AGO gets cash to spruce up Grange Park

A popular, but uninspiring refuge in the heart of the city will get an overdue makeover thanks to the Weston family.

Flanked by a renovated Art Gallery of Ontario to the north and OCAD University’s striking tabletop structure to the east, Grange Park seemed to have been left behind.

The AGO property — which has been a public park since 1911 when the gallery made an agreement with the city — has a wading pool, a playground and trees, but little else.

Now, Galen Weston, chairman of the W. Garfield Weston Foundation, has promised an undisclosed sum to help restore the park. The city will also chip in.

“Grange Park has a cherished place in my family’s history,” Weston said in a statement.

“It is just steps away from the original Weston Bakery where my grandfather lived and worked both baking and delivering the bread. While the neighbourhood has changed, the park has been a constant over all these years.”

The gallery has hired urban design and landscape architecture firm PFS Studio to make the park “green, beautiful, resilient, sustainable and accessible.”

PFS also designed Sherbourne Common, an award-winning park and stormwater treatment facility on Toronto’s waterfront.

The Westons previously gave the AGO $12 million to build a learning centre and set up an educational endowment.

“As a longtime supporter of the AGO, Galen Weston has once again chosen to invest in the Gallery and our community,” said gallery CEO Matthew Teitelbaum.

“This project will allow us to contribute to the beauty and vitality of our great city of Toronto.”

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