An urban beach built next to a working sugar refinery
Sugar Beach
Opened in 2010 on the East Bayfront, Sugar Beach brought pink umbrellas and imported sand to a stretch of waterfront still overlooked by the Redpath Sugar refinery it's named for.
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Sugar Beach opened in 2010 on Toronto's East Bayfront, one of the first major public spaces completed as part of Waterfront Toronto's long-running redevelopment of the city's central waterfront. Designed by landscape architecture firm Claude Cormier + Associés, the small artificial beach brought in imported sand and installed dozens of oversized pink umbrellas along the water's edge, a deliberately playful design that stood out against the industrial waterfront it sat within.
Named for its neighbour
The park takes its name from its immediate neighbour, the still-operating Redpath Sugar refinery next door, whose working industrial silos remain visible from the beach — an unusual and intentional juxtaposition of a leisure space next to active heavy industry that designers treated as a feature rather than something to screen out. Sugar Beach became one of the more photographed and widely cited successes of Toronto's waterfront revitalization, credited with demonstrating that small, design-forward public spaces could draw visitors even without swimmable water.
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