Heritage Plan Drives Kensington Market's 2027 Infrastructure Overhaul

The City of Toronto is planning major state-of-good-repair infrastructure work in Kensington Market, including watermain replacement, road resurfacing and reconstruction, starting in Spring 2027 for one to two years. This work follows directly from the Kensington Market Heritage Conservation District Plan adopted by City Council on February 5, 2025.

Heritage Plan Provides Preservation Framework

The plan was adopted to preserve the neighbourhood's character and limit demolition. It supplies the policy backdrop against which the upcoming road and watermain projects are being designed. Earlier safe streets documentation from 2023 already identified the same streets for traffic calming measures, creating a continuous planning thread that the 2025 heritage designation reinforced.

Utility Coordination Precedes Road Reconstruction

Toronto Hydro is scheduled to begin replacing utility poles along Augusta Avenue in October 2026, after the CaféTO season ends. The timing aligns the pole work with the larger infrastructure project that will cover six streets and two laneways beginning the following spring. The planned improvements include wider sidewalks, curb extensions and traffic calming measures to enhance pedestrian safety and accessibility.

Affordable Housing Project Advances on Former Parking Lot

Separately, a 78-unit deeply affordable housing complex using cross-laminated timber is under construction on a former parking lot at 35 Bellevue Avenue as part of the City’s Rapid Housing Initiative. This development proceeds alongside the heritage and infrastructure planning, showing how multiple City programs intersect in the same area.

The sequence of decisions-safe streets work in 2023, heritage district adoption in February 2025, hydro pole replacement in October 2026 and the main reconstruction starting Spring 2027-shows how earlier studies and council actions shaped the current project scope. Residents can review the full infrastructure consultation materials and heritage district documents on the City of Toronto website for details on street-by-street timing and access impacts once construction schedules are finalised.