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 Ontario government has been adamant that building a new Science Centre at Ontario Place will be preferable to reinvesting in the Ontario Science Centre at its current site. But such an assessment does not hold up to scrutiny.

In past articles, I have examined how the cost of repairing the existing Ontario Science Centre is far less than the cost of building a new, half-sized science centre at Ontario Place. I’ve also looked at how a new science centre will not be ready until 2030-2034, depriving a full generation of Ontario kids and parents from a full science centre experience.

The current article takes a more granular look at the architectural details of a new science centre, based on currently available information, and what would be lost compared to reinvesting in the existing Ontario Science Centre.

An 18%-56% reduction in exhibition space

The government claims that the current Ontario Science Centre is inefficient in its layout, and that therefore, even though the new Ontario Science Centre has half the footprint, it will have a comparable amount of exhibition space.

But as the Auditor General has confirmed, the current Ontario Science Centre is 568,000 square feet in size, with 134,000 square feet of exhibitions. The proposed centre at Ontario Place is 275,700 square feet, with 110,000 square feet of indoor exhibit space—18% less than at the current Science Centre.

The amount of exhibition space in the proposed centre risks being reduced even further, considering that several key spaces have not been accounted for properly in the government’s preliminary calculations.

In the test fit, school intake, lockers, classrooms, unloading zones, first aid, storage, and exhibition maintenance and prep areas—some 23,226 square feet of functional program in all—were located in the P1 and P2 parking levels. However, as the design of these parking areas has evolved, the allocated space has been given over to other essential logistical needs, including a large underground bus drop-off loop and bicycle parking. As a result, these program elements will need to be accommodated in the above-ground portions of the building.

Another inconsistency is that in the business case, the heritage pods have been counted as being 100% usable space—adding up to some 40,000 square feet—whereas in reality, they will need to contain washrooms, exit stairs, mechanical areas, and corridors. In the test fit, some of these items begin to be blocked in, and the gross area comes in at 32,662 square feet—7,338 square feet less than originally anticipated.

In all, this adds up to another 30,564 square feet of space that is “missing” from the space planning calculations for the centre at Ontario Place. If this space come out of the exhibition areas directly, this means that the exhibition space would be reduced to just under 80,000 square feet—a 41% reduction from the current Ontario Science Centre.

In the relocation business case, exhibitions for the proposed science centre are not fully funded. According to this document, there will be no exhibitions in three of the five pods on opening day—some 20,408 square feet of exhibition. This means that when the proposed science centre at Ontario Place opens, it will have under 60,000 square feet of exhibition space—56% less than the current Ontario Science Centre.

In the currently available drawings, the 130-metre-long underground tunnel linking the science pavilion to the pods is labelled as “Pavilion Gallery Space.” Even though this is far from the optimal location for exhibitions, this comprises some 20,000 square feet of space that may to be “counted” as part of the Ontario Place location’s overall exhibition space. Accordingly, when the proposed science centre at Ontario Place opens, a third of its exhibition space may in reality be lower-quality space, on a basement level, that does triple-duty as a major circulation pathway, building flex space, and exhibition space.

Missing feature areas

What goes by the wayside when a Science Centre’s overall area is reduced by 50%, and its exhibition spaces are significantly reduced? Within the relocation business case, a few key areas are identified. To start, the new centre will not have a large immersive space that replicates the experience of the TELUS Rainforest. Even the business case admits that “this creates a gap in the overall science centre experience,” adding that “a unique and fully immersive experience is what helps create a world class tourist destination.”

There will be no adventure playground, equivalent to the Cohon Family Nature Escape and Science Plaza at the current Ontario Science Centre. “The new OSC@OP has limited outdoor space envisioned in the current plans,” the business case admits.

The planetarium, which was expected to reopen this year, will also be excluded from the new centre. “An immersive state-of-the-art modern New Planetarium is core to the science centre experience,” the report says. “Planetariums are not just for young learners,” it explains. “They welcome everyone from the community to attend public events. A state-of-the-art spectacular planetarium has the potential to engage researchers as scholars interested in engaging with the public.”

A fabrication facility, too, is absent from the plans for a new centre. Creating exhibitions is part of the Ontario Science Centre’s core mandate. It’s also part of the Science Centre’s magic: there is an immediate feedback loop from the exhibition floor to the workshop, that allows the Science Centre’s exhibition designers and fabricators to hone their work in response to visitor behaviour. Observers have noted how this design process would not be nearly as fulsome with an off-site fabrication facility.

The current facility generates $2.5-3 million annually from exhibition sales and rentals. The government’s own pricing anticipates that leasing an appropriate space will cost $420,000 to $690,000 per year, plus an initial design and fit-out cost. While it notes that “ideally there is some proximity to the OP precinct,” the industrial spaces it prices out in its business case are chosen for their proximity to the 400-series highways—not to Ontario Place.

More missing areas

Moriyama Teshima Architects, the firm that designed the original Ontario Science Centre, has compared the size of each major program component in the current Ontario Science Centre with the proposed centre.

In terms of public space, the IMAX theatre increases substantially in size, doubling its capacity from 300 to 600 seats. This is more space where it is not needed: while a large IMAX theatre may be useful for occasional evening premieres, the bread-and-butter of the Science Centre’s IMAX is frequent, daytime showings for smaller audiences. Even the relocation business case notes that the larger “capacity is rarely likely to be reached.”

Almost everything else goes down in size: the building entry and visitor amenities shrink by 43% from 46,200 square feet to 26,650 square feet, education spaces are reduced a whopping 88% from 11,700 square feet to 2,600 square feet, and the OSC School disappears entirely, as do dedicated event and rental spaces.

The lack of education spaces is particularly concerning: it will certainly mean the elimination of special immersive STEM programs geared to high school groups, such as the popular Voyage to Mars and Return to the Moon. The webpage for the OSC School—a specialized program that allows grade 12 students to spend a full semester at the Ontario Science Centre—has already been taken down.

In addition to the noted 18-56% reduction in dedicated exhibition areas, the support space for those exhibitions is reduced by 38%, while overall building support spaces are reduced by 85%, and administrative spaces by 58%. The loss of support space is notable since the hallmark of an interactive science museums is the “host” concept, where staff interact with visitors, and provide demonstrations and assistance in interpreting exhibits. This program requires space both within and outside of the exhibit spaces for prep, storage and staff needs. The dramatic reduction in support spaces, along with proposed reductions of staff by at least 17% in the business case, indicates that this essential aspect of the science centre program will undoubtedly be compromised.

As mentioned in the last section of this analysis, exhibition design and fabrication spaces are absent from the proposed centre. This area is often used as part of “behind the scenes” public tours—another part of the visitor experience which will be lost in the proposed relocation to Ontario Place.

While it makes sense that some areas would shrink in a half-sized science centre, one would anticipate that if the intention was to maintain exhibition spaces at the current size, then the same size of support spaces for those exhibitions would also be required. Moreover, the business plan for a new science centre is premised on growing attendance by 50%—an indication that visitor amenities would need to expand, rather than shrinking by 43%.

