SkyDome and the birth of condoland on Toronto's waterfront

We were reading a few days ago one of many pieces that have been done about the SkyDome, that hulking neighbour to the north of Queens Quay. It was 20 years ago today, June 5, 1989, that the Dome opened, ushering in a few glory years of baseball in this city.

Sports columnist Stephen Brunt writes about a "pretty standard, multiuse stadium of the type much in vogue during the 1970s" and that it's "functional, but charmless."

He goes on to write about the politics behind the dome (a Grey Cup during an ice storm at Exhibition Stadium supposedly changed minds) and that.

What's perhaps missing from some of this sports analysis of what the Dome meant for the sporting life in this city is what it has done for LIFE in the city for general. In the Google Map below, we mapped just some of the developments that took off right around the SkyDome in the years after 1989.


View SkyDome and a emerging neighbourhood in a larger map

It's pretty stark, isn't it?

If SkyDome was a seed, or weed, then you can see its offspring in the developments of condo around it. CityPlace, for instance, has sprouted out. Queens Quay saw more than a few parking lots turn into late 1990s and early 2000s developments. True, the condo bust of the 1980s turned condo development cold until the late to mid 1990s, but it's undoubtedly true that this area was made all the more fit for building once you brought the people to the area.

For good (uh, we live here) and bad (for the detractors of condoland).

Happy 20th, Rogers... er, SkyDome.