of the natural acoustics alone. The phrase “sound sculptures” comes up a lot.

Judy Matthews, who has an master’s degree in urban planning and has worked for the City of Toronto, is the driving force behind the project, which will be co-partnered by Waterfront Toronto and the City of Toronto, and developed in three phases, the first to see completion in 2017. The sky, literally, is the limit. On a recent tour of the site for the public, suggestions ran from painting the expressway pillars with international flags to represent Toronto’s diversity to designing climbing structures or even treehouses perched on the “bents,” as the concrete pillars are called.

Community input is a marvellous thing, a marked contrast to the many major developments going up in Toronto with little regard for public preferences. But design by committee might prove troublesome (and could look sloppy). Already, there has been a cheating incident in the online vote to name the new public space. (In June, voters drove up The Artery to first place through automatic voting. A second vote was held, and The Bentway won.)

Judy Matthews, like architect and philanthropist Phyllis Lambert in Montreal, is not just handing over dough and stepping aside. Whatever happens – the usual cost overruns, overambitious side projects, squabbling co-partners, city bureaucracy or project delays – the Matthewses are not shying away.

In a recent media interview, Judy emphasized that she and her husband intend to remain involved patrons, including making sure that the park is completed by July 2017 – Canada’s 150th birthday.

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