From personal experience, the current Science Centre’s cafeteria space is already at capacity on weekends. It is hard to understand how a significantly smaller cafeteria could hope to accommodate a significantly greater number of visitors. In a recent summer trip to Montreal, I visited the Montreal Science Centre, which did not have an operating cafeteria and also had little by way of dedicated student intake area in evidence. At lunchtime, my child and I were obliged to walk through the rain throughout the Old Port area looking for a food concession. In any case, we would have had trouble making our way into the science centre in any case, since the entry area was blocked by summer campers eating brown-bag lunches throughout the hallways—the kind of scenario that would be common in a Ontario Place science centre with insufficient student and visitor support spaces.

Urban design

But what would the proposed science centre at Ontario Place look like? While there are no renderings available, we can get some sense of the answer by considering the immediate context.

Although Ontario Place as a whole is large, the proposed science centre would occupy a relatively constrained site between two private developments: the Therme indoor water theme park and spa, and the enlarged 29,000-capacity LiveNation venue. The Therme development has a footprint of 8.4 acres, comparable to the footprint of the SkyDome. The proposed Science Pavilion’s footprint on the mainland is 88% smaller—about the size of that baseball stadium’s infield.

Detailed plans are not yet available for the LiveNation venue, but its new footprint will be of a similar scale to the Therme development, as seen in publicly available site diagrams.

Architect Brian Rudy of Moriyama & Teshima Architects describes the situation like this: “This diagram strikes me as the most blatant representation of the problem: the massive Therme on one side, the huge future expansion of Live Nation on the other side—with the half-sized science centre squashed in the middle, almost literally as an afterthought. The science centre is like several leftover and insufficient bits & pieces of ill-arranged garnish, sandwiched between two slices of bloated and soggy white bread.” He adds: “How can the science centre possibly stand on its own to create its own identity—let-alone create an environment for inspiration and learning—in this location, squished between these two giant money generators?”

The Science Pavilion occupies a constrained site, against Lakeshore Boulevard and the Martin Goodman trail to the north, and Lake Ontario to the south. There are two entrances to the Pavilion: a car drop-off to the east, and an entrance off an outdoor plaza to the west. (The same outdoor plaza also gives access to the Therme project). Even though some reports say that the building is four storeys high, the “roof” includes a substantial built-up portion, so the true height of the building is five storeys. Overall, it will be around 115 feet tall—almost twice as high as the 60-foot-tall Cinesphere.

The moniker “pavilion” is somewhat deceptive, since “pavilion” usually indicates a low-slung, one-storey-high building. Instead, the science building will essentially form an opaque wall between Lakeshore Boulevard and the waterfront. While this means that the building will block views of the heritage Cinesphere and Pods, the Science Pavilion’s wedge shape allows for glimpses of those structures from Lakeshore Boulevard and the Martin Goodman trail, approaching Ontario Place from the east. From the west, views of the Cinesphere and Pods will be blocked by the Therme development.

In the original proposal, the Science Pavilion sits atop a five-storey, 2,000-car underground parkade meant to serve Ontario Place as a whole, including dedicated parking spots that the province is obliged to provide under its signed lease with Therme. (It is anticipated that the lease agreement with LiveNation will similarly require dedicated spots.) And while there is some discussion about this site-wide parking moving across the street to Exhibition Place, the need will likely remain for the Science Pavilion and Therme entrance pavilion to include two underground levels.

This is because of several shared services that take place in that underground area: notably, a double-height bus drop-off loop, shipping/receiving zones for both the science centre and Therme, and an underground car drop-off zone for Therme. While for many buildings, such services are located at street level, the tightness of the Ontario Place site makes these functions virtually impossible to accommodate anywhere expect underground.

The P1 level also includes an underground link, which would allow for science centre visitors to connect to the exhibition-containing Pods and Cinesphere without exiting the ticketed zone. After traveling through the link, visitors would pop up into a tower squeezed next to the Therme entrance pavilion, from which a bridge crosses over to the elevated pods.

Visitor Journey

As a visitor to a science centre at Ontario Place, you would be dropped off at the east entrance or underground, travel through three floors of exhibitions, then travel through a tunnel and/or series of bridges to see the pods and Cinesphere.

Off the bat, there are some aspects of this journey that are less than ideal. IMAX theatres are typically located near the entrance of science centres, rather than at the end: this allows people to access them as a separate attraction, and also to more easily select a show time without having to account for finding and making one’s way to the theatre. (As a mother with a young kid, I can tell you that making it to a ticketed show, at an unknown distance, for a specific timeslot can be significantly challenging.)

Moriyama Teshima’s office has performed a helpful exercise of diagramming out what this visitor journey would look like, in comparison to a visitor journey at the current Ontario Science Centre. In the current Ontario Science Centre, a one-way trip that includes all of the exhibitions entails a 730 metre walk. In the proposed science centre at Ontario Place, that same trip would be 1.3 kilometres long—almost twice the distance—to see less exhibit space. While good for those counting steps, a longer journey can create accessibility issues: creating an additional burden to those with mobility issues (such as grandparents) or those with strollers (such as parents with kids under the age of 4). It’s an additional measure that points to a poorer experience for visitors.

A risky proposition

The inclusion of a 130-metre-long underground tunnel and some 400 metres of bridges not only creates for a long visitor journey, but it makes the building vulnerable to future major repair requirements.

As architect Brian Rudy explains: “As we have seen, the existing Ontario Science Centre had a vulnerability when the bridge between Buildings A and B was deemed unsafe and closed to the public. While we may debate why the province didn’t immediately set to fixing this 60-metre-long bridge, imagine the vulnerability of the approximately 400 metres of bridge as part of the OP proposal, and then also consider that this bridge is already over 50 years old.” He adds, “Speaking of vulnerabilities, also imagine a 130-metre-long tunnel built right next to—and 2.5 metres below the waters of Lake Ontario [as it is shown on in current sections]. Are we confident that the provincial government 50 years in the future will be willing to invest in a 50-year-old leaky tunnel?”

Rudy also notes that the presence of so many bridges makes for a very inefficient structure—echoing the Province’s key criticism of the existing building. The Province wrote in its business case that “the 568,000 square feet of the [current Ontario Science Centre] is expansive and spread across three buildings and multiple levels, creating a highly inefficient structure…[resulting] in a significant amount of inefficient spaces.” Says Rudy: “While it is hard to argue that the existing Ontario Science Centre is the most efficient building in the world, the Ontario Place proposal will almost certainly be less efficient than the existing Ontario Science Centre—given its constrained five-story pavilion footprint, long tunnels, and bridges connecting relatively small spaces over a vast area. This lack of efficiency will cost more to build, cost more to maintain over the long run, and likely result in further compromises and reductions of usable (ie. exhibition) space.”

Customized design vs. P3

As with most endeavours, the process affects the product. In the case of the proposed science centre at Ontario Place, the architectural outcome will largely be related to the way it is procured: through a public-private-partnership, or P3.

A traditional procurement model for a building is straightforward: the client (Infrastructure Ontario and the Ontario Science Centre) would vet a number of architects, then choose one to work with in designing a building to suit their needs and the site. As part of this process, other sub-consultants, such as engineers and heritage specialists, are brought onto the team. When the design is complete, contractors are invited to bid on constructing the project. This is how all museums and cultural facilities in Ontario and Canada have been designed to-date.

Introduced in 2005 in Ontario, the P3 model is typically used for large infrastructure projects and buildings, including highways, hospitals, courthouses, and sporting venues. In this model, Infrastructure Ontario first vets and hires a compliance architect, who puts together a master specification, known as the Project-Specific Outcome Specification (PSOS). Instead of dictating the final design, this is intended to be a general specification that lists all of the project’s requirements, but doesn’t foreclose opportunities for saving money through a creative solution to those requirements.

