On a typical winter day, real estate executive Philip Mostowich enters his garage directly from his house, drives downtown and takes an elevator to his office. He shops at the Hudson’s Bay department store, works out at a club and meets clients–all without going outdoors. You just have to “avoid having lunch dates somewhere on the surface,” he says.
Like many in Toronto, Mostowich has taken to traversing the seven-mile maze of corridors and malls that link the city’s major office towers and hotels. In the past few years, the “Path,” as it’s called here, has expanded significantly, as previously separate parts of the system were linked and more residents than ever found they could bypass the cold entirely.
That prospect is deeply alluring. Toronto in February means howling winds and bone-chilling cold. But down here, the odd undergrounder can be seen in shorts and T-shirt.
Mostowich says he “sometimes goes a full week without going outside.” There’s always an easy place to eat or run errands nearby. Some folks lollygag their way through the maze, while others dart from office to office. But no horns honk, and no traffic lights blink.
There is no wind or slush to contend with. Drivers get to the Path through underground parking lots, where they can have their vehicles scrubbed at car-wash stations. Hard-core undergrounders, though, are lucky to get a few lungfulls of fresh air in a day.
The network feels like a sort of corporate mine shaft illuminated by fluorescent lighting. Many Torontonians report having had several-day stretches without daylight, because they travel to and from work in the dark and stay indoors all day–often in windowless offices.
Without the sun, it’s easy to lose track of time. After a long shift underground, one often squints at the sunlight upon resurfacing.
If you wear a winter coat or boots in the Path, you risk sticking out.
“I always felt there was a Path dress code,” says John Elkins, a Vermont-based computer consultant who does business in Toronto. “I saw people wearing coats and I was like, where the hell are they from?”
Looking at his watch as he stands inside the Scotia Plaza office tower, Elkins says he has been indoors “approaching 56 hours.” Like many newcomers to the maze, he says he initially “got lost a couple of times and started getting panicky,” but he was soon “captured” by the ease of underground life.
His hotel was linked to the building in which he was working. He ate, shopped, people-watched and ran on a fitness-club treadmill. He says he is thinking about jogging through the maze at night.
“It’s very unlike me,” he says. “Normally I would go outside and run.”
Elkins’s penchant for the outdoors vanished during his Toronto stay.
“There must be a disease, a name for this,” he says.
Other North American cities, such as Chicago, Montreal, Houston, Calgary, Minneapolis, Atlanta and New York, have protected pedestrian passageways, either underground or above-ground. But Toronto’s network is exceptional in its breadth.
Bewildered Path pedestrians are often seen asking for directions, only to get shrugs from equally lost passersby. Aspiring architect John Peirson, for one, was curious to know how long it would take to walk from the south end of the maze to the north end: He clocked it at 45 minutes one day recently during his lunch hour.
The trip took him from the Toronto Convention Centre through the train station, office buildings, department stores, malls, subways, food courts, and past a play that was being performed in an atrium area until he reached the Go bus terminal at the other end of the Path.
Peirson regrets hauling his coat along for the journey.
“I was boiling” down there, he says.
The maze started as just a few pedestrian tunnels 30 years ago. But now, on raw winter days, subterranean Toronto attracts so many people that it leaves downtown streets looking like a ghost town. The walkways often feature live music or art displays. Bow-tied waiters serve coffee, desserts and drinks to people lounging in sidewalk cafes.
More than 100,000 people work in the four dozen office towers hooked into the underground. About 1,100 stores and restaurants are tied to the system. Half a dozen hotels, as well as numerous dental and medical offices, fitness clubs, dry cleaners, movie theaters and even the Hockey Hall of Fame are all connected.
A basketball and hockey stadium is currently being built alongside the tunnel, where the Raptors and the Maple Leafs will play regularly.
And while the city once offered subsidies to buildings that included underground passageways, property owners are now eager to build the tunnels and link them to the system at their own expense. Analysts say underground-accessible buildings command monthly rents two or three (Canadian) dollars higher per square foot than non-linked buildings.
Urban planners doubt that many other big North American cities will try to match Canada’s sprawling underground networks.
“You have to have a climatic reason to do it” and it’s expensive, says Glenn Miller, research director at the Canadian Urban Institute. Still, the development has greatly increased the city’s downtown density, and has been “a tremendous economic benefit to the city,” he says.
Toronto is particularly well-suited to an underground city because the downtown is “very tightly knit,” with skyscrapers, subway stops and a train station all in close proximity, says Toronto real estate consultant Barry Lyon.
