The timeline for opening a permanent new Ontario Science Centre appears to have been delayed, with infrastructure officials telling the auditor general’s office the centre is expected to be up and running in 2029.

When Premier Doug Ford announced last year the planned move for the attraction, from its east Toronto location to a redeveloped Ontario Place on the city’s waterfront, the science centre said the new facility would open in 2028.

In June, when the government announced the abrupt closure of the science centre over structural concerns with the roof, its press release said the Ontario Place facility would open “as early as” 2028.

Now, according to a report earlier this month from Ontario’s auditor general Shelley Spence on the Ontario Place redevelopment, “the new building is expected to open in 2029.”

That information was provided to the auditor general’s office by Infrastructure Ontario, a spokesperson for the auditor said.

Jason Ash, co-chair of the group Save Ontario’s Science Centre, said it’s a shame that there will be no permanent Ontario Science Centre for at least an extra year.

“It’s really a whole generation of Ontario children who are not going to have access to world-class science education that the Ontario Science Centre has provided for 55 years,” he said.

“Simply put, the Ontario Science Centre was unique in that the majority of its business actually came from Ontarians, with tourism coming in second place. So Ontario kids aren’t being served and tourists are not going to get a great experience either in the meantime.”

Two requests for comment from Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma went unanswered, with a spokesperson ultimately replying to a third by saying she would not be responding.

“Due to the request submitted by the Leader of the Official Opposition to the Integrity Commissioner on October 16th, 2024, Minister Kinga Surma has been asked not to comment and will respect the process at this time,” Ash Milton wrote.

Milton’s reply came after Surma answered at least a dozen questions in question period on the auditor general’s Ontario Place redevelopment findings.

NDP Leader Marit Stiles’ integrity complaint focused largely on terms and negotiations that led to a 95-year lease for Therme to build and operate a spa and waterpark at Ontario Place, but also alleges “irregularities” with the plan to relocate the science centre.

Stiles suggests, based on information previously uncovered last year by the auditor general, that the government wanted to have the science centre at Ontario Place and integrate parking promised to Therme with the science centre building in order to dispel public concerns over the project.

“This is yet another expensive project that nobody asked for – with a plan that no one is buying,” Stiles wrote in a statement this week.

“We could have revitalized the existing Science Centre for a fraction the cost. Ford and Surma boasted about the new Science Centre opening in 2028, but that sounds like more false promises from a flailing government.”

A spokesperson for Infrastructure Ontario said the procurement process for the new centre continues, with the request for proposals stage expected to wrap up next fall.

A firm date for the completion of construction will be posted once a contract is awarded, and the opening date will depend on the centre’s timeline for moving into the new building, Karen Evans said in an email.

“The overall plan for delivering the vision remains unchanged,” she said.

That audit found that it will now cost more for the government to build a new Ontario Science Centre at Ontario Place than it would have to maintain the site it abruptly closed earlier this year.

The cost estimate for building and maintaining a new science centre at Ontario Place has increased by nearly $400 million from the government’s spring 2023 business case for relocating it, the auditor said, meaning it will cost approximately $1.4 billion — higher than the $1.3-billion estimate for maintaining the attraction at its east Toronto location.

The increase is due to higher design and construction costs, life cycle and maintenance costs, and ancillary costs that have added up because of changes to the scope of the planned building and about $61 million in cost escalations, Spence wrote.

Michael Lindsay, at the time the president and CEO of Infrastructure Ontario, said he didn’t agree that building a new science centre will cost more than rehabilitating the old one, noting that project would also be facing inflationary price increases.

Lindsay provided some reasoning for possible delays in a briefing on the day the science centre was closed.

“The language … (of “as early as” 2028) probably just reflects the realities of procurement and construction,” he said.

“We’re going to be talking to our counterparties through the procurement about what it would take to construct a new science centre, how long that might be, and so I think the plan remains the plan. That language probably just points at the reality that further conversation with our market is coming about what it’s going to take to both procure and then build the new science centre.”

Ontario is planning to have a temporary science centre open in the interim, but has not provided any public updates on that process since it issued a request for proposals in June.

That RFP showed the province is looking for retail or commercial space of about 50,000 to 100,000 square feet — much smaller than the original building’s 568,000 square feet – with a start date of “no later than” Jan. 1, 2026.

The RFP also showed that the province wants a lease of up to five years for the temporary space, plus three options to extend the lease for one year each, which would allow the government to operate a science centre in a temporary home until 2034, Ash said.

The science centre is currently operating two pop-up exhibits at Harbourfront Centre and the Sherway Gardens mall in Toronto.

The post New Ontario Science Centre at Ontario Place to open in 2029, auditor general says appeared first on Canadian Architect.

The construction of Therme’s stadium-sized waterpark, the doubling in size of Live Nation’s concert venue, and the relocation of the Ontario Science Centre are considered to be the first phase of the redevelopment of Ontario Place. The Auditor General’s report also notes that a second phase is planned. In a May 2020 Treasury board submission, the Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries noted that “The approach to Phase 2 is currently under consideration and contemplates the development of a large-scale entertainment destination on a portion of the East Island and mainland.”

A second phase of privatization would, like the first phase, entail considerable public investment.  The Auditor General’s report notes that in an earlier briefing to the same ministry and to the Premier’s office, Infrastructure Ontario “stated that the government would be responsible for lagoon in-fill on the East Island for a larger-scale tenant for the future phase.”

Documents obtained by the NDP and shared by Global News earlier this year appear to confirm that Phase 2 would potentially involve filling in and paving the lagoon, also known as Brigantine Cove—the body of water between Budweiser Stage and Trillium Park. The purpose would be to add to the land available to build on. An August 2022 briefing prepared for the Premier’s office describes this as “Phase 2: Potential Future Development Opportunity (up to 25 acres).”

According to Global News, a September 2020 document explains that “Phase II contemplates development of a large-scale entertainment, retail and restaurant destination on a portion of the East island and mainland.”

What could that “large-scale entertainment venue, retail and restaurant destination” look like? One possibility for the nature of the development—and perhaps even the eventual developer that will be selected—is hinted at in the Auditor General’s report. One of the applicants proposing a comprehensive development on the Ontario Place site as a whole was a company called Triple Five. Triple Five initially received a low score in all categories of evaluation and was noted as having “Insufficient Information Provided to Assess.” But after the consensus evaluation meeting, a VP from Infrastructure Ontario reached out to Big Five to request clarification on submission details, and exchanged a series of further e-mails and phone calls with them—a process that was not pursued for any of the other 10 participants who had similarly provided “Insufficient Information to Assess”. Triple Five resubmitted their presentation 70 days after the deadline, receiving revised higher scores.

Triple Five is a company that, according to its website, “has developed, owns, and manages the world’s first, second and third largest tourism, retail and entertainment complexes of its kind,” including the West Edmonton Mall, Mall of America, and the American Dream indoor amusement park and luxury shopping mall.

Will the Phase II addition to Ontario Place be an outpost of the West Edmonton Mall? The Ministerial Zoning Order (MZO) for the property only explicitly prohibits “residential, hotel, and casino uses”— and in fact lists “retail stores” and “eating establishments” as permitted uses. And it would be easy enough for the government to explicitly add “shopping mall,” “nightclub,” or whatever they please to this list, as it’s part of a regulation which can be adjusted without approval from the Legislature, with little recourse for public debate or opposition.

Following the Money

The Auditor General’s report revealed substantial increases for public realm spending, both for Therme’s project and in the provincially-led portions of the site.

As noted in an earlier post, the day before the lease was released, Therme apparently confirmed with Infrastructure Ontario that they would be spending $700 million on their project—up from the $350 million stated in their Call for Development submissions and in subsequent documents dating from 2019 to 2024. This included a projected spend of $200 million on public realm work—up from $10 million in previous documents—an astounding increase of 2000%.

This may be, at least in part, an effort to conceal the direct subsidy that the Province is providing to Therme for the construction of these park areas. In addition to constructing a parkade whose spots will be mostly reserved for Therme (over $280M), demolishing the West Island’s buildings and trees ($40.4M), and completing site servicing of Ontario Place as a whole ($391.9 M), the Province is contractually obliged to provide an additional $25 million in direct subsidies to Therme’s construction work—$10 million for its public realm, and $15 million for its shoreline work.

As the Auditor General noted, there is no stipulated minimum spend for construction by Therme in its 297-page contract, so whatever figures are released publicly are of no material consequence to Therme’s actual construction budget.

However, Therme’s original projected spend of $10 million on public realm certainly would have raised eyebrows when the lease revealed a $10 million public subsidy that conveniently offset that amount—and on top of that, showed that the Province was contributing $15 million towards Therme’s shoreline work. This directly contradicts public claims, by the Province and Therme, that the Therme deal was justified in part by the Austrian company paying out of its own pocket for the construction of public parkland. The announcement that Therme is now, supposedly, spending $200 million on parks and public land conveniently conceals the $25 million public subsidy, and restores the narrative that Therme is paying for public parklands, even if the truth may turn out differently.

Is a similar narrative twist in the works for East Island? Infrastructure Ontario has stated that its current estimate for the public realm at Ontario Place is now $500 million, up from its $50 million estimate three years ago. It told the auditor general’s office that “early estimates prior to a fixed design may have reflected early concepts including a basic park of Trillium Park level of design” and that “estimates may not have taken into consideration the considerable site rehabilitation requirements.”

However, the majority of site rehabilitation requirements—including soil rehabilitation, shoreline reconstruction, and even the construction of roads—are accounted for in a separate line item. The $500 million budget amounts to some $18 million per acre, or $413 per square foot. At this price, the entirety of the public realm could be paved in high-end Italian marble. By comparison, the rehabilitation of Toronto’s Portlands amounted to approximately $1.5 million per acre, the construction of Trillium Park (including the raising of the land by a metre) cost around $4 million per acre, and the construction of Corktown Common (including the raising of the land to create a 8.5-metre-high flood protection berm) cost around $7.5 million per acre.

I do not intend to discourage spending on public space, but the number appears to be very large. It raises the question: Has the number been inflated to set the stage for the further privatization of Ontario Place? It is conceivable that the Phase Two development and privatization of East Island will entail an arrangement similar to that of Therme: in which a new private partner is given free rein on a large portion of land, in return for offsetting the cost of building something akin to privately-owned public space—even if that cost-transfer may, ultimately, be an illusion.

Related:

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 1: The cost of privatizing Ontario Place

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 2: The billion dollar question of parking

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 3: Therme

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 4: Collateral Damage

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 6: Procurement

The post The Auditor General’s Report, Part 5: The Future, Continued Privatization of Ontario Place appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Today, I look at two further areas of interest from the Auditor General’s report: the insights it provides about the relocation of the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place, and the continued environmental destruction that we might expect to see taking place at Ontario Place.