Three teams—each consisting of a contractor, architect, and subconsultants such as engineers—are then invited to submit bids that include the price to design, build, finance, and maintain the project for a specified number of years. Once the winning team is selected, they are responsible for the full execution of the project.

In theory, this process results in competitive bidding, taxpayer savings, and the transfer of risk to the private sector. But as auditor general Bonnie Lysk pointed out in a report nine years ago, this is not the reality of how P3s have played out. Because the private sector is taking on financing costs at a higher cost than the public sector, is responsible for higher ancillary costs (such as legal, engineering, and project management fees), and tends to over-price project risks, Lysk concluded that the cost of the 74 projects taken on between 2005-2015 was 29% higher than if the same projects had been managed through traditional procurement—costing the government an additional eight billion dollars that decade.

Yet, P3s remain attractive to governments. This is largely because, despite evidence to the contrary, they still have the appearance of carrying taxpayer savings. In a Design-Build-Finance-Maintain contract—the kind being used for the proposed Ontario Place—project costs are paid for in installments over a long period, usually 30 years. This means that a project can be started while putting little cost on the government’s books, with the majority of costs ultimately passed along to future governments.

For architects, the downsides of P3s are well-known. Bidding for a P3 can involve a massive amount of work that isn’t sufficiently compensated—a significant financial gamble for any office. The selection process generally weighs heavily on the side of lowest cost, rather than the most innovative design. As a member of the winning proponent team, architects work for a developer, not for the building’s users. Often they have little direct contact with the client. On both proponent and compliance sides, reams of paperwork can bog down a project’s progress—as well as the morale of employees.

Many players in the industry feel that overall, P3s also represent poor value for the built environment. With few exceptions, P3 projects fall short of the architectural quality that might have been achieved with a comparable budget, under a traditional stipulated-sum contract.

Because of its complex preparatory setup and legalistic nature, the P3 process also has a longer timeline than traditional projects.

For the proposed science centre at Ontario Place, the government has so far completed the selection of a compliance architect. An RFQ was issued for proponent teams last spring, with submissions due on July 4; an RFP with the completed PSOS is expected to be issued to the finalist teams in early November. At this rate, a proponent team would not be selected until 2025 or 2026. Construction documents and approvals would still need to be completed from that point. Optimistically, construction would not be finished until 2030, with exhibition installation and commissioning taking some months longer.

This timeline correlates with the government’s RFP for a temporary science centre location, which asks for a lease going until 2030, with the possibility of yearly extensions until 2034. As I have written, the only plausible explanation for this long lease is that the Province does not expect the OSC at Ontario Place to be open until 2030-2034—not 2028, as they have been telling the public.

Reopen, renew, and reinvest

Overall, a new science centre at Ontario Place will be a shadow of what we have at the Ontario Science Centre’s current location. It will have significantly less exhibition space, will lack key feature areas, and will lose other important program areas, including educational spaces, event rental areas, the OSC school, and support spaces.

The proposed science centre at Ontario Place will be compressed on its site, where it will be dwarfed by the private Therme and LiveNation developments. It will necessitate a visitor journey that is twice the length, to see fewer exhibits. The P3 process by which it is being constructed will mean poorer quality architecture, delivered on a longer timeline.

The Moriyama-designed building was closed less than two months ago, and while reopening it and performing necessary repairs will take some doing, it can happen more quickly than preparing a temporary location (which would not open until 2026) or pursuing a relocation to Ontario Place (which would not open until 2030-2034).

The right decision is clear: Ontario must reopen, renew, and reinvest in the Ontario Science Centre at its current location.

Related:

Infrastructure Ontario document lists “scaling back programming” and “staffing reductions” as money-saving “pros” of Science Centre closure

As Province edges towards demolition of Science Centre, documents point to a manufactured crisis

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

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

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The post What would a Science Centre at Ontario Place look like? appeared first on Canadian Architect.

In spring 2023, the Ontario Government announced that it was planning to move the Ontario Science Centre to a significantly smaller facility at Ontario Place. That planned move came under criticism from many quarters, including from the province’s Auditor General. But instead of backing down, the province doubled down. Shockingly to all, they decided to close the existing Science Centre earlier this summer, on the flimsy, now-debunked premise that an engineer’s roof report required the closure.

The Province’s original relocation plan, for all of its faults, ensured continuous access to a science educational facility in the region by proposing to reduce the existing science centre location to a smaller footprint in the transition period before a new science centre would be open. The cost to do so was estimated at $32 million.

The decision to suddenly close the Science Centre at the beginning of this summer was an unexpected change of course. A temporary science centre, which is 1/10^th of the size of the current facility, will not open until 2026. A new Science Centre will not open at Ontario Place until 2030 to 2034.

A single page of the government’s business case for the relocation lays out, in broad strokes, what is happening right now—and the risks that the government is knowingly accepting by choosing this course of action.

The slide, labelled “Option 1A: Decant to Alternate Space,” is the sole image included in the business case’s “Appendix Q: Interim Operating Expenses,” although its label (Option 1A) indicates that it was one of several options considered by the Province (there was presumably also an Option 1B and Option 2, if not more options on the table).

The blue “policy objective” box at the top left outlines why the Province might choose to pursue the option to Decant to an Alternate Space. Pros and cons are listed at the top of the slide, followed by a grid that lays out the cost to government. At the top right, red and orange flags summarize the risk to the existing building, and the risk to the OSC’s programs.

I will take us through these elements one at a time.

Let’s start with the “Policy objective” and “Pros,” which can be read together. The idea of an interim OSC at an alternate space, we read in both places, is to “maintain an in-person OSC service offering.” Another pro is that the strategy, had it been chosen from the outset, “Provides sufficient time to either identify/lease space and complete fit-up.” But as we have seen, because of the sudden closure this summer, the possibility of a continuous, in-person OSC service offering has certainly not been assured. According to the current schedule—which even Infrastructure Ontario has admitted is ambitious—a temporary OSC in an alternate space will not be ready until 2026, creating a gap of at least 18 months from the facility’s closure.

The temporary OSC strategy also “expediates decant from existing site to reduce risk.” It is not clear from the present document what kind of “risk” this is referring to, but in the business case, there is a discussion that negotiating an early return of the OSC lands to the City of Toronto, from which the lands are leased, could help limit “any trailing obligations,” including but not limited to “decommissioning costs (approximately $21 million) and costs related to returning the building in a state of good repair (up to $369 million).” One might reasonably infer that an expedited decant is intended to limit the costs that the Province may owe to the City upon leaving the Don Mills site.

The other “Pros” are straight-up troubling. Perhaps if your job is as a bean-counter, you could see it as a positive that this strategy “allows sufficient time for staffing reductions resulting in surplussing”—but in most views, the loss of jobs in science education would seem to be an overall negative, both for the job holders and for Ontarians at large. Likewise, the idea of “scaling back programming/operating costs”—to the tune of $13-14 million per year—implies a severe reduction in science-based programming. If this “savings” is applied directly to staff salaries and wages (the largest line item in the Science Centre’s business plan), it suggests that more than half of the Science Centre’s staff will be laid off this fall. If the “savings” are applied equally across all Science Centre expenses, it would still mean that a full 1/3 of staff will be laid off imminently.

