Making your voice heard about Ontario Place
6 things to do in October
- Vote, if you can, in the Toronto Municipal Election on October 24th
- Register for the Provincial consultation event on October 27th **Alert: keep trying to register – today the website says registration is closed.**
- Complete the Provincial online consultation opening on October 25th
- Send the new Ontario Place for All letter to Premier Ford, Ministers Lumsden and Surma and Mayor Tory
- Amplify critical voices from the community and media through Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok
- Donate to Ontario Place for All and help fund the fight
Election Day is Monday
Don’t forget to vote on Monday October 24th. Consider supporting candidates that have pledged to keep Ontario Place a place for everyone.
October 27th - Ontario Place Virtual Consultation Event
One year later – Another frustrating round of public realm consultation? Still important to participate and let the Province know you are watching.
On October 27th 5:pm-7:00 pm, Ontario will be hosting a virtual consultation event on:
- the proposed public realm design options for Ontario Place, and
- the