Planning continues for relocation of Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place

Even if the Auditor General’s office has questioned the value-for-money proposition of the relocation of the Ontario Science Centre—both in its 2023 and now its 2024 report—plans are continuing apace to move the storied institution to a half-sized new facility at Ontario Place.

The estimate for building and operating a Science Centre at Ontario Place has gone up by $400 million from when the relocation was announced. The new price tag of over $700 million for a new Science Centre includes items that were considered “out of scope” when the business case for the relocation was completed, but that should have been anticipated. These include, for instance, an underground loading zone. To meet functional requirements for the Science Centre, this will likely be a two-storey underground space that also accommodates a bus loop, as well as car drop-off, bus entry, and shipping/receiving for Therme.

The report notes that there was only a single bidder on the $5 million contract for a planning, design, and compliance consultant for the new Science Centre—WZMH Architects is the consultant that was selected for this work. Their Output Specifications document is expected to be completed by early 2025, and the RFP planned to be released to up to three vendors in January 2025, delayed from the original projected date in the RFQ of Fall 2024.

While the government has stated in the past that a new Science Centre at Ontario Place would open “as early as 2028,” it has now told the Auditor General that the new building is expected to open in 2029. The RFP for a temporary location suggests that a new Science Centre may not be ready until as late as 2034.

That temporary location for the Ontario Science, which the government had promised to secure quickly, has not been publicly announced. A memo to Science Centre employees indicated that it may be selecting a conference facility in Mississauga. Meanwhile, the presence of the Science Centre is currently limited to temporary pop-ups at Harbourfront Centre and Sherway Gardens.

While the Auditor General came short of stating that renewing the legacy location of the Ontario Science Centre would represent better value-for-money than relocating it to Ontario Place, the ballooning costs for a new Science Centre supports this conclusion—making the unpopular closure and relocation an even worse proposition to taxpayers.

Continued environmental destruction at Ontario Place

As of October 2024, the report notes, 1,491 trees have been removed from Ontario Place. The Province is planning to remove an additional 298 trees, for a total of 1,789 trees. “Only 149 trees (or 8% of the original tree inventory at Ontario Place) will be conserved on the site,” the report notes. A 2022 arborist report prepared for Infrastructure Ontario had anticipated that while the Therme project would entail the removal of all trees on the West Island, 25% of the overall trees at Ontario Place would be protected.

Most of the Auditor General’s recommendations were accepted by the government, but these largely consisted of pledges to improve of procurement practices in the future. The government rejected the sole recommendation concerning the current Ontario Place project—a recommendation that it implements mitigation measure identified in a draft 2023 Heritage Impact Assessment report.  In its response, the Ministry of Infrastructure curtly “notes the site is exempt from the Ontario Heritage Act.”

The recommendations of the draft 2023 Heritage Impact Assessment report seem to be  relatively modest in the scope of a $2.2 billion project, but based on the government’s response, we should not expect to see them implemented by matter of course. Those recommendations were as follows:

• Site-wide native planting and new landscape features (e.g., berms) to address the removal of extant vegetation, trees and landscape features. It is anticipated that approximately 2,900 trees will be planted within Ontario Place.
• New pathway system to improve accessibility, support pedestrian circulation and address the removal of the extant pathway system
• New pathway nodes and plazas with vantage points for views, to address the removal of vantage points within the extant pathway system and the obstruction of views by new buildings
• New aquatic habitat and boardwalks to create the opportunity for close-range experiences of water and mitigate the removal of the extant waterbodies
• New accessory structures that interpret the design and history of Ontario Place to address the removal of extant buildings

This series will continue with two more parts, looking at the Call for Development process and the possibility for future, continued privatization plans at Ontario Place.

Related:

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 1: The cost of privatizing Ontario Place

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 2: The billion dollar question of parking

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 3: Therme

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 5: The Future, Continued Privatization of Ontario Place

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 6: Procurement

The post The Auditor General’s Report, Part 4: Collateral Damage appeared first on Canadian Architect.

The current post looks at what we might expect of Therme’s development, based on new information provided in the Auditor General’s report.

While the Auditor General’s report has described the Call for Development process for Ontario Place as “not fair, transparent or accountable to all participants,” the government has held steadfast to its plans. Public management professor emeritus Sandford Borins has summed this up in a post he entitled “Ford to Auditor-General: Drop Dead.” “It is clear,” writes Borins, “that the Government is going to ignore the report.”

So if it’s full speed ahead for the Ontario Place redevelopment and for Therme’s waterpark, what can we expect to see in the months and years ahead?

Acceleration of work, early handover to Therme

Based on a review of e-mail correspondence, the Auditor General found that Infrastructure Ontario has been in active discussions since early 2024 to move the handover date up by 11 months, to May 31, 2025, from the original hand-off date of April 30, 2026.

“If the site is handed over to the tenant earlier, once Therme has obtained its excavation permit, it would eliminate the Province’s ability to terminate the lease for convenience,” notes the Auditor General. Pulling out of the lease before the handover will carry a $30 million penalty. However, after the excavation permit is issued, pulling out would be near-impossible—the Province would be required to provide a five-year notice period after 10 years of operations, and pay for the demolition and rebuilding of Therme’s facility at a different provincial site agreeable to the Austrian company.

While the government apparently gave Infrastructure Ontario direction “to terminate the exploration of early site handoff” on November 4, 2024, the work has likely already been completed to secure an early hand-off. Demolition on the West Island was sole-sourced, at an added expense of some $10 million or more—the demolition cost $40.4 million, compared to initial estimates of $5 to $10 million and a later estimate of $31.5 million for this work.

The work may arguably have been accelerated to close Therme’s window to end the lease agreement. If interim utility services are not provided by December 31, 2024, Therme could exercise a right to terminate the lease, and, if the government did not have the site ready to hand over in 180 days, Therme could pull out from the project and charge the government $30 million in liquidated damages.

Will Therme’s Facility be a white elephant?

Public management professor emeritus Sandford Borins, whose analysis I referred to earlier, believes the Therme facility may “turn out to be a classic white elephant.”

This is based in part on the Auditor General’s notes that the proponent was selected with little scrutiny. Red flags were raised by a senior advisor at Infrastructure Ontario that prior to December 31, 2019, Therme Group had an equity value of less than one million euros, and that based on both its 2019 and 2020 financial statements, the company was “not cash flow positive.” These concerns were not addressed before the lease was signed, 12 days after the senior advisor raised these issues. In its submission, Therme presented six projects as evidence of its track record. No due diligence was done by Infrastructure Ontario—if it was, it would have revealed that five of those six projects were not actually owned and operated by Therme.

(Therme’s finances had, apparently, turned around by the end of 2020, but this was well after Cabinet had approved the redevelopment approach on January 30, 2020—at which time only Therme’s 2019 finances would have been available for review. Due diligence was only completed in the following months, when the required money—$100 million—turned up, and the sources of these investments are unclear. The Auditor General notes that: “The lease between the Province of Ontario and Therme includes a financial test. The lease required Therme Group to have a net worth of $100 million. An examination by IO of Therme Group’s 2020 audited financial statements show that Therme had met this financial test per the lease requirements.”)

The amount of rent that the Province will receive—some $1.1 billion over 95 years, or a more paltry $163 million in today’s dollars, accounting for inflation—is tied to the success of the project. The Province accepted Therme’s estimates of the number of visitors it expected—1.6 million visitors in Year 1, and up to 2.7 million visitors in Year 10 (some 7,400 visitors per day)—without any attempt at independent verification. The Auditor General estimates that Therme will break even on the project after 21 years, which Borins notes “is a long time.”

What will Therme really spend on the project?

Therme’s capital investment in the project may, in fact, be less than expected. When the lease was made public, a press release from the Province stated that Therme would be making $700 million in capital investments, including $500 million to build the waterpark and spa facility, and $200 million going towards creating 16 acres of public space.

But in previous documents from 2019 to April 2024, Therme’s investment was expected to be half that amount—$340 million on the facility, and only $10 million on the public realm, for a total of $350 million. Infrastructure Ontario says that the day before the lease details were released, Therme confirmed the doubling of the overall estimate to $700 million—an increase of 2000% on the public realm costs, and 147% on the facility costs. But as the Auditor General notes, there is no contractual obligation with the government for Therme to invest any specific amount in the project, let alone $700 million.

While Therme’s 297-page lease is explicit about the amount it must spend in advertising ($7.5 million during its first six years of operation), it does not stipulate a minimum amount of capital investment that Therme must make in the project itself. “This contrasts with the Province’s lease agreement with Live Nation, which specifies a dollar amount as the minimum capital investment to be made by Live Nation,” the Auditor General notes.

Therme’s contract also obliges the Province to make a $25 million contribution to the bill for work on Therme’s shoreline and public realm.

Infrastructure Ontario’s ability to monitor the build overall, and ensure quality of construction, is undercut by the Rebuilding Ontario Place Act, one facet of which removes requirements for municipal permitting.

The number of jobs that Therme is expected to create has also gone down from 2022 estimates, from 3,290 to 2,000 during construction, and from 848 to 800 during operations. As Borins has noted, in Ontario’s current strong economy, these job numbers are, in any case, an illusion: “If people weren’t employed building and operating the spa, they would be employed doing other things.”

A “commercial village” in Therme-built public areas?

The public areas that Therme is constructing aren’t entirely public: the lease gives Therme the exclusive right to conduct commercial activity and programming on up to 30% of these lands. Journalist John Lorinc has noted that the document gives Therme “considerable latitude to commercialize these areas beyond the walls of the spa building” and notes that “the province has thoughtfully indemnified Therme for anything that happens in these public areas that results in a lawsuit.”

The Auditor General’s report provides a hint at what these areas might end up looking like. In 2023, the Minister of Infrastructure’s Office  directed Infrastructure Ontario to enter negotiations with Ontario Live, despite concerns about an earlier submission by the group, which has close links to Premier Doug Ford. These negotiations identified Ontario Live as the preferred partner for establishing food and beverage services, people-moving infrastructure, and other amenities on the East Island. While contract discussions with Ontario Live were curtailed this July—possibly because of the upcoming Auditor General’s report—there is nothing to prevent the group reappearing as an operator of commercial spaces in Therme’s public areas.

It is plausible to imagine Ontario Live, or another group, constructing something similar to what Ontario Live originally proposed for the East Island, but now in the areas around Therme: a commercial development including “twelve restaurants, office space, and a marketplace, in addition to creating programming for special events.”

Next week, I will examine what the Auditor General’s report reveals about further privatization plans for Ontario Place, and the continued planning for the relocation of the Ontario Science Centre.