The last “Pro”—the idea that “interim operations could be leveraged as a communications and marketing opportunity to build anticipation for a new facility”—seems simply shameful. This essentially argues for depriving families and kids of a full science centre to win their gratitude when something permanent—anything permanent—eventually opens.

Let’s now look at the “Cons” and the two risk flags together. To start us off, there’s the fact that “a reduction in programming or closure would likely result in negative stakeholder and public reaction.” This couldn’t be more true—in the past six weeks since the Science Centre closed, 83,000 people from across the Province have signed a petition to reopen it, millions of dollars have been pledged by philanthropists to repair it, and hours of discussion in Toronto’s City Hall have taken place concerning how the City can work with the Province to restore it.

Then, there’s the idea that the “strategy accepts operational, health & safety risks by the program.” If you refuse to invest in maintenance projects flagged as ‘critical’ for a building, over time, there is a greater chance that it may start to pose real risks. As it turns out, it’s been clear that the roof repairs and other critical issues that the government has recently pointed to can be addressed with staged repairs that will have little impact to the visitor experience. The overall safety of the building, at least for the present, is being tacitly acknowledged by the fact that it housed a wedding the day after it closed, and hundreds of staff are still reporting to work—let alone the fact that the roof handily withstood a historic rainfall event in mid-July.

The other item listed in “Con” is that the “occupancy of existing site must terminate by March 31, 2025.” It’s not clear why this date is so specific, but I would welcome insight on this. It may be about simply making the numbers in the chart add up, or avoiding triggering the need for greater maintenance expenses that may be expected in that year—or it may be in some way linked to a construction funding deadline for the existing OSC site or new Science Centre at Ontario Place.

Turning to the two flags at the top right of the page, the strategy of a temporary space entails “High Building Risk.” This refers to the physical buildings at Don Mills Road, which, in this scenario, are “decommissioned” in 2026-27 at a cost of $20-24 million—a price tag that aligns with the Province’s estimates for demolishing the buildings entirely.

The temporary location also carries a “Medium Program Risk.” Severe reductions in staff, operations, and programming will fundamentally undermine the core functions of the OSC, resulting in losses to science education for the OSC’s million annual visitors, as well as long-term losses in institutional knowledge and know-how. I’m not sure what a “High Program Risk” would look like, and how it could be worse than this: maybe the “High Risk” flag was reserved for an option where the interim Science Centre consisted only of virtual offerings and pop-ups.

How does this pan out in terms of the financials? In this chart, it’s estimated that the cost of fitting out and operating a temporary OSC on a different site until 2028 would be $34.3 to $58.3 million.

This range is close to my estimate for a temporary OSC, which I figured pencils out at between $32 to $90 million. My higher estimate is premised on a slightly higher range of costs for fit-out, and the fact that the government is seeking a temporary space for a longer period of time—with a lease going until 2030, with the possibility of yearly extensions until 2034. (As I have written, the only plausible explanation for this long lease is that the Province does not expect the OSC at Ontario Place to be open until 2030-2034—not 2028, as they have been telling the public. This also correlates with industry experience that, given where the project is currently at in the P3 public-private-partnership process, the building will take approximately 6 to 10 years to be completed.)

Disturbingly, the government’s estimates on this chart suggest that the costs of operating a temporary Science Centre for a longer period of time would remain stable, since the savings from reduced operations/programming (having much less science education and a much reduced staff) would offset the leasing costs and revenue loss (presumably from reduced ticket and membership sales, the removal of event rental income, and the suspension of exhibit construction and sales).

If one extends the timeline to 2030-2034, and insists on maintaining operational funding and staffing at current levels, the cost of a temporary Science Centre skyrockets. Using these revised assumptions and the government’s numbers, the added costs of operating a temporary Science Centre until a new Science Centre opens at Ontario Place tallies up to $91.3 million – $178.3 million.

This amount would go a long way towards addressing comprehensive repairs to the Science Centre, which will not be the half-billion the government has stated, but much less. Infrastructure Ontario’s consultants estimated the cost of comprehensive repairs and upgrades to be $228 million over a 20 year period. This figure includes $32 million towards a full roof replacement, $11 million towards the pedestrian bridge, $33 million towards HVAC, and $25 million towards interior finishes. This also includes a generous 185% markup factor for consultants and to account for unexpected costs and complexity.

Fortunately, a closure can be reversed. The Science Centre was closed just weeks ago, and could be reopened just as quickly—certainly more quickly than building out a new temporary Science Centre at another yet-to-be-determined site. Reinvesting in the Science Centre means that if and when the Province decides to decamp to a new location, the building will be in good repair for its next owner, the City of Toronto, to either continue operating with science-based programming as the Province agreed to discuss with the City, or to adaptively reuse to another purpose to serve the rapidly growing population of the area and of the region.

Reversing the closure and reinvesting in the Ontario Science Centre means protecting the building, the staff, and science education. We must insist that the Province reverses its decision, and reopens the Science Centre.

Related:

As Province edges towards demolition of Science Centre, documents point to a manufactured crisis

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

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

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The post Infrastructure Ontario document lists “scaling back programming” and “staffing reductions” as money-saving “pros” of Science Centre closure appeared first on Canadian Architect.

On Thursday, July 11, Infrastructure Ontario doubled down on its unfounded claims that closing the Ontario Science Centre was necessary, and that repairs to the Science Centre will cost $478 million dollars. In documents released that day, and in the Premier’s remarks earlier in the week, the Province suggests that besides the roof, there is a series of urgent, cost-prohibitive repair issues with the building.

But once again, the actual documents it offers to support these claims tell a different story: one that, like the falsely urgent roof repairs, constitutes a manufactured crisis.

The specific problems the government pointed to in its presentation on Thursday are, for the most part, either known issues or relatively minor issues that can be easily and cost-effectively resolved.

The documents issued on Thursday continue to indicate that full closure was unnecessary, and that the cost of repairs is around $200 million over 20 years—less than half what the government claims.

The government provided three key documents on July 11, only one of which provided truly new information.

The first document, a peer review of the Rimkus engineering report, was conducted by VanBoxmeer & Stranges. It agreed with Rimkus’ assessment of the roof, including its suggested approach to immediately addressing the handful of RAAC roof panels designated as being in Critical and High risk categories, and incrementally replacing the other roof areas containing this panel types. As I’ve noted before, the six Critical risk panels were identified and repaired during the inspections earlier this year;  and the vast majority of permanent exhibition areas are not under this roof type at all.

The second document is a re-issue of the Province’s business case for relocating the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place, a document that I have analyzed in two previous articles: one which focuses on how the actual costs of repairs to the Science Centre were more than doubled in the document; and another article that also examines how the costs to build a new Science Centre at Ontario Place were minimized in the document. The actual cost of repairs, using industry-standard markup figures rather than the Province’s inflated numbers, is around $211 million over 20 years.

The final document, shown during the media briefing, is a Powerpoint presentation that summarizes the government’s argument that closing the building was urgent and necessary. It is these slides that I will focus on analyzing in detail in the current article.

The first slide, a summary of the peer review of the Rimkus report by VanBoxmeer & Stranges, merely affirms what the Rimkus report found: that some repairs are needed to a handful of roof panels before November, and that the replacement of the remaining RAAC roof panels should happen with scheduled re-roofing over the next 10 years.

