possible in the circumstances, by suitable alternative lands for that purpose." Construction started in 1963 with the clearing of the route. The area north of Lawrence Avenue was open land. South of Lawrence, dozens of homes were demolished. Coinciding with the opening of the Yorkdale mall, an interim roadway was opened from Lawrence north to Yorkdale Road on February25, 1964. In 1964, Metro released another transportation plan, which proposed the Spadina route south of Bloor, again requiring the demolition of homes south of Davenport. Toronto City Council adopted an Official Plan opposing the Crosstown Expressway and the Christie Expressway completely. Ontario's Minister of Municipal Affairs overruled the city, and modified the city's Plan to allow for the construction of both expressways. The City and Metro were now in disagreement. On December15, 1966, the section from Lawrence Avenue north to Transit Road was opened to traffic. Construction then started on the section south to Eglinton Avenue. York Council had dropped its opposition to the expressway and made an agreement with Metro on the use of Cedarvale Park for the expressway. This agreement provided for the creation of of park lands in the Borough of York to replace the park lands lost to the expressway trench. This plan would have meant the expropriation of homes for the replacement lands and residents of York protested the plan to the Council. The cost of the expropriation plan was an estimated $4million of construction, plus the loss of the assessment, while putting a cover over the roadway within the park would have cost $5million. The opposition led Metro to agree to building the expressway within a tunnel under the park. As construction proceeded, opposition to the expressway grew among City of Toronto residents. In October 1969, the "Stop Spadina, Save Our City Co-ordinating Committee" (SSSOCCC, or "Stop Spadina") was formed, under the chairmanship of University of Toronto professor Allan Powell. The group was a coalition of students, academics, politicians, ratepayer groups and business people. Notable among the opposition was urban theorist Jane Jacobs, who moved to the Annex in 1969, fresh from a battle to stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway in New York City. Marshall McLuhan, too, was opposed to the expressway and said: "Toronto will commit suicide if it plunges the Spadina Expressway into its heart... our planners are 19th century men with a naive faith in an obsolete technology. In an age of