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 1: The cost of privatizing Ontario Place

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 2: The billion dollar question of parking

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 4: Collateral Damage

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 5: The Future, Continued Privatization of Ontario Place

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 6: Procurement

The post The Auditor General’s Report, Part 3: Therme appeared first on Canadian Architect.

This piece was amended on Sunday, December 8 to add in an additional scenario for the placement of the parking garage, and information about the “last mile” connection between the Ontario Line and Ontario Place.

In Part 1 of this series analyzing the Auditor General’s 2024 report on the Ontario Place Redevelopment, I broke down how the project has gone from costing the public $400 million to involving over $2.2 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Today’s post concerns one of the biggest ticket items in that cost: the proposal for new parking at Ontario Place. I have titled the post “the billion dollar question” as the estimated cost of providing the parking required in the Province’s leases with Therme and Live Nation ranges from over $280-million to over $1.3 billion dollars.

The signed lease with Therme requires that the Province will construct 1,600 parking spots for Therme within 650 metres from Therme’s entrance. The Auditor General’s report notes that the Province has also agreed to make 1,200 spots available to Live Nation, within 750 metres of its entrance. There is some overlap between the spots—several hundred of the Therme spots will be ceded to Live Nation on concert nights—but overall, the Province has agreed to build a 1,800 spot parkade.

Back in 2021, the plan was to create a five-storey underground parkade on the south side of Lakeshore Boulevard, up against Lake Ontario, with the relocated Ontario Science Centre on top of it. In fact, as the Auditor General noted last year, the relocation of the Ontario Science Centre itself was presented to key decision-makers as primarily to justify this site-wide parking solution.

We have now learned that Infrastructure Ontario’s total capital cost for a five-storey underground parkade, beneath the half-sized Science Centre, is over $1.3 billion. Value-engineering this to a four-storey parkade would still cost $975 million.

Infrastructure Ontario has, due to these high costs, turned to examining options for parking at Exhibition Place, across the street. The Rebuilding Ontario Place Act, passed as part of the New Deal for Toronto, gives the Province broad range to extract lands from the City that would enable the Ontario Place redevelopment, and parking arguably falls within this scope.

There are two large existing surface lots on the south side of Exhibition Place—one just south of BMO Field, and one southeast of BMO field. The southeast lot has been approved for redevelopment as a 7,000-seat e-sports stadium, developed by OverActive Media and designed by Populous, making it an unsuitable candidate for a new parking facility.

The parking lot directly south of BMO field is key to Exhibition Place’s marquis event, the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE)—it houses the entirety of the midway—as well as being part of the IndyCar Series (formerly the Molson Indy), during which it houses grandstands, general viewing areas, and vendors. It is also a vital staging and parking area for other conferences and events held at Exhibition Place. Therefore, any new parking on this site would need to be below-ground. Infrastructure has estimated the cost of a two-storey underground parkade here, providing some 2,125 spots, at over $800 million.

Infrastructure Ontario currently has two “recommended” options, which are less costly, to fulfill its parking obligations. The first is a four-storey above-ground parkade at Exhibition Place. Alternatively, they suggest a single parking level below the new Ontario Science Centre, paired with a three-level above-ground parkade at Exhibition Place. These options are priced, respectively, at over $280 million, and over $400 million.

While no site is specified in the documents, there are two possibilities. Neither is perfect. One is a parkade on the land adjacent to the current Exhibition GO stop (and future Ontario Line Exhibition stop), where the CNE currently houses its kid’s midway. This would take up a potentially prime spot for future development or expansion of the CNE. Moreover, while creating large park-and-ride facilities next to transit nodes may makes sense in the suburbs, it seems like an odd placement in this downtown location—particularly as the parkade would not serve transit riders, but almost exclusively visitors to Therme and Live Nation. 

The other would entail the demolition of Better Living Centre, a modernist structure designed by Marani, Morris & Allan in 1962. This would be closer to Lakeshore Boulevard, and the elevation change of the site (which sits higher than the road) would potentially conceal some of the parkade’s height. However, it would remove a heritage building, and a place which currently serves as a homeless shelter in the winter.

The report also contains a line item of over $60 million for a “last mile” connection between the Ontario Line terminus and Ontario Place—presumably a connection that would also include a stop at the parkade, wherever it lands. A Metrolinx report, referenced in a consultant document about Exhibition Place, mentions options including a shuttle bus, AV shuttle (self-driving buses? a monorail?), and two possible routes for a gondola.

The Auditor General’s report does note that the Province would own the parking garage, and would therefore also collect revenues for it. Financially, the parking structure (exclusive of the last mile connection) would be expected to break even in 28-35 years. But, other investments—such as in healthcare, education, and affordable housing—also involve spending money now, and expecting net financial benefits in the future (such as from the quantifiable benefits of a healthier and more educated population, better able to be productive members of society). Does investing hundreds of millions in a parkade make sense?

It would be fair to also ask whether this substantial investment in parking is justified given the proximity of Ontario Place to the expected terminus of the Ontario Line—a major public transit node—and the existing traffic congestion in this part of downtown Toronto. In short, Toronto drivers already know that Lakeshore Boulevard is a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam for most of the day. How will things look if we encourage—and expect—an additional 1,800 people to drive to this area each day?

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 1: The cost of privatizing Ontario Place

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 3: Therme

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 4: Collateral Damage

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 5: The Future, Continued Privatization of Ontario Place

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 6: Procurement

The post The Auditor General’s Report, Part 2: The billion dollar question of parking appeared first on Canadian Architect.

This article is part of a multi-part series examining findings from the Auditor General’s 2024 Report. Future parts will be posted in the coming week.

On Tuesday, December 3, 2024, Ontario’s Auditor General released its 2024 report, including a 117-page long analysis of the Ontario Place Redevelopment, on Toronto’s waterfront. The project—which includes a stadium-sized waterpark and spa by Austrian developer Therme, and expanded concert venue by LiveNation—has elicited public concern related to its privatization of public space, environmental impacts, and procurement process. The planned redevelopment is also linked to the closure of the Ontario Science Centre, which the government plans to replace with a half-sized facility at Ontario Place.

The Auditor General’s office noted that the public cost of the Ontario Place redevelopment has ballooned from when the call was launched. While initially, the government anticipated spending $335 million to $424 million preparing the site, the total tally for the project currently amounts to over $2.237 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Where did the extra $1.8 billion in costs come from? This bill includes the much-discussed parking garage. In the government’s lease with Therme, the Province has agreed to construct a 1,800-spot parking garage, with 1,600 spots reserved for Therme’s use. Its lease with LiveNation includes 1,200 parking spots. While the initial plans anticipated a 5-storey below-grade parking garage under the new Ontario Science Centre pavilion, the cost for this structure was estimated by Infrastructure Ontario to come in at over $1.3 billion dollars. The two currently preferred options are priced, respectively, at over $280 million and over $400 million.

The cost of a new Ontario Science Centre has gone up nearly $400 million. This results largely from additional scope changes. Those big-ticket items were, in my assessment, known but deliberately omitted from the initial business case. They include building a tunnel-and-bridge connection to the Pods, the construction of a basement level with loading dock, and the need for excavation and structural foundation work. The new cost estimates suggest that even in the Province’s faulty business case, the scales would now be tipped in favour of the cost-effectiveness of retaining and repairing the existing Science Centre, rather than replacing it with a new one.

More costs arise from an increase to the costs of demolition on the West Island, and increase in costs for restoring the Pods and Cinesphere. The Auditor General notes that the original contract for repairs to the heritage structures was awarded via an RFP, but that when the work was delayed, the work was transferred to another contractor—without an open procurement, and at a cost of $64 million, in addition to the $32.9 million already paid to the first contractor. That same second contractor was also sole-sourced for the contract for the West Island demolition, at a cost of $40.4 million (up from an initial estimate of $5-10 million).

The Province will also be on the hook for higher costs of site servicing and site preparation, which has doubled from $183.5 million in 2021 estimates to $391.9 in 2024. New costs also  include contributing over $20 million to the Therme shoreline and public realm, and over $60 million to relocate two combined sewer outflows, one of which impacts Therme’s planned beach, and the other of which is expected to conflict with proposed underground construction.

According to the Auditor General, the government has spent $8.5 million on legal fees, related in part to defending itself from court applications related to the controversial development.

The biggest part of the added expenses is an increase to the costs of public realm development—over $500 million for parks, paths, roads, facilities, and landscape at Ontario Place, up from having no budget in 2019, and an estimate of $50 million in 2021. This is, says the Auditor General, directly linked to the government’s decision to act as “master developer” for the site. But this was not pre-determined: in the Auditor General’s analysis, seven of the 10 comprehensive site-wide submissions from the Call for Development “included a design for the public realm, three of which included a provision to pay for the public realm.” Her office’s report also notes that “Seven included a parking solution, three of which included a provision to pay for parking.”

In deciding to select participants responsible for developing parts of the site (Therme, Live Nation, and Écorécreo), rather than a single developer to take on the full site, the Province was also deciding to bear these extra costs. However, no estimates for this additional, significant work were prepared or presented to key decision makers. There will also be additional costs to maintain and operate these spaces.

This $2.237 billion in investments would, in theory, be offset by revenues from Therme. However, as the Auditor General has pointed out, the $1.1 billion in rent payments that the Province has cited is in nominal dollars, over a 95-year period. The present value—that is the concept of today’s dollars being worth more than tomorrow’s dollars because of inflation—means that the near-century worth of rent payments are only worth about $163 million in today’s dollars.

Zooming out, it is worth taking a moment to consider the implicit promise of privatizing large sections of Ontario Place. Such a move was objectionable to many critics, but the government held fast to the idea that it would result in substantial savings to taxpayers—maybe even, some might have expected, a free ride, or close to it. As it turns out, a privatized Ontario Place is not free: in addition to giving away this waterfront land, the Ontario Place Redevelopment puts Ontario taxpayers on the hook for over $2 billion.

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 2: The billion dollar question of parking

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 3: Therme

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 4: Collateral Damage

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 5: The Future, Continued Privatization of Ontario Place

The Auditor General’s Report, Part 6: Procurement

The post The Auditor General’s Report, Part 1: The cost of privatizing Ontario Place appeared first on Canadian Architect.

The Ontario Government has agreed to stop demolition at Ontario Place, pending the hearing of Ontario Place Protectors (OPP)’s Application to the Superior Court of Ontario on July 19, 2024. The Ontario government had begun demolition at the West Island on Saturday, June 23, 2024, beginning early preparations for the recreational facility by private developer Therme.

According to OPP, Ontario agrees to the following until 6:00 p.m. on July 19, 2024, with respect to the work at Ontario Place:

The post Provincial government agrees to pause demolition at Ontario Place appeared first on Canadian Architect.

