The big number
675 days
The length of time between the deadline for Ontario Place redevelopment bids and Premier Doug Ford’s announcement of the winning bidders. During that time, all negotiations were conducted behind closed doors.
Meet the new Ontario Place. Same as the old Ontario Place.
Premier Doug Ford’s splashy announcement last week unveiling the three winning bids to redevelop the waterfront site came with a lot of platitudes about a spectacular, world-class transformation. But the plan is basically just a swap of some components.
The old theme park will be replaced by, well, two new theme parks. One will be a water park and spa built by Austrian company Therme Group. The other will be an “adventure park” from Quebec company Écorécréo Group. And, oh look, wow, concert promoter Live Nation will be replacing the Budweiser Stage with … a new Budweiser Stage.
Much of the rest will stay. The iconic Cinesphere and pod structures will remain in place, as will the recently-constructed Trillium Park and William G. Davis Trail — hallelujah.
As plans go, it could have been a lot worse. When Ford first set his sights on Ontario Place, people worried the end result would be something like Biff’s Casino from the dystopian alternate version of 1985 Marty McFly visits in the Back to the Future trilogy. Tacky and cheap, with everything sold to the highest bidder.
This isn’t that. The promise in the Therme proposal for eight acres of public gathering spaces and beaches is particularly appealing — let’s make sure they actually deliver — and keeping the Cinesphere and existing park space is a significant win.
But it’s also not a plan that really addresses the problems that plagued the old Ontario Place and caused it to sputter along as a money pit until it was abruptly closed almost a decade ago.
Like with the old theme park, access will come at a cost. Ford told reporters admission to the new theme parks would be roughly equivalent to admission to the Toronto Zoo, which is 28 bucks a person. But Therme says adult tickets to their water park and spa could run more like $40.
And Ontario Place looks like it will remain disconnected from the rest of the city. Maps showing how the land will be split between the successful bidders still show large surface parking lots, suggesting this will be a place that most users are expected to arrive at by car.
Ford’s Ontario Line, despite the name, won’t really provide door-to-door transit service to Ontario Place. The nearest stop will be north of the Gardiner Expressway, at Exhibition station, and the current pedestrian connections through the Exhibition Grounds and across Lake Shore Boulevard don’t exactly make for a charming stroll. It’s a real missed opportunity to not consider redevelopment of the Exhibition in lockstep with the Ontario Place process.
Steep admission costs and access challenges are a recipe for a place people visit infrequently. When it opens, sometime between 2027 and 2030, the new Ontario Place will probably enjoy a few glory years, just like the old Ontario Place did. But then the novelty will wear off. The facilities will start to feel dated. Crowds will thin out.
I would not be surprised if, in two or three decades, the process starts anew — with provincial politicians trying to figure out how to transform Ontario Place, again.
Ford’s government would have increased the odds of coming up with something durable and appealing to the public if they had just, you know, asked the public. It’s not like there wasn’t time. An incredible 675 days elapsed between the Sep. 24, 2019 deadline the provincial government set for Ontario Place redevelopment bids and Ford’s announcement last Friday. During that time, all negotiations were conducted in secret.
Key details, like how much the provincial government will spend preparing this public land for private use, remain undisclosed. There was never a real opportunity for the public to weigh in. Only now, after announcing the winning bidders, is Queen’s Park promising some consultation. The cart is miles ahead of the horse.
The pandemic, meanwhile, offered a kind of informal demonstration of what people really value in a place like Ontario Place. A walk or bike ride through the new park and trail — opened in 2017 — on a weekend day over the last year revealed that reports of Ontario Place’s death had been greatly exaggerated. A well-designed public space with no admission costs and a good connection to the waterfront trail brought a whole bunch of people out.
I suspect that had the Ontario government talked to people before they talked to corporate bidders they would have heard that people wanted more like that —an Ontario Place that is public, accessible and free. It’s too bad they didn’t ask.
A public process could have led to something spectacular — instead, Doug Ford’s new Ontario Place just offers more of the same - Toronto Star
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