The following slide expands on some technical details related to the RAAC roof panels. The statement that “the risk [of individual panels failing] is further compounded by the distribution of the panels and the condition of the entire roof assembly” was taken into account in the Rimkus report, and its recommendations for prioritizing roof replacements in certain areas over others.

VanBoxmeer & Stranges does not dispute the Rimkus recommendation that, in the event that repair of the high-risk panels is not possible by October 31, the health and safety of visitors and staff can also be completely assured by restricting access to the areas directly beneath the panels.

Perhaps in an attempt to create a false sense of the severity of the roof problem, the presentation  includes a photo of the type of structural overhead hoarding that it states “would be required throughout the buildings to mitigate high-risk panels prior to October 31, 2024.”

In fact, the image shows a hoarding type that is particular to maintaining circulation under a portion of critical-risk RAAC roof that could not be reinforced, due to mechanical systems running under the panels. Many of the high-risk RAAC panels (which, again, account for just 2.3% of the Science Centre’s overall roofs, and are not over key exhibition areas) presumably do not have mechanical services running directly underneath. According to both the Rimkus and Van Boxmeer & Stranges reports, these panels can be more cleanly replaced with steel deck—exactly what has been already done in several areas of the building over the years—or shored-up above the ceilings to allow for safe, unencumbered circulation below. Alternatively, if they are not over essential circulation corridors, the areas directly beneath the panels can be even more simply cordoned off to prevent people from walking directly below the at-risk panels.

Another slide in the deck seems meant to show something that looks scary. (It’s easy to take unflattering flash photos of roof structural conditions.) But looking more closely, it demonstrates how straightforward the temporary repairs of the high- and critical-condition RAAC panels can be. A simple bracing system, made of wood and metal piping, is all that is required to ensure that the damaged roof panel is secured, ensuring complete safety until such time as a full panel replacement (or replacement of the entire roof) is done. The shadow of the photographer indicates that the space is tall enough to work easily within it. Depending on the location and size of the individual panels, the Rimkus report estimates the cost of this reinforcement work at about $2,500 – $5,000 per panel, with work required at 50 locations, none of which are over key exhibition areas.

The presentation goes into some detail about what a continued investigation would entail for the un-inspected areas in Buildings A and B. It falsely states that investigation would “require closure to complete” when in reality, small areas below the ceilings could be cordoned off and made safe.

As a whole, the information on this slide contradicts the recommendations in the actual reports. In the case of Building A, the Rimkus report suggests that the panels could be inspected not through intrusive cuts into reinforced concrete, but by accessing “the interstitial space between the ceiling/soffit panels”—similar to the space visible in the previous slide above. It noted this area “was not accessible at the time of our site visits.” It went on to suggest that “It is recommended that these areas undergo investigations when timing and site conditions permit.”

In the case of Building B, the engineering reports did not specify that follow-up investigation was required. But, in the accompanying white paper, it suggested that if such investigations were needed, they could be done by making a small hole in the finished ceiling, and using a robotic camera (such as a drone) to complete the inspection.

The VanBoxmeer & Stranges report affirms the validity of Rimkus’s alternative approach to assessing the uninvestigated areas in both Building A and B: which was to make an educated assumption about their condition, based on existing records, visible information, and observed conditions on adjacent roof areas.

As it turns out, all of the key areas identified in this slide—the Great Hall, Auditorium, and front Concourse—are identified as priority items for roof replacement in the coming year. Practically, assessment would occur concurrently with planned repairs, rather than as a project requiring separate preparation and closure—ie. the same scaffolding could be used for inspection and then repairs. The feasibility of completing repairs from the exterior of the structure, so as to minimize disruption to the interior, might also be evaluated.

The next slide is at the crux of the argument that the Province is making that the repairs will be unfeasibly expensive and onerous. There are several falsehoods to unpack here.

First, I’d like to debunk the statement that there is a “minimum investment of $478 million” plus significant issues “not include in the estimated cost above.” The actual estimate for repairs from the 2022 Pinchin report was $228 million. This includes $32 million towards a full roof replacement covering both RAAC and non-RAAC roof areas, $11 million towards the pedestrian bridge, $33 million towards HVAC, and $25 million towards interior finishes. This also includes a generous 185% markup factor for consultants and to account for added complexity. (Pinchin’s base construction cost for an extensive suite of repairs that will keep the building in good repair for decades to come is $142 million.)

Next, there is the bolded statement that “all three buildings would need to be vacant to undertake critical repairs.” There is nothing in either the Pinchin, Rimkus, or VanBoxmeer & Stranges consultant reports that suggests that full closure—let alone vacancy (which implies removal of everything inside the building)—is necessary or recommended.

The closest the reports come to this is Rimkus’s note that particular areas of the Science Centre may need to be closed for three-month-plus stretches for roof repairs. It singles out the workshop area in particular, saying that its functions would need to be paused, since the roof repairs would take place over bulky equipment that is not easily moved. The implication is that in all other areas of the Science Centre, repairs could be staged and managed so as to minimize disruptions to staff and visitors.

In the case of HVAC repairs, I spoke to a mechanical engineer who said that such repairs could be staged, and that it is not uncommon to rent temporary equipment to keep a building fully functional while repairs are being performed on a portion of it.

We need only look to a plethora of other recent projects in the city to see how Ontario’s world-class architects and engineers have managed major work on complex buildings, while keeping them open and operational. The 900-foot-long galleria skylight of Toronto’s Eaton’s Centre was fully replaced, without closing the mall, in a project led by Zeidler Architecture. Every inch of the Toronto Reference Library was renovated by Moriyama Teshima Architects without closing the facility. Union Station’s extensive revamp, led by NORR, included excavating and constructing a full new underground level of station space—while maintaining a 24-7 schedule of active rail traffic on the train tracks running directly above the construction.

This slide focuses on a known issue—the closed pedestrian bridge connecting the main entrance to the exhibition halls—and a new issue—the absence of heat in Building B, which the text links to a “malfunction” of heating pipes built into this currently-not-accessible bridge. There seems to have been no issue with heating or cooling when the Science Centre was still open, just under a month ago.

A structural issue was first identified with the pedestrian bridge in 2021, and the cost of repairs at that time was estimated at $11 million in the Pinchin report (a number that includes, as mentioned before, a generous 185% markup for consultants). Instead of undertaking the repairs, a choice was made to close the bridge and implement a shuttle bus that takes visitors to a temporary entrance at the back of the building, at a cost of $2.5 million yearly, plus lost ticketing and membership revenue—a steep price that would have paid for the bridge repair in a few years. Ontario’s auditor general criticized this decision in its value-for-money audit, since it is expensive and yields a poor visitor experience. Infrastructure Ontario has seemingly done little towards actually repairing the bridge in the intervening three years, hiring a series of consultants but only installing scaffolding—a first step to  investigating the problem—earlier this summer.

Further, according to the Auditor General, Infrastructure Ontario says that the cost “to provide a temporary solution to stabilize the bridge” is now $16 million—with permanent repair costs following that stabilization unknown. A structural engineer I spoke with noted that $16 million indicates a cost-per-square-foot that seems very high, and that would be more consistent with the complete repair of a large vehicular bridge, rather than the structural stabilization alone of an enclosed pedestrian bridge.