This article is a follow-up on my previous articles debunking the business case for the Ontario Science Centre’s relocation, analyzing how the engineers’ roof report doesn’t call for a complete closure, demonstrating how a temporary location of the Science Centre would be costly and would not be open for two years, and calculating how the actual cost to repair the Science Centre is around $200 million—or just $25-30 million for tackling priority repairs—not the $478 million that is being cited by the Province.

Over 78,000 people have signed a petition demanding the reopening of the Ontario Science Centre. And it’s clear, as with any older building, that repair and reinvestment will be needed.

It’s true that in addition to the cost of roof repairs, there are other repairs needed to maintain the Science Centre’s buildings in good working order. But, as I have written before and detailed yesterday, the actual construction cost of repairs over the next 20 years is around $200 million—not the $478 million that the Province cites. To keep the building open for the next few years would cost much less—around $25-30 million.

The actual figure for repairs comes in at $211 million. This is based on the estimates provided by the Province’s consultants Pinchin and Rimkus, and applies industry standard figures for construction escalation, consultant fees, and contingency, instead of the province’s inflated mark-ups. It fully addresses deferred maintenance and sets the building up to be functional for decades to come, including addressing repairs needed to the roof and budgeting $16 million in repairs to the pedestrian bridge.

But what about just keeping the building operating for a shorter term—say, until a new facility is opened at Ontario Place? In its business case for the relocation, Infrastructure Ontario had planned to do just that. It estimated that the repairs needed to keep the Science Centre functional on a smaller footprint (presumably within the valley-side Building C, which contains the bulk of the exhibitions) until a new Science Centre was ready would amount to $32 million. (In reality, the cost should be $24 million if you were to use industry standard mark-ups and contingencies, rather than the Province’s mark-ups—and even less still if you take into account that Moriyama Teshima Architects, the firm that originally built the centre, has assembled a consultant team to help with the roof repairs pro bono—but we’ll stick with $32 million for simplicity).

Let’s also assume that roof repairs were an unexpected addition to this cost—and that the Province opts to undertake the full $2 million in roof repairs and replacements recommended by their consultants to take place in the coming five years for Building C alone. The total comes to $34 million.

$34 million is not insignificant, but it is also far less than the $478 million figure that Infrastructure Ontario says it is unwilling to invest in a Science Centre that will be soon closed. It’s also far less than the $83 million it may take to lease and fit-out a temporary location for the Science Centre.

Even if the Province manages to pull off the leasing and fit-out of a temporary location for $25 million (at the very lowest end of my calculations), that space would not be open for two years, costing $14 million in lost admission and membership revenue—a total of $39 million.

It would be less expensive, by the Province’s own numbers, to simply keep the existing facility running on a smaller footprint. The repairs would more than pay for themselves.

Closure doesn’t mean that the Province can simply walk away from the Science Centre. There are significant costs in addition to paying for a temporary location.

In the long run, when the Science Centre relocates to Ontario Place, the buildings will revert to the City of Toronto. The Province’s lease obliged it to keep the buildings in a state of good repair, and in terminating the lease, the City can seek compensation for losses associated with the early lease termination. In its business case, Infrastructure Ontario has allocated $21 million towards decommissioning the existing Science Centre to resolve this—a number that seems to correlate with the cost of demolishing the buildings, clearing the slate for redevelopment. But the business case for the relocation also acknowledges that the province may be on the hook for “costs related to returning the building to a state of good repair (up to $369 million).”

An excerpt from the business case for the relocation of the Ontario Science Centre details the cost of demolishing the buildings at $25 million, roughly correlating with the decommissioning costs detailed earlier. It also notes that “as a heritage asset, demolition would require Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism (MCM) Minister’s Consent.” As commentators to Adam McNamara’s X thread analysis of the business case have noted, the current MCM Minister is Michael D. Ford, Premier Doug Ford’s nephew.

Demolition may become more difficult if the buildings become heritage designated with the City of Toronto, a process which is underway now, and which should be completed by mid-September, 2024.  This would require the approval from the City for any changes to the “heritage attributes” of the centre, and make demolition a last resort to other solutions for the site. However, as the Auditor General has pointed out, under the Province’s amendments to the Ontario Heritage Act in January 2023, Cabinet could exempt even a city-designated Ontario Science Centre from having to comply with heritage standards and guidelines.

Perhaps more pertinently, under the New Deal for Toronto, the City and Province are currently discussing retaining the buildings for “community-based science programming,” creating a public expectation that the buildings will not be demolished—but will, indeed, but repaired and reinvested in, whoever is paying the final bill.

If the Province no longer wants to be responsible for the Science Centre buildings, it would seem reasonable for the City to ask the Province for the $25-83 million it would otherwise have spent for a temporary location, plus the $21 million it had budgeted for decommissioning the buildings—easily something in the realm of $50-$100 million in all.

In return, the City could agree to reinvest that money in the Science Centre, including making the needed $26-32 million in repairs needed to keep it open it until a new Science Centre opens in 2030-2034. Under such an agreement, the Science Centre would also continue to receive its ongoing operational funding from the province. The small yearly operational deficit of the Science Centre, around $1 million, could be covered by the generosity of private donors who have stepped up to keep the Science Centre open—such as Sabina Vohra-Miller, Geoffrey Hinton, and  Adam McNamara; the Auditor General’s report also identified opportunities for the Science Centre to increase its self-generated revenues.

Ideally, some version of the Science Centre would continue operating on the site after a new satellite location is completed at Ontario Place—both to make full use of the Moriyama building, as well as to serve locals and school audiences who will have more difficulty accessing an Ontario Place location. To make this viable for decades to come would require a continual commitment of operational funding from the Province, as well as further support for capital work—but this would be to the tune of $100-150 million, not the hundreds of millions that the Province is suggesting. There would be years to figure out where that money could come from—perhaps some combination of public sources, the development of the Science Centre’s parking lots, private philanthropy, and self-generated revenue.

In any case, making the needed repairs to the Science Centre in the interim makes fiscal sense, and sets the Science Centre up for success in the future. Most importantly, it benefits Ontarians, and especially the province’s kids and parents—who want to see the doors of the Ontario Science Centre reopened as soon as possible.

Related:

The true cost of repairing the Ontario Science Centre is much, much less than what Infrastructure Ontario has been saying—and the proof is in its own documents

Cost of Ontario Science Centre temporary location exceeds cost of roof repairs

Ontario Science Centre doesn’t require full closure: A close reading of the engineers’ report

TSA issues open letter on Ontario Science Centre closure

Closing science centre unnecessary, says firm of architect who designed building

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The post How to pay for repairing the Ontario Science Centre? Let’s start by using the money it’s taking to close it appeared first on Canadian Architect.

This article is a follow-up on my previous articles debunking the business case for the Ontario Science Centre’s relocation, analyzing how the engineers’ roof report doesn’t call for a complete closure, and demonstrating how a temporary location of the Science Centre would be costly and would not be open for two years. Another piece will appear tomorrow about how the Science Centre could be reopened and repaired by using the money that the Ontario government is planning to spend closing and demolishing it.

How much will it cost to repair the Ontario Science Centre? Two figures have been cited by the Ontario Government: $478 million and $369 million. I have done a deep dive into the origins of this stated cost of repairs, and concluded that the actual figure is much less—around $200 million, or just $24 million if you were to prioritize repairs to a limited footprint of the Science Centre.

Let’s start with the $478-million figure that has been widely cited by Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma. This includes a generous $109 million allocation to cosmetic upgrades and to the renewal of exhibitions in the existing location of the Science Centre. At $66.5 million, the exhibition upgrade budget is equivalent to the entirety of the budget for exhibitions at the proposed new location of the Ontario Science Centre at Ontario Place. The $42.5-million renovation budget is also generous, especially considering that some $25-million of such upgrades appear to be double-counted in the cost for base repairs and renovations.

In any case, cosmetic repairs and renewed exhibitions fall in the category of nice-to-have, but not need-to-have. Over 75,000 people across Ontario have signed a petition saying they’d be more than happy to have the science centre back, just as it is. Tech sector donors have, unasked, also pledged over $2.5 million toward a reopened Science Centre—an offer that seems ripe with opportunities to work together towards sponsored upgrades to exhibitions. Personally, I think the “Hinton Hall of Computing and AI” has a nice ring to it.

Cosmetic upgrades and exhibition renewal aside, the cost for repairs cited by the Ontario government is $369 million. We can nitpick this—some $25 million of it, for instance, is for upgrades to interior ceiling finishes, flooring, walls, and kitchen millwork, which, as I have said, should arguably fall within the “cosmetic upgrades” budget rather than being considered part of core repairs.

But the bigger picture is that in order to create a business case that made the relocation to Ontario Place palatable, Infrastructure Ontario (IO) appears to have systematically maximized the possible costs of repairing the existing Science Centre, and, conversely, minimized the costs of building a new Science Centre at Ontario Place.

Environmental consultants Pinchin, who contributed to this business case by assessing the state of the Science Centre and estimating the cost of repairs over the next 20 years, came up with an estimate that would have originally been around $142 million.

Pinchin was asked to multiply its original number by an “adjustment factor” of 1.85 due to the “fact that Ontario Science Centre is a complex facility with unique characteristics” and “per Client’s [IO’s] request to account for the hidden internal and external fees.” This brings us to $228 million.

Then, since the work they recommended would stretch over 20 years, they were asked to assume a yearly inflation rate of 2.5% and add this to the adjusted estimate, bringing the total to $263 million.

IO then applied an additional mark-up of 40% to Pinchin’s inflated $228-million bill “to account for uncertain and rapidly increasing cost pressures,” to reach the estimated $369-million costs for its business case.

What about the roof? Pinchin’s estimate includes $32 million ($17 million before the complexity factor of 1.85 was applied) to replace the Science Centre’s roofs—an amount that correlates with the estimate for completely replacing the RAAC roofs included in the Rimkus report ($17 million in construction costs, plus 15% in consultant fees and a somewhat generous 20% in contingency, for a total of $21 million).

And the bridge? Pinchin’s estimate also includes the $11.6 million (roughly $6 million, pre-adjustment) that would have been needed to stabilize the bi-level pedestrian bridge when an issue was first identified with it in 2021. The auditor general’s office was told by Infrastructure Ontario that a new contract for the bridge repair amounted to $16 million, which would provide “a temporary solution to stabilize the bridge.” This seems like an overly large budget—a structural engineer I spoke with indicated that the cost of over $1,000 per square foot put the estimate in the realm of what he would expect to see for repairing a large, vehicular bridge, not a pedestrian bridge. But as the documents related to these bridge repair contracts have not been made publicly available, it is hard to assess whether the numbers are competitive. For the sake of a ballpark figure, let’s add the full $10 million difference to Pinchin’s $142 million, for a total construction cost of $152 million.

Adding 17% in construction inflation (according to Statistics Canada) since Pinchin’s report was generated in 2022, 12% in consultants’ fees, and 10% contingency, the total bill comes to $211 million in repairs.

This amount could be readily parsed into priority projects, if the intention is to keep the Science Centre functional only until such time that it moves to a different location. Pinchin’s report recommends that roughly half of the repairs for the next 20 years should be completed in the coming five years. Some of the items in Pinchin’s priority list might be reconsidered—for instance, some $8 million ($4 million unadjusted) in ceiling finish replacements that are marked “optional”, or a $1.7 million ($1 million unadjusted) replacement of vinyl floor tiles in the exhibition hall and offices.

Infrastructure Ontario itself estimated that the footprint of the Science Centre could be reduced in footprint for that interim period, presumably restricting it to the Valley Building C alone, a move that it said would entail some $32 million in repairs. In reality, the interim cost of making the necessary repairs to keep the Ontario Science Centre in its may be closer to $24 million, if you were to use industry standard mark-ups and contingencies, rather than the Province’s mark-ups. It could be and even less still if you take into account that Moriyama Teshima Architects, the firm that originally built the centre, has assembled a consultant team to help with the roof repairs pro bono.

It is also plausible that, as part of constructing a business case for the relocation, Infrastructure Ontario directed Pinchin to adjust the priority of the repair items, in order to effect a shift of the overall Facility Condition grade assigned to the building, which is calculated in part using the repair amounts needed in the coming two years, in this case, 2022-2023 (to which over $60 million in repairs was recommended—repairs which were clearly not undertaken during that time):

This would explain a key discrepancy in Pinchin’s report, where in one sentence it notes that the Facility Condition is such that “the facility and its components are functioning as intended; for most infrastructure assets, this would infer that no repairs anticipated within the next five years”—a comment consistent with the facility receiving a ‘B’ grade. In the same section, though, the report notes the building’s grade as a “C.” Even this “C” is hardly a dire grade, but rather carries the correlating note: “The Facility and its components are functioning as intended; normal deterioration and minor distress observed; repairs will be required within the next five years to maintain functionality.”

As for running the Science Centre, in Infrastructure Ontario’s business case, the maintenance costs for the existing Science Centre are also exaggerated. Again, due to the “fact that Ontario Science Centre is a complex facility with unique characteristics” and “as per Client’s request to account for the hidden internal and external fees,” Pinchin “adjusted” the Current Replacement Value (CRV) of the property by a factor of 1.30. Since the maintenance expenses were calculated as 1.25% of the property’s CRV, the resulting annual maintenance estimate of $7.5 million per year is also inflated.

The actual maintenance number, without the inflated CRV, would be $5.8 million per year. This number is still significantly larger than the actual expenses in recent years. The Province charges the Ontario Science Centre $4.8 million as an annual occupancy cost—a figure that not only has historically covered maintenance, but also taxes, operating and management fees, utilities, and leasehold improvements, as outsourced to an outside property management firm. In other words, the Science Centre has been getting by on an annual maintenance budget that is somewhat less than $4.8 million.

Of course, reinvestment in the Science Centre—including in ongoing maintenance—is indisputably needed. All buildings, new and old alike, require regular maintenance. The Auditor General’s report notes that from 2016 to 2023, 34 maintenance projects identified as “critical,” totaling $12 million dollars, were approved, while 42 of such maintenance projects, totaling over $16 million dollars, were denied funding, which the Auditor General notes “result[ed] in further deterioration of the building.” The responsibility falls under different provincial leaders, but from 2016 to 2018, $11 million-worth of these projects were approved and $2 million denied funding; whereas from 2018 to 2023, the period in which Doug Ford has been Premier, just $1 million of these projects were approved, whereas $14 million were denied funding.

Although the difference may seem academic, the responsibility for the vast majority of repairs falls to Infrastructure Ontario as the building owner, rather than to the Ontario Science Centre, which has a limited budget and responsibility for building improvements. The Ontario Science Centre, for its part, seemed to be doing what it could with its limited means and scope. At the time of the auditor general’s report, the Science Centre was in the process of purchasing equipment using its exhibit renewals budget in order to reopen its planetarium in 2024.

As minor as it is, this may be, for me, one of the most telling details in this whole saga. Over the past five years, Infrastructure Ontario has systematically denied critical funding to the Ontario Science Centre, allowing its maintenance to lapse. The most visible effects of the Centre’s apparent decline have included the closure of its planetarium in 2022, and the closure of its pedestrian bridge that same year. At the very moment that the province announced the sudden, indefinite closure of the Science Centre on the flimsy basis of an engineering report that asked for manageable, phased roof repairs, one of those key experiences was about to be restored.

The Science Centre had scraped through the pandemic and suffered through putting its visitors on shuttle buses to its back entrance. It had been informed that the government planned to move it to a half-sized facility at Ontario Place in a few years, a move that would include laying off one out of every six people who currently worked there. And yet, it remained determined to give its visitors the best possible science experience in the interim. New exhibitions were still appearing in its Science Arcade and Weston Family Innovation Centre. And the planetarium was going to reopen.

Related:

How to pay for repairing the Ontario Science Centre? Let’s start by using the money it’s taking to close it

Cost of Ontario Science Centre temporary location exceeds cost of roof repairs

Ontario Science Centre doesn’t require full closure: A close reading of the engineers’ report

TSA issues open letter on Ontario Science Centre closure

Closing science centre unnecessary, says firm of architect who designed building

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The post The true cost of repairing the Ontario Science Centre is much, much less than what Infrastructure Ontario has been saying—and the proof is in its own documents appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Galt Health, Cambridge, Ontario

ARCHITECT Jaliya Fonseka Studio

TEXT David T. Fortin

PHOTOS Riley Snelling

Spaces for healthcare present, in many ways, the ideal opportunity to explore an ethos of care through design—an approach that is grounded in being mindful of one’s intuitions and individual well-being, but also based in empathy and compassion for others. Since Tommy Douglas first introduced medicare to Saskatchewan in the 1950s, the idea of universal healthcare has arguably remained one of the most broadly embraced Canadian values. A society that sees access to basic health services as a human right is one that, ultimately, believes in a collective responsibility to care for each other. 

Yet the bedrock of universal healthcare—the family physician’s office—is often an uninspired space, wedged above pharmacies and into strip malls. It is rare for the designers of such clinics to earnestly embrace an ideology of care. Many, if not the majority, of family health clinics across the country have a bare minimum of design thinking invested into them, offering a series of sterilized and compartmentalized windowless patient rooms flanking equally utilitarian corridors. These kinds of spaces hardly inspire optimism for someone who is likely feeling vulnerable, or in at least somewhat of a compromised state. 

Jaliya Fonseka has designed a clinic for Galt Health Centre in downtown Cambridge, Ontario, that is clearly an exception. Upon entering the space, there is immediately a sense of warmth, framed by its humble material palette and careful attention to light. But as one spends more time in the clinic, its carefully composed arrangements become increasingly evident. Everything about the project is modest: its budget, its size, its location off the atrium of a standard office building, its materiality. And yet, its thoughtful design skillfully creates a place where one instantly feels uplifted. 

The organization of the project emerged from Fonseka’s consultations with the clinic’s medical professionals and staff, as well as community members, to ensure their insights were foundational to the design. This led to a focus on access to daylight, views, and a sense of openness. Despite the efficient and compact use of space, the exposed wood-fin ceiling, with utilities set between and behind the slats, allows for a surprisingly generous sense of volume. The plan, resulting from a thorough study of the users’ daily activities and movement patterns, positions the patient rooms in a central block, accessed along the building’s exterior wall. This allows daylight to flood the hall, extending into the reception and waiting areas through carefully arranged openings. A circulation loop links the patient corridor to the staff working areas, allowing for a certain fluidity and ease of movement. Strategic curved walls and arches allow natural light to softly guide movement throughout the project. Inside the patient rooms, simple pitched roof ceilings bring a sense of domestic familiarity and added volume, while translucent glazing creates planes of natural daylight.

Perhaps the most defining attribute of the project is its wood millwork. Vertical wood fins, made of standard dimensional lumber, are positioned thoughtfully to maximize light while offering a sense of enclosure and privacy from certain angles. They are composed to strategically break up and contain spaces at the same time. Meanwhile, wood ceiling fins and a custom-built 35-metre-long plywood bench tie the clinic’s various areas together at the perimeter. 

In this project, the use of wood is about more than just its composition. All of the wood was locally sourced and milled on-site. It was finished with natural and renewable raw materials—a mix of soybean oil, sunflower oil, thistle oil, carnauba wax, and candelilla wax. Perhaps most impressively, Fonseka constructed the millwork himself, by hand, acting also as the general contractor for the project. The personal commitment to craft can be sensed at all levels. In a profession that seems like it is constantly challenged by diminishing budgets and timelines, it is easy—and most often necessary—to prioritize efficiency in billable hours, material sourcing, and constructability. But in the frenzy of such means of production, it is easy to forget the importance of sometimes slowing down and taking care of the process.

Nowadays, whenever I am forced to slow down and sit with my family in the waiting room at the Galt Health Centre, I can’t help but sense the personal investment and careful intentions for the project. Despite the discomfort that we may be feeling, the clinic offers a sense of respite, with the sun filtering through Fonseka’s hand-crafted wood fins. It serves as an important reminder of how a quiet and empathetic approach to design can indeed be powerful and uplifting, even in the most humble of places.

David T. Fortin is a Professor at the University of Waterloo and Principal Architect of David T Fortin Architect. His research and practice focus on concepts of home and alienation, and the structural impact that colonization and commodification have on these conditions, with particular interest in how design can instead embed relationality—between humans and more-than-humans—as its first priority.

CLIENT Gheriani Medicine Professional | ARCHITECT TEAM Jaliya Fonseka, Walter Bettio, Deni Papetti | STRUCTURAL | MECHANICAL CONSULTANT Sopes Engineering | MECHANICAL CONTRACTOR Sharpline HVAC | ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR Spark Power Corp.  | BUILDING SUPERVISOR / GENERAL CONTRACTOR  Jaliya Fonseka | CUSTOM MILLWORK AND FABRICATION Jaliya Fonseka, Bradley Paddock, Carrie Paddock | METAL FABRICATION Rees Metal Design and Fabrication | AREA 246 m2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION Fall 2023

As appeared in the June 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

The post Taking Care Through Design: Galt Health, Cambridge, Ontario appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Churchill Meadows Community Centre and Sports Park, Mississauga, Ontario

ARCHITECT MJMA Architecture & Design

TEXT Elsa Lam

Photos Scott Norsworthy, unless otherwise noted

Toronto-based MJMA has steadily evolved the typology of the aquatic centre since its competition win for the Grand River Aquatic Centre in Kitchener, Ontario, in 1988. In the 36 years since, the firm has been awarded three Governor General’s Medals in Architecture for pool buildings. And this spring, one of its recent projects cinched Ontario’s top architecture prize: the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Architecture went to Churchill Meadows Community Centre, located at the suburban western edge of Mississauga, Ontario.