As for the heating issue? I spoke with a mechanical engineer who said that “malfunction” is a bizarre term, but seems to point to either a leak or a clog in the heating pipes, both of which are easily fixable. If it’s a leak, it could be fixed from the inside of the pipes using an inflating instrument or patch, and if it’s a clog, it could be cleared from the ends, with a tool akin to a long plumbing snake. There would be no need for workers to be in the pedestrian bridge to fix a mechanical issue, unless there was mechanical equipment that required servicing within the bridge portion—and the standard design would be to place such equipment at the ends of the bridge, not inside the bridge itself.

In this slide, Infrastructure Ontario claims that the boilers, chiller and electrical systems are out of date, and that new wiring would be destructive to the building.

The detailed analysis in the Pinchin report says that, on the contrary, the chiller had 9 years left in its expected service life, and the two boilers in Building A had 7 and 22 years left, respectively. The mechanical engineer I spoke with noted that no professional engineer ever “guarantees” that equipment will remain operational, because there are always circumstances beyond their control. In the same way, there may be no “guarantee” that your home’s new heat pump functions beyond its 1-year warranty period. The Infrastructure Ontario report is using wordplay to make a claim that is not supported by its consultants’ reports.

Replacing the electrical systems is a cost covered by the Pinchin estimates, and the wiring does not have to go inside the concrete walls—it could be otherwise coordinated in the building.

The slides then discuss the concrete overhangs in two of the three buildings. It implies that the removal of these overhangs, in order to repair the roof, will be cost prohibitive.

The Rimkus report does not include a recommendation to remove the decorative concrete overhangs in order to replace the RAAC panels in this area. I spoke with two architects who both confirmed that it was unlikely that the panels would need to be removed to perform roof repairs. Looking at the Rimkus roof drawings, it is clear that RAAC panels in the overhang areas have, indeed, already been replaced with steel deck in the past, without removing the decorative concrete. RAAC was a preferred construction type in its time precisely because the panels were easy to remove and replace, and there is no connection between the roof panels and hanging concrete overhangs below. Roof repairs would be performed from above the roof.

Even if there was  need to remove the panels, the task would likely not be as complicated as this slide implies. The usual way to construct such overhangs would be to create a steel superstructure, and to attach the concrete elements as panels to it. This is affirmed by an earlier photo in the government’s slide deck, showing the underside of a reinforced RAAC panel in the roof assembly in building A. To the left and right sides of this photo, bolted connections are visible that appear to be the connections for the pre-cast decorative panels in Building A. If so, the panels would be relatively straightforward to detach, remove, and then re-attach later.

Two slides remain in the deck presented by Infrastructure Ontario on July 11.

While Infrastructure Ontario has repeatedly claimed that the building is at the end of its useful life, this is simply not the case.  Major public buildings are built to a lifespan measured in centuries, not decades—but of course, this means they have to be periodically maintained, including replacing certain systems that do have a limited lifespan (such as, for instance, mechanical items) on a regular schedule. If it is true that the Ontario Science Centre is at the end of its useful life, then many buildings older than it—the ROM, the AGO, and even Queen’s Park—are much further beyond their useful life, and by the same logic, should have been torn down decades ago. It is known that Queen’s Park is due for a major upgrade that is expected to cost at least a billion dollars: should we tear it down, or vacate its occupants?

There are some indications that the Science Centre may be in much better condition, in fact, than some buildings of the same era. No major damage was reported during a historic rainstorm on Tuesday, July 16, with almost 100 mm of rainfall that caused significant flood damage to both private and public buildings throughout Toronto. The Pinchin report concludes, in one section, that “the facility and its components are performing as intended; for most infrastructure assets, this would infer that no repairs anticipated within the next five years,” an evaluation consistent with a Facility Condition Index of “B”.

In the back-and-forth that is normal between consultants and clients, Pinchin may have been asked to shift more of the needed repairs into a shorter timeframe to create a false sense of urgency, and to effect a change in the Facility Condition Index to a “C”—a FCI evaluation that also, confusingly, appears in its report. Even this is not dire—the accompanying evaluation is that “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.” Architect Raymond Moriyama said the Science Centre was designed to last 250 years with regular maintenance; Pinchin’s report affirms that with its recommended repairs, the building will be in good repair for decades to come.

This slide also mentions the need for temporary access roads. These are a normal part of most construction sites. While some trees may need to be removed for this to occur, they can be replanted. The demolition of the Science Centre would carry an immensely larger environmental impact: not only involving the destruction of much more of the natural landscape, but also entailing the landfilling of an extremely large building that could have endured for decades longer.

A final slide in the set focuses on the trillium-shaped Building B, and mostly reiterates claims from before. To again answer these concerns: The lack of heat is a problem that is likely easily fixable from the ends of the affected pipe(s), without requiring access to the pedestrian bridge or exterior access. For eventual larger repairs, creating a temporary access road is a normal part of construction. The Rimkus report has recommended replacing Building B’s roof in its entirety as a priority repair, and has made an educated evaluation of the areas unavailable for inspection using methodology accepted in a peer review.

Asbestos is a serious issue, but it is a material that our construction industry has extensive experience with handling and abating safely. Curiously, asbestos is mentioned four times in Infrastructure Ontario’s business case for relocating the Science Centre, but not once in the 333-page appendix accompanying this business case, the Pinchin report, the Rimkus report, or the Van Boxmeer & Stranges peer review. This makes it unclear whether asbestos is widespread in the facility, or is perhaps confined to a small area. Its lack of mention in all of the consultant reports made available by Infrastructure Ontario suggests that the latter may be true.

An architect I spoke with indicated that given the age of the building, the likely location of any asbestos in the Great Hall is as a coating to the HVAC heating and cooling ducts as a fireproofing measure. The manufacturing process for these components would have involved spraying on the asbestos with a glue base mix, and overwrapping it with a fibreglass wrap that would hold everything in place. The removal of this type of asbestos can be performed with more ease and control than many other types of asbestos.

Disturbingly, the issue of the lack of heat to Building B may be a veiled threat. It indicates that the Province may be unwilling to perform even minor repairs to restore heat, willfully allowing a major part of the complex to degrade over the winter. Its business case to relocate the Science Centre to Ontario Place budgets for the legacy building’s demolition (at $25 million) rather than its repair; and one of the appendices to this business case plays out a scenario of demolishing the complex in 2026.

Such a demolition would be willfully destructive and wholly unjustified. It cannot be allowed.

Related:

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

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

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

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The post As Province edges towards demolition of Science Centre, documents point to a manufactured crisis 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.

This article is a follow-up on my previous articles debunking the business case for the Ontario Science Centre’s relocation and analyzing how the engineers’ roof report doesn’t call for a complete closure.

Hot on the heels of the abrupt closure of the Ontario Science, the government’s search for a temporary location for the Science Centre began.

The Monday after the closure, on June 24, 2024, Infrastructure Ontario put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a 50,000 to 100,000 square foot commercial/retail space to house a temporary Science Centre until its planned new facility at Ontario Place is complete.

The temporary location, which would not be open until 2026, will put the Science Centre in a location that is significantly smaller—and likely much more remote—than its current site. It will be there for up to eight years until the new facility at Ontario Place is open—which the RFP anticipates will be in 2030-3034, not 2028 as Minister Kinga Surma asserts.

Ironically, relocating to a temporary location will also be at least as expensive—and up to three times more costly—as making the $22-$40M in roof repairs which Infrastructure Ontario cited as the reason for the Centre’s abrupt closure.

The option that best serves Ontarians (and the one that may also prove the most economical) appears to be making repairs to the Science Centre, and reopening it.