The new facility shows how MJMA is not content to rest on its laurels, but rather, has been continuing to innovate from the basis of its successes. Churchill Meadows Recreation Centre shares a similar planning approach to MJMA’s Pam McConnell Aquatic Centre in Toronto’s Regent Park, which was acclaimed for its generous natural light and new-to-Canada introduction of universal change rooms. Both facilities have window-ringed pools, flanked by a block of universal change rooms, and edged with an access corridor set alongside a glazed façade; to this parti, Churchill Meadows adds a triple gymnasium and partial second floor. 

But here the similarities end. Churchill Meadows has decisively raised the bar for design excellence. This was in part enabled by MJMA’s wide scope on the project: the firm was responsible not only for the building, but for its surrounding landscape and for the masterplan of the 50-acre park in which it sits. Instead of sinking the rec centre to the back of the site, behind a sea of parking, the designers decided to rotate it 45 degrees relative to the urban grid, so that the building faces the cardinal directions. As a result, parking is pushed to two corners of the site, and the building becomes a focal point for the surrounding park.

Led by MJMA principal Chris Burbidge and design architect Tyler Walker, the team next opted to design the rec centre as a long, skinny rectangle, ringed by covered walkways. The most spectacular of these is a 130-metre-long promenade that stretches alongside the building’s western edge, facing the park. The two-storey outdoor space is topped by a sculptural parade of V-shaped glulam rafters edged with expanded metal mesh, providing a snow-free promenade in the winter, and a shady respite in the summer. Many recreation centres boast an outdoor public promenade of some type—a kind of enlarged version of a home’s front porch—but few achieve the combined sense of both intimacy and grandeur that is present at Churchill Meadows.

The creation of this promenade, explains Walker, stems from the core idea of the project: “pulling the façade apart and making it do as much as possible,” in order to blur the boundary between inside and outside. “The hope was that it would wrap the building in this kind of ‘sticky’ space where people gather, pause, and socialize—the idea of social infrastructure—while simultaneously shading the building and interiors.”

A highly efficient building section was developed with Blackwell Structural Engineers’ Ian Mountfort to work within the project’s tight budget, while maximizing visual impact. A series of glulam columns supports the building’s roof, and is the main support for the façade panels. To avoid diagonal members detracting from the rhythm of the columns, lateral bracing was moved into the core of the building, which was possible because of the volume’s thin proportions. 

The glulam columns are remarkably slender—just 136mm wide and 450mm deep. This is because they work in triads, with each steel roof truss supported by three columns tied together at their top, middle, and bottom points for stability. 

The steel angle tying the columns together at their bottom point supports a bench that extends the length of the building’s interior and exterior. Air supply vents and radiators are tucked under this bench, out of sight and safe from kicking feet chasing stray balls. In the gym and pool areas, the generous ledge is a convenient place for depositing backpacks, water bottles, and swim towels. Outside, it welcomes lingering—a sheltered place to sit, chat with friends, or watch playing kids.

On the east façade, the second floor volume cantilevers out to create extra-deep window alcoves on the upper floor—favourite activity nooks for children attending programs in the community kitchen and multi-purpose studios. On the lower floor, the projecting volume forms a canopy that creates a sheltered approach to the centre. The long bench makes an appearance here, too, providing indoor and outdoor amenity. 

If the short section of the project is an essay in maximizing the function and efficiency of a structure and its façades, the long section tells a story about inviting in light. Seven north-facing skylights, arrayed along the length, mark out the functions of the building: three skylights illuminate the three sections of the gymnasium, one crowns a central atrium, and three mark the pool. 

While the ceiling is shaped over each program space to support lighting, acoustics, and ventilation, the most dramatic sculpting happens over the warm water leisure pool, where the ceiling dips down to create a more intimate interior space. This continues an exploration of shaped roofs from the firm’s aquatic centre at the University of British Columbia, completed with Acton Ostry Architects, where a lowered ceiling caps and frames the leisure pool. “Pools are grand rooms and they want ceilings to define the space,” says Burbidge.

Both views and light are carefully considered in the natatorium. Swimmers enjoy park vistas to the west and to the north of the pool; a strategically located hill brings extra green into the view and conceals sports fields and a distant highway. 

“The quality of light that’s captured in this building is one of the most successful parts of the project,” says MJMA partner Ted Watson. Daylight is carefully filtered and balanced to cut glare, minimizing the need for the City operators to lower sun-blocking blinds. From the west, the expanded metal mesh and glulam struts provide shade without impeding the sense of openness between indoors and out, while the 450-millimetre-deep glulam columns act like giant venetian blinds, lowering heat gain. The use of a universal change room, equipped with individual and family-sized privacy cubicles, allows for daylight to enter through glazing to both sides of the change area.

The inclusion of a mass timber feature stair in the main atrium is audacious for a project that aims to be as open and transparent as possible. But it works, in part because it’s treated like a freestanding sculptural element. The upper portion of the stair is supported by 20-metre-long CLT beams—the longest self-supporting mass timber members available from Nordic Structures at the time of manufacturing. These eight-foot-wide, one-foot-thick beams land on delicate V-shaped steel supports, while the rest of the stair is supported by glulam hangers that integrate with the west wall. Beyond its impressive structural gymnastics, this serves to maintain a clear view corridor from the main entrance through to the park beyond. The only point of visual friction is the rough quality of the mass timber—because of the way that large CLT members are manufactured, it can have visible cracks and inconsistencies, unlike the more polished look one has become accustomed to with glulam.

The project began in 2016, before embodied carbon was a widespread topic of discussion, but the building has also proven progressive in this aspect. The optimized structure means that there is no secondary steel, reducing a major contributor to a building’s embodied carbon footprint. MJMA recently undertook a carbon analysis of 14 projects in its portfolio, and found that Churchill Meadows’ embodied carbon intensity of 435 CO2e/m2 put it at the lower end of its buildings with concrete pool basins. 

The learnings from this internal embodied carbon study, as well as from the design of Churchill Meadows, are already informing MJMA’s next set of buildings, particularly several mass timber buildings on its drawing boards. But while all recreation centres are similar in program, the buildings are also distinct—reflecting the diversity of individual communities. The unique identity of Churchill Meadows is perhaps most evident on Friday evenings, when the gymnasium hosts Muslim prayers, a function facilitated by foot baths built to the sides of the gym’s twin access corridors. “It’s amazing when you see it—they come up and set up all of the prayer mats straight to Mecca,” says Burbidge. Basket hoops pulled up and pickleball nets tucked away, with sunset colours framed by the wood structure to the west, the architecture gracefully transforms from a sports facility to a place of worship—a building truly at the heart of its community.

CLIENT City of Mississauga | ARCHITECT TEAM David Miller (FRAIC), Chris Burbidge (MRAIC), Tyler Walker (MRAIC), Ted Watson (FRAIC), Tarisha Dolyniuk (FRAIC), Tim Belanger, Andrew Filarski (FRAIC), Robert Allen (FRAIC), Obinna Ogunedo, Leland Dadson, Kris Vassilev, Darlene Montgomery, Jasper Flores, Caleb Tsui, Natalia Ultremari, Jeremy Campbell, Caileigh MacKellar, Kyung-Sun Hur | STRUCTURAL Blackwell | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Smith + Andersen | CIVIL EMC Group | LANDSCAPE MJMA Architecture & Design | INTERIORS MJMA Architecture & Design | CONTRACTOR Aquicon Construction | EXPERIENTIAL GRAPHIC DESIGN/SIGNAGE & WAYFINDING MJMA Architecture & Design | AREA 7,000 m2 | BUDGET $48  (Community Centre & district park) / $61.8 M (2023 escalated) | COMPLETION October 2021

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 570.2  kWh/m2/year

As appeared in the June 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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Entremise – OBNL en aménagement, recently put together an open letter discussing concerns about the upcoming vacancy of the îlot voyageur located at 505 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Est, in Montreal.

The letter begins by stating that Mayor Valérie Plante has revealed the timeline for the upcoming real estate project on the l’îlot voyageur, the former Berri-UQAM bus station, during a press conference.

According to the letter, the proposed timetable sets the beginning of construction in spring 2025. The letter notes that this timeline is “overly optimistic” given the recent history of delayed real estate projects within the Ville de Montréal.

The letter noted examples including the social housing project at the former Projet Young site in Griffintown, the Hippodrome Blue Bonnets, the redevelopment of the Saint-Sulpice library, and the ongoing negotiations for 4000 rue Saint-Patrick following the C40 competition in 2021.

According to the letter, no measures or recommendations have been implemented to prevent the sizable 25,000 sq.ft. building from remaining vacant until its future, yet unidentified, owner takes possession. The letter also noted that this is an ongoing situation despite the housing crisis and land pressures, and emphasized the need for proactive measures.

The letter noted that the city has taken steps beyond identification by implementing regulations such as the recent building occupancy and maintenance by-law (23-016), that came into effect on October 24, 2023. This by-law strengthens regulations for property owners who abandon their buildings and demonstrates the municipality’s attempt to actively combat the problem.

The letter noted that this effort aligns with the city’s broader commitment to the circular economy, as outlined in the September 2023 recommendations report, “Vers une Feuille de route montréalaise en économie circulaire.” The report underscores the approach of transitional use of spaces and buildings as a means to manage urban resources and establishes a relationship between solving the housing crisis and promoting a circular economy within the city.

The letter noted that as landowners, they advocate for the city to transition from recommendations to tangible actions, setting an example by not overlooking vacancy issues during the planning stages.

The letter made recomendations such as emulating the practices seen in projects like the Grandes Locos initiative overseen by the Metropole de Lyon. This proactive strategy not only set expectations for the developer but also encouraged future partners to follow suit, minimizing the period of vacancy for the site and its structures.

“It’s particularly perplexing that the current conditions of sale lack such measures, especially when a transitional project is already underway in the building in question,” reads the letter. “Significant investments have been made to facilitate organizations operating in the circular economy to occupy the premises, enhancing the safety of the site’s environment. However, despite these efforts, they have been asked to vacate the premises by October 2024.”

The letter went on to state that instead of allowing the space to fall into disuse, they advocate for the consideration of the community’s potential benefits.

They also suggested that the vacant space could serve as an exhibition venue for students, a food counter for organizations, a logistics hub, or even a refuge for the homeless.

Ultimately, this letter serves as a call to action, emphasizing the necessity for an approach aligned with the city’s commitments to the circular economy and responsible urban planning.

“We firmly believe it is imperative to foster collaborative decisions regarding the vacancy of this site and the retention of its occupants. We are open to collaborative efforts to devise innovative and inclusive solutions in the best interests of the community,” concludes the letter.

“We extend an invitation to all stakeholders in the field to respond and reflect on this issue collectively. Let’s collaborate to cultivate cities that are fairer, more sustainable, and resilient.”

Note: Currently, the open letter is only available in French.

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PROJECT The Well, Toronto, Ontario

ARCHITECTS Hariri Pontarini Architects (Masterplan and Office), Adamson Associates Architects (Executive Architect), BDP (Retail, Canopy, Landscape Architect), CCxA Architectes Paysagistes (Landscape Architect—Masterplan and Public Realm), Giannone Petricone Associates (Wellington Market), Wallman Architects (Residential Midrises), architects—Alliance (Residential Highrises), Urban Strategies (Urban Design and Planning)

PHOTOS RioCan, unless otherwise noted

TEXT John Lorinc

The elevating history of Toronto’s upward trajectory is a story that can be told in chapters, beginning with suburban slab apartments and downtown bank towers (1960s-1980s), moving through the era of arterial point tower clusters (on Bay, the Kings, North York City Centre, downtown Yonge, Jarvis) and on to massive industrial conversions (Liberty Village, the railway lands). Half a century after David Crombie imposed his infamous 45-foot freeze, height passes muster almost anywhere, and, despite policy efforts to stoke low- and midrise residential, there’s little to indicate that Toronto’s verticality will subside anytime soon.

What is quite new in the narrative of the city’s intensification is the advent of the mega-site—not just large-ish former car dealerships and the like, but precinct-sized projects that come fitted out with all manner of planning riddles, such as relationships to transit, abutting neighbourhoods, and architectural vernaculars. These sites include large inner city and suburban supermarket and mall properties, with their acres of blacktop, as well as marquis projects, such as the redevelopment of the 9.2-acre Canada Square site, at Yonge and Eglinton, by Oxford Properties and CT REIT working with Hariri Pontarini and Urban Strategies, and the former Honest Ed’s/Mirvish Village lands, which are being converted to mixed-use rental by Westbank with Henriquez Partners Architects, Diamond Schmitt Architects, Urban Strategies, and Janet Rosenberg Landscape Architects.  

Most (though not all) of the developers pursuing these large-scale gigs recognize they require a more extensive tool kit—intentional architectural variety, unconventional massing, new public open spaces and, crucially, porousness to prevent such developments from becoming too monolithic. 

In the case of the Galleria Mall, Almadev, working with Urban Strategies and Hariri Pontarini Architects, cut a deal with the city to build a new grid-busting diagonal road through the site and swap land to create a central park. With Mirvish Village and a future Ontario Line project at the Corktown station at King and Parliament, the designers and city planners carved out mid-block pedestrian cut-throughs, which, with the exception of a few examples in the downtown office core, represent an entirely new type of car-free public space in the city. (The Corktown site plan, prepared by SvN, includes two intersecting mid-block connections.)   

The first of these mega-projects to cross the finish line is The Well, a much anticipated and heavily publicized collaboration between RioCan and Allied Properties REIT. The 7.7-acre site—which belonged to the Thomson family, owner of The Globe and Mail, whose flagship facility stood on the site for many years, and much else—includes 1.2 million square feet of office space, 320,000 square feet of retail, and some 1,700 condos and rental units. The developers estimate it will eventually house about 11,000 residents and employees, whose comings and goings are expected to sustain the retail space and provide a major boost to a somewhat ragged corner of the King West district. 

Several design firms were involved in the project, including Hariri Pontarini Architects, which was responsible for the office tower and led the masterplan in collaboration with Urban Strategies and CCxA. BDP led the retail components, architects—Alliance designed the residential towers on the southern half of the site, and Wallman Architects oversaw the residential midrises on the northern half. The late Claude Cormier’s practice, CCxA, developed the landscape plan, while Adamson Associates served as executive architect. 

The complex features a huge underground cistern—thus, “the well,” a name that also nods to the adjacency with Wellington Street. The reservoir is not just a fixture of the project’s internal heating/cooling infrastructure, but will also serve as a means of extending the city’s deep lake water cooling network (owned and operated by Enwave) into the western part of the core.  

The Well’s headlining feature, however, is the covered passageways physically linking the various buildings that open onto Front Street, Spadina and Wellington. These mid-block, multi-level connections—lined with shops and colonnades, and then topped by a undulating latticed glass canopy—are unlike anything else in Toronto, with the possible exception of Santiago Calatrava’s smaller enclosed galleria in Brookfield’s BCE Place.   

This space can be seen and experienced in two overlapping ways: as an inside-out mall, and as a means for pedestrians to move between the three streets that delineate the property.  These internal lanes have no doors, and as such the passageway will function as a “privately-owned public space” (POPS), a formal designation created about a decade ago by the City of Toronto’s planning department as a means of expanding the pedestrian realm in an increasingly vertical downtown. 

The most literal inspiration for The Well’s covered mall can be found in many parts of the U.K. “This idea of having a roof like an umbrella, rather than an enclosed space, is something we’ve done in the U.K. a lot,” says Adrian Price, a London-based principal at BDP, noting that British planning rules in the 1990s didn’t permit enclosed malls. He cites examples like Victoria Square in Belfast and Cabot Circus in Bristol. But, as David Pontarini notes of those U.K. projects, “They’re all mixed-use residential-retail-office sites, but they don’t work at the density [The Well] is working at. This is kind of a European-combined-with-Asian model.”

The canopy—designed collaboratively by Hariri Pontarini, BDP, and Adamson, working with RJC Engineers—extends between seven buildings. It is held aloft by V-shaped supports, relying on what Price calls a “continuous walk-in gutter” that extends around the edge of the structure to provide stiffness. The supports, in turn, are designed to have enough give to accommodate building movement, while the panels of engineered glass sit atop the lattice. “It’s the largest structure of its type in North America,” says Price.

The internal passageways of the mall provide the most intimately scaled evidence of the project’s strategy to pack the site with diverse architectural elements: the office and retail blocks facing the promenade are rendered in distinct styles and materials, including red brick, white terracotta, and metal fins. As a whole, the complex includes seven connected buildings, ranging from tall glass office towers to mid-rise brick residential blocks that step down towards Wellington, self-consciously referencing the scale and massing of the King West brick-and-beam warehouses immediately to the north. The north face of the office towers features a glass elevator, offering commanding views of the west end, while a rooftop restaurant provides sweeping vistas of downtown. 

Two of the residential towers on the Front Street side are aligned, sensibly, off the customary Toronto grid so as to avoid direct exposure to morning and afternoon sun. Thus situated, they bear a certain resemblance to the off-centre orientation of every sun-destination hotel or condo. But this decision reflects an important and all-too-often ignored reality about the thermal loading that is endemic in so many high-rise glazed residential towers in Toronto.

The site’s intentional mix of architectural forms and styles holds up a mirror to the extraordinary variety in built form in the chunk of King West that extends from Spadina over to Tecumseh. The precinct now includes everything from early-19th-century workers’ cottages to the Bjarke Ingels Group’s King Toronto—a Habitat-esque confection, created with developers Westbank and Allied Properties, and designer Diamond Schmitt Architects. Hariri Pontarini worked on another mixed-use Allied/RioCan project across the street from where King Toronto is under construction—the King Portland Centre. The King Portland Centre and The Well share a strategy of leveraging the network of mid-block passageways which have long been a feature of the area.

Indeed, The Well’s urban design is its most distinctive feature. The entrance portal from the corner of Spadina and Front—for years, a car dealership—is now all show business, while the north-facing edge, just around the corner, seems to want to blend into, but also define, a rather staid stretch of Wellington. The project planners are to be commended for providing a generous and well-landscaped sidewalk allowance on this side of The Well. However, it remains to be seen whether the former buzz of that stretch of Wellington, with its industrial businesses, bistros and oddball clubs, will ever come back—or if it is now destined to remain a kind of high-end residential interstitial space between Front and King. 

As for the south side, the passageway and adjoining condo entrances opening onto Front are likely to spend the next 10 to 15 years staring at what will become a vast construction site. The five-tower Rail Deck District project is to be cantilevered over the GO/VIA rail corridor, after prevailing in a tense air-rights battle with the City of Toronto over the latter’s plan to build a multi-billion-dollar park above the tracks. Metrolinx also has a block of land reserved across Front Street from The Well for a future shoulder-station.

For the time being, the question posed by The Well and its highly deliberate urban design choices is a variation on the one that Eb Zeidler’s Eaton Centre posed when it opened in the late 1970s. Will the mall’s gravitational pull suck King Westers, in all their guises, away from King and Lower Spadina? Or does its porousness—a feature that serves as a notable point of differentiation with the Eaton Centre—represent a meaningful addition to the urban connectivity of that neighbourhood? 

It feels trite to say here that time will tell. Yet the breathtaking dynamism of King West’s urban form can lead to no other conclusion for the moment. The enormous project has enormous ambitions, setting out to meaningfully address itself to the three streets around it, and to create a new downtown hub. But it begins life as a kind of island of high density within a mid-rise neighbourhood that’s very much in flux. How well The Well serves the future and evolving King West is an open question, yet one whose answer is revealing itself bit by bit—and now mega-block by mega-block—with each passing year.   

John Lorinc is a Toronto journalist who writes about planning, public space and development for Spacing and The Globe and Mail. Follow him on X at @johnlorinc. 