The RFP for the relocation initiates a search for a space that the document says will take up to 12 months to fit-out, with a subsequent move-in date as late as January 1, 2026. In theory, the document implies, the renovation of a space could happen more quickly and the move-in date could be sooner, but the reverse is more likely the case. Real estate and design experts I have spoken to say that for a project of this size and scope, 18 to 24 months would be a more realistic schedule for completion.

Even if the project moves exceptionally quickly, it means that Toronto would have no Science Centre for at least a year and a half, and more likely over two full years.

The RFP’s terms also suggest that a new, smaller Science Centre would not be completed until 2030, or perhaps as late as 2034—not the 2028 date that has been publicized.  This is apparent from the RFP’s ask for a five-year lease starting as late as January 1, 2026, with the option to terminate the lease anytime after the fourth year, and to renew the lease for up to three years.

What would a temporary Science Centre look like? Overall, the new space will be a fraction of the current Science Centre’s 568,000 square feet—possibly less than a tenth of its overall size.

The current Science Centre has been critiqued for having a small ratio of exhibition space to overall space, at around 25%. An environmental scan commissioned by the Province from Lord Cultural Resources says that the median ratio of exhibition-space-to-building-space for science centres in North America is somewhere between 39 to 45%. At the most efficient end, the exhibitions in the temporary location may occupy 22,400 to 44,800 square feet of space. That’s a 61 to 85% reduction from the 153,360 square feet of exhibition space in the current location of the Science Centre.

While the RFP states a preference for a downtown, central location, the reality is that its requirements—a very large, high ceilinged building, with up to 500 parking spots, a bus drop-off, a freight elevator and loading dock, and the ability to accommodate up to 5,000+ visitors in peak periods—make a remote location more likely. It’s probable that the location will be at the edge of TTC boundaries. An empty big box store might fit the bill, out near Kipling or Vaughan stations, or up by the zoo in Scarborough.

According to The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, the average commercial/retail lease rate in Toronto is $29.08/square foot, meaning that annual rent on such a space, depending on its size, would be around $1.5 million to $3 million per year—$6 to $24 million over the four to eight year term of the lease.

Preparing such a space will be expensive. I spoke with an architect familiar with this project type, who estimated that bringing an empty commercial space up to public museum standards would cost from $200 to $300 per square foot, depending on the base building conditions, for a total of $10 to $30 million. If the government settled on a large industrial space, it would be especially costly to bring this up to public assembly standard, with modifications needed to meet requirements including fire code, exiting, floor loading, and HVAC. According to the industry expert, the cost could be as much as $400 per square foot—$40 million in all—if the location was a large, empty industrial shell building.

Standard practice would be to budget 12% on top of this, to cover the consultant fees of architects, engineers, project managers, and others involved in delivering the project, and to include a 10% cost contingency. This adds $2.2 to $8.8 million more.

The move itself is expensive, too—Infrastructure Ontario estimates that a single move to the smaller facility at Ontario Place would cost $4.9 million; a temporary space will mean paying for that move twice over. Since not all of the exhibitions could be shown in the temporary space, storage would also need to be arranged for a substantial amount of material. TRREB reports that the annual industrial lease rate in Toronto is $16.90 per square foot. Assuming that the contents of the remaining 500,000 square feet or so of building could be packed into a 20,000 square foot space, this would still add up to half a million dollars in annual storage costs.

This back-of-napkin math brings us to a one-time cost of $17-55 million dollars, plus $8 to $28 million in rent, depending on the size of the temporary space and the length of the lease—$25-$83 million in all. All for a temporary location that may be difficult to access, will not be open until 2026, may only offer 15% of the current Science Centre’s exhibition space, and will be a poor shadow of the Ontario Science Centre’s original grand digs for a long period of time—possibly the next decade.

Ironically, the space that best meets all the needs of a temporary location, including the RFP’s stated preference for a space that enables the Science Centre to “open more quickly,” is almost certainly the Ontario Science Centre’s current location on Don Mills Road.

It’s centrally located, and on the doorstep of the Eglinton LRT.

The complex’s lower building, Building C, alone contains 273,465 square feet of space, including almost all of the Science Centre’s permanent exhibitions. As I have written in my analysis of Rimkus’s engineering report on the roof, these permanent exhibitions are under a section of the building with a standard concrete roof.

RAAC roof does exist over the current temporary entrance to the Science Centre, and a temporary exhibitions hall. This area includes 11 RAAC panels classified as being high-risk, and a 2,500 square foot section of roof that is recommended for replacement in the coming year, as its EPDM membrane is in poor condition.

The cost to fix these areas? About $450,000, according to the Rimkus report.

For an additional $17,200, the report details, you could also replace the three high-risk panels over an area that connects to the remaining permanent exhibition areas and school spaces on the balcony level of Building C, and to the permanent exhibition areas in Building B —the popular Space Hall and KidSpark. The latter, the engineering report suggests, can safely remain open as they are not directly under the roof, but one level down.

Likewise, the Ontario Science Centre’s full IMAX theatre, along with its entrance atrium, are additions to the original complex and are topped by a non-RAAC roof.

The RFP says that “IO is evaluating several alternatives and cost is a critical issue.  Please specify any concession package to be provided by the Landlord (e.g. free rent, Tenant Improvement Allowance, etc).” The existing Science Centre is already fit-out and owned by the province, and rent on the land will continue to be a bargain at $1 a year.

As for timing?

A new location for a smaller, temporary Ontario Science Centre in a different location will likely take two years to materialize.

 The existing location was closed just under two weeks ago. It could be reopened just as quickly.

This article was edited on Thursday, July 4 to include a photo that represents the type of space that is currently available for a temporary Science Centre.

Related:

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

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

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

Never miss an update: Sign-up to receive Canadian Architect’s free weekly e-Newsletter    

The post Cost of Ontario Science Centre temporary location exceeds cost of roof repairs appeared first on Canadian Architect.

This article is part of a series including a previous article debunking the business case for the Ontario Science Centre’s relocation and a later article demonstrating how an expensive temporary location of the Science Centre would not be open for two years.

On Friday, June 21 at 4 pm, the Ontario government announced that the Ontario Science Centre’s landmark 1969 building, by Japanese-Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama, would be closed immediately, for an indefinite period of time. It cited an engineering report by Rimkus to justify the closure, saying that the report found “serious structural issues with the Ontario Science Centre building.” While these issues would not be expected to materialize until the winter, according to Infrastructure Ontario, the intervening months were needed “for staff to safely vacate the building.”

But a deep dive into the report reveals a different story. It suggests that the building’s key exhibition areas could continue to operate safely for years to come—even if the Ontario government chooses not to invest in any structural roof repairs this year.

The issue at stake is the presence of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) roof panels, sold under the brand name Siporex, which make up 57% of the Science Centre’s roofs. A popular material in Ontario from the mid-1950s to mid-1970s, the lightweight panels were made from an aerated blend of sand, Portland cement, and aluminum.

However, concerns have been raised that the panels have an overall reduced robustness compared to steel decks or traditional concrete, especially if there are leaks in the area. It’s a known issue—over the past decades, the roofs of the Ontario Science Centre have been monitored and sections of the RAAC roof panels have been replaced with steel decking.

Rimkus’s report is a comprehensive, panel-by-panel visual assessment of all accessible RAAC roof panels in the facility. It recommends a staged approach to addressing the RAAC issue once and for all: by removing and replacing all remaining RAAC panels with steel deck roofs, mostly when they come up for regular scheduled renewal over the next 10 years.

In assessing the panels, Rimkus found that a total of six of the 18-inch-wide, 5- or 10-foot-long RAAC panels in the facility were in what it deemed “critical” condition. These were reported as soon as they were identified, and all of these panels have been shored or are in the process of being reinforced.

Rimkus assessed a number of additional RAAC panels as being in “high risk” condition, and recommended that these be reinforced or replaced before the next snow season begins at the end of October, when an exceptionally large snow load could compromise the panels. In total, the “high risk” and “critical” condition RAAC panels constitute less than 2.5% of the Science Centre’s overall roofs.

The remediation of these “high risk” panels is estimated to take at least three months per building—and floor areas directly beneath the high risk panels would “need to be treated as construction zones within the building,” according to the report.

However, this doesn’t mean closing the building entirely: it means erecting barrier walls to eliminate pedestrian traffic in the areas directly below the 2.5% of the roof panels being repaired or replaced. The hoarding would be similar to what’s currently present inside the ROM, where parts of the museum are undergoing renovation.

At the Ontario Science Centre, the construction would arguably affect visitors even less than at the ROM, because the RAAC panels do not exist above most key exhibition areas.

In the lowest and largest building, facing the Don Valley, the main exhibition spaces are in a part of the building with regular concrete panels on the roof—not the RAAC panels. Areas under the regular roof, which is not in need of repair, including the Weston Family Innovation Centre, AstraZeneca Human Edge, Living Earth, Science Arcade, Hot Zone, A Question of Truth, School Area Learning Centres, and the Valley Cafeteria

The highly popular KidSpark and the Space Hall—as well as the Rube Goldberg-esque machine outside of these areas—could also remain open, since they are not immediately beneath a roof, but one level down.

The IMAX theatre and entrance, as well, have a different roof type and could remain open with no danger.

There are some areas that would be more affected, but these are largely outside of the permanent exhibition areas. The report notes that the Science Centre’s in-house workshop would need to pause operations for the repairs to be completed, since that area includes large machinery that couldn’t be easily moved out of the way for repairs.

The most notable temporary closure would be of the Great Hall, where special exhibitions are hosted; the special exhibition space at the lowest level may also need to be temporarily closed. From what is shown on the drawings, the Rock Paper Science hall—a space that is currently only sparsely populated with a handful of exhibits—is the only permanent exhibition area that may require temporary closure to accommodate repairs.

The Rimkus report acknowledges that getting the first wave of needed repairs done by October 31 may be challenging. So, it offers some alternate options for maintaining public safety. You could install temporary reinforcement for the panels, it says, or horizontal hoarding below the panels. The absolute safest option, it notes, would be to close the areas immediately below the less than 2.5% of roofs with high-risk panels, to stop people from walking in these areas.

Since the areas with high-risk panels are largely above non-exhibition areas, this means that even if there was a need to delay roof repairs past October 31, the Ontario Science Centre’s permanent exhibitions could remain safely open to the public.

In short, whether the roofs will be repaired or not, there is no material in the engineering report that calls for the complete closure of the Science Centre, either now or even by the October 31 deadline. Those repairs should be made, of course, presuming there is the intent to keep the building functional in some way in the future—but the idea that a life safety issue requires complete closure of the centre is false. The safety of staff and visitors can be ensured by simply sealing off the floor areas below less than 2.5% of the roof with construction hoarding, and completing the three-month-long repairs. If the repairs take longer than the fall, the construction hoarding can stay up, and this solution is judged by the engineers to “completely eliminate the risk to public or staff.”

There are no roofs needing repair directly above the key exhibition spaces—including the Weston Family Innovation Centre, AstraZeneca Human Edge, Living Earth, Science Arcade, Hot Zone, A Question of Truth, School Area Learning Centres, and the Valley Restaurant. Therefore, the report suggests, these areas can remain safely open, regardless of whether or not roof repairs are undertaken immediately.

The Ontario government has stated that the summer camps scheduled at the Ontario Science Centre will take place at a nearby school. It has also said that it is issuing an RFP for a temporary location for science programming, while it continues work on a new location for the Ontario Science Centre at Ontario Place. This new location for the science centre will be 45% of the size of the current Science Centre, and there is currently a call out for companies to build the project through a public-public partnership (P3), a process that is known for prioritizing cost savings over design quality.

As I have written before, the relocation of the Science Centre is based on a faulty business case. As the business case states, it was prepared “in response to the December 2021 direction to identify order of magnitude costing and capital requirements associated with relocating the OSC to the Ontario Place site and subsequent April 2022 direction to seek Stage Two (construction) approval for the project.” In other words, the provincial government had already determined, more than two years before any public announcement, that it was determined to relocate the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place. The business case was specifically constructed to justify this decision.

Meanwhile, the timing of the sudden closure of the Ontario Science Centre on June 21 also seems to have been calculated, rather than resulting from a newly received report. Officials with Infrastructure Ontario said they had received the report detailing the building’s structural roof issues in the week of the announcement, and made the decision to close the building “as quickly as we could move.” However, the drawings included with the engineers’ report indicate that Infrastructure Ontario had received progress updates about Rimkus’s roof assessment as early as January 12, 2024, and that it had a draft assessment report in hand on March 1, 2024—almost four months before the June 21, 2024 announcement of the immediate closure.

The Ontario Science Centre’s Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC) will be contacting the Ministry of Labour that the report was not conducted legally: staff were not notified that the report was being prepared, that inspections were being made, or that there would be people on site.

Even though the province has stated that camps would be relocated, staff also say that there is no plan in place at the moment, and that they are scrambling to find accommodation for summer camps.

Related:

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

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

TSA issues open letter on Ontario Science Centre closure

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

Never miss an update: Sign-up to receive Canadian Architect’s free weekly e-Newsletter    

The post Ontario Science Centre doesn’t require full closure: A close reading of the engineers’ report appeared first on Canadian Architect.

The Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO) has announced the return of its in-person gathering at their annual Symposium this September.

The focal point for 2023 centers around the themes of Heritage and Housing. This year’s event is set to take place on September 23, 2023, and will be hosted at the esteemed Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Ont.

The symposium has been designed to delve into three distinct sessions: Addressing Affordability, Responding To The Climate Crisis, and The Future Of Our Growing City. These sessions will feature an array of speakers, encompassing both emerging and established professionals, and including architects, developers, planners, artists, and academics.

Each of these sessions will span a duration of 1.5 hours, during which three or four speakers representing diverse viewpoints will take the stage. Each speaker will present their ideas or case studies, which will be followed by a moderated Q&A panel discussion involving all the speakers.

The third session, called The Future of Our Growing City, will take place from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. and be moderated by Elsa Lam, editor of Canadian Architect.

The session moderated by Lam aims to envision the forthcoming landscape of housing and heritage within Toronto. It will also explore the emergence of innovative projects, concepts, and methodologies that harness and incorporate the existing built environment and cultural legacy, while addressing the crucial need for housing. Its speakers include Joey Giaimo (Giaimo), Robert Sims (KPMB), and Chiyi Tam (Kensington Market & Chinatown Land Trust).

For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.

The post ACO announces return of annual Symposium in Toronto on September 23 appeared first on Canadian Architect.