CLIENT RioCan REIT, Allied | RESIDENTIAL CLIENT TRIDEL, RioCan Living, Woodbourne Capital Canada | ARCHITECT TEAMS Hariri Pontarini Architects—David Pontarini, Michael Conway, Douglas Keith, Ali Soleymani, Shuan Liu, Elnaz Sabouri, Michele Hauner, Dorna Ghorashi, Alyssa Goraieb, Asem Alhadrab, Brad Moore. Hariri Pontarini Architects (Interior Design)—Cathy Knott, Danielle Tsisko, Victoria Kwon, Paloma Pontarini, Emma Craig. Adamson Associates Architects—Bill Bradley, Domenic Virdo, David Jansen, Alex Richter, Jack Cusimano, Steve Carroll, Deni Di Filippo, Navjit Singh Matharu, Rasha Mousa, Anna Satchkova, Gianni Meogrossi, Gordon Adair, Pam Bruneau, Chuck Comartin, Martin Dolan, Alfredo Falcone, Ana Gadin, Sarah Gilbert, Margarita Goyzueta, Dwayne Keith, Negar Khalili, Jimin Kim, Mike Koehler, Gilles Leger, Tonino Ottaviani, Theresa Prince, Dan Rubenzahl, Arlene So, Gintaras Valiulis, Gabriel Virag, Ashley Wewiora. BDP—Adrian Price, Steve Downey, Roberta Massabo, Maarten Mutters, Greg Froggatt, Lauren Copping, Marco Cosmi, Paul Foster, Malcolm De Cruz, Catherine Griffiths, Ivan Popov, Michelle Wong, Hoa Quan, Maria Martinez, Simon Perez, Trevor Pool, Luminita Musat, Emilie Kwapisz, Daniele De Paula, Millan Tarazona, Peter Coleman, Waimond Ip, Adriano Scarfo. BDP (Interior Design)—Justin Parsons, Sean Rainey, Cora Granier, Amy Simpson, Vivien Kerr, Anna Carnevale, Melodie Peters. Concept Lighting—Colin Ball, Sarah Alsayed, Mim Beaufort, Jono Redden. BDP (Landscape)—Mehron Kirk, Lucy White, Cedric Chausse, Bethany Gale, Martyna Dobosz, Dalia Todary-Michael. Wallman Architects—Rudy Wallman, Rod Pell, Khodayar Shafaei, Michael Panacci, Aleksandra Mazowiec, Tristan Armesto, Shaun Oldfield. CCxa Architectes Paysagistes—Claude Cormier, Guillaume Paradis, Logan Littlefield, Yannick Roberge, Marc Hallé, James Cole, Yi Zhou, Hélio Araujo, Georges-Étienne Parent, Nicole M. Meier. Architects—Alliance: Peter Clewes, Adam Feldmann, Oliver Laumeyer, Barb Zee, Helen Tran, Nicolas Peters, Sophia Radev, Dele Oladunmoye, Robert Connor, Lisa Maharaj, Anna Wan, Jason DeLine, Carl Caliva. Giannone Petricone Associates—Ralph Giannone, Andria Vacca, Cassandra Hryniw, Carlo Odorico, Katherine French, Amy Piccinni, Tracy Ho, Shane Alharbi, Yoland Senik, Hung Hoang. Urban Strategies—George Dark, Dennis Lago, Geoff Whittaker, Craig Cal, Pino Di Mascio | STRUCTURAL RJC Engineers (Daniel Sokolowski) | STRUCTURAL (RESIDENTIAL) Jablonsky Ast & Partners | ELECTRICAL/IT/COMMUNICATIONS/AV/SECURITY/LIGHTING Mulvey & Banani (Eric Cornish, Olumide Joseph, Nirojan Ketheeswaran | Mechanical The Mitchell Partnership (James McEwan, Camille Williams) | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL (RESIDENTIAL) Novatrend | CIVIL Odan/Detech Group, Inc. | ACOUSTICS & VIBRATION HGC Engineering | HARDWARE Trillium Architectural Products | TRANSPORTATION/PARKING BA Consulting Group | WIND RWDI | FIRE/CODE/LIFE SAFETY/ACCESSIBILITY LRI Engineering, Inc. | VERTICAL TRANSPORTATION Soberman Engineering | SURVEYOR J.D. Barnes | EXTERIOR BUILDING MAINTENANCE RDP Associates | ice/snow Microclimate Ice & Snow Inc. | WASTE MANAGEMENT Cini-Little International, Inc. | LANDSCAPE (RESIDENTIAL) Janet Rosenberg & Studio, MBTW | SUSTAINABILITY EQ Building Performance | SHORING AND EXCAVATION Isherwood Geostructural Engineers, GFL Environmental | CONSTRUCTION MANAGERS EllisDon, Deltera, Knightsbridge  | CODE LRI (Steven Grant) | STRUCTURE AVENUE-verdi jv | CLADDING & ROOFING Bothwell-Accurate | CANOPY Gartner GMBH | CONCEPT LIGHTING BDP | LIGHTING Mulvey & Banani (Stephen Kaye) | WAYFINDING kramer design associates | LANDSCAPE SUBCONSULTANTS Albert Mondor (planting); Joe Carter (irrigation); Peter Simon (urban forestry) | AREA 7.67 acres | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION November 2023

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On December 19, 2023, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) wrote a letter to the Government of Ontario expressing their dismay at the proposal to demolish the urban forest of Canada’s Ontario Place.

“In 2020, WMF named Canada’s Ontario Place to the World Monuments Watch, a biennial selection of 25 of the world’s most significant heritage sites in need of immediate attention. The Toronto  public waterfront site’s selection for this internationally recognized program placed it alongside such renowned places as Easter Island, Chile, and Notre-Dame of Paris, France. The choice affirmed that Ontario Place is a modernist icon worthy of protection,” reads the letter.

The letter noted that in collaboration with Architectural Conservancy Ontario (ACO), and the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, WMF assembled a digital public archive of Ontario Place’s history and recorded interviews with architects, urbanists, activists, and current users about the significance of Ontario Place.

“Through our research, we uncovered a sketch by the site’s architect, Eberhard Zeidler, that describes his approach to ‘reclaim[ing] the shoreline for people; the meeting of water and land brought to a poetic awareness.’ Out of respect for Zeidler’s legacy, Ontario Place’s poetic and public value should receive the highest level of consideration,” reads the letter.

The WMF noted in the letter that they have been following developments at Ontario Place over the past weeks “with dismay” and are “alarmed” at the recently introduced Rebuilding Ontario Place Act, which proposes to exempt the site from the Ontario Heritage Act, the Environmental Assessment Act, and other regulatory guardrails that ensure the proper management of public heritage sites.

“Ontario Place is a unique synthesis of architectural and natural elements, and the current proposal would level a large portion of the original landscape designed by renowned Canadian landscape architect Michael Hough–demolishing an urban forest of over 850 mature trees. Local activists report that tree removal at this beloved landmark has already begun, damaging Ontario Place’s internationally recognized heritage landscape and the site’s ecology,” reads the letter.

The letter concluded by stating that the WMF joins the Cultural Landscape Foundation in condemning this proposal in the strongest terms and noted that the Ontario Heritage Act, under which Ontario Place is listed as a Heritage Property of Provincial significance, must be respected.

“The proposed legislation, which fails to take into account Ontario Place’s internationally recognized cultural significance, must not be passed. We encourage the Government of Ontario, as stewards of a public site, to consider international best practices in site management and more productive dialogues with local stakeholders. Doing so will ensure that Ontario Place will be safeguarded for those in Canada and abroad that cherish this irreplaceable heritage site,” concludes the letter.

For more information on the Ontario Place for All Campaign, click here.

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The federal government intends to resurrect a post-war effort to ramp up housing construction across Canada, but with a 21st-century twist.

A consultation process will begin next month on developing a catalogue of pre-approved home designs to accelerate the home-building process for developers, Housing Minister Sean Fraser said on December 12.

It’s a reboot of a federal policy from the post-Second World War era, when the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. developed straightforward blueprints to help speed up the construction of badly needed homes, Fraser said.

“When many thousands of soldiers were returning home to be reunited with their families at once, Canada faced enormous housing crunches,” he said.

“We intend to take these lessons from our history books and bring them into the 21st century.”

Many of the post-war home designs including those for modest detached homes known as strawberry box houses are still scattered in neighbourhoods across the country to this day.

The modern-day version of the catalogue will instead focus on low-rise builds, such as small multiplexes, student housing and seniors’ residences, then explore a potential catalogue for higher-density construction.

The goal is to better ensure housing builds can be fast-tracked for approval from the CMHC and others, while also promoting larger-scale production through factory-based construction.

“I have seen estimates from experts in the field indicating this could cut up to one year off the time for construction on a project,” Fraser said.

The government isaiming to have the catalogue ready sometime next year.

Fraser said it will go hand-in-hand with the national building code. The code, which the minister said the government is planning to update, offers guidelines that are only enforceable if a province or territory chooses to adopt them.

The idea of a catalogue of pre-approved blueprints was also one of several recommendations in a report co-authored by housing expert Mike Moffatt that was released earlier this year called the National Housing Accord.

“This is potentially very transformative,” Moffatt said in an interview.

Creating a catalogue will help get shovels into the ground faster by speeding up the process of approval for everything from financing to municipal permitting, he said.

Moffatt, who is a senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute, has become an influential figure on housing policy in the country. After publishing his report this summer, Moffatt attend the Liberals’ cabinet retreat to talk about housing.

On the catalogue, Moffatt added the blueprints also have the potential to boost productivity.

“One of the big challenges we’re going to have building enough homes is having enough skilled labour. And certainly we need to increase the number of tradespeople we have. But we also need to find ways to be more productive. And this would help get us there,” Moffatt said.

The federal government has so far moved forward with several recommendations in the accord that Moffatt and other stakeholders put together.

“We made sure that we brought together builders and developers in the real-estate industry, along with academics, but also with the not-for-profit side,” Moffatt said.

“Because we essentially (locked) everyone into a room for a day and tried to figure out what we can all agree on, that, I think, gives these recommendations credibility.”

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The Toronto Star has reported that landscape architect Walter Kehm of LANDinc, who was involved in the Ontario Place redevelopment project, has stepped down due to concerns over the clearing of trees on the waterfront site to accommodate a waterpark and private spa.

According to the Toronto Star, Kehm, who is known for designing Trillium and Tommy Thompson parks, said he felt as though he became “persona non grata” after advocating for the hundreds of trees and decades-old wildlife habitat being threatened by the project.

Kehm told the Toronto Star he could no longer be affiliated with a project that threatened the wildlife habitat, due to his professional commitment to protecting nature.

Toronto-based LANDinc was one of two firms awarded the commission by Infrastructure Ontario to work with the province of Ontario on the design and construction of the public realm of Ontario Place.

“I think it’s time for plain speaking. It’s time for telling the truth,” Kehm, a longtime friend of the late Michael Hough, the landscape architect who helped design the original Ontario Place, told the Star. “I remember when [Hough] was planting those trees. To think they could be clear-cut,” he added, “doesn’t sit in my stomach very well.”

The Ford government’s controversial decision to grant provincial land for the construction of a private spa has sparked ongoing tension, and encountered significant public opposition. Currently, city staff are in the process of reviewing the resubmitted plans for the spa and water park. Earlier this month, Ontario’s auditor general announced that they are opening a value-for-money audit on the redevelopment along with the provincial’s government’s decision to relocate the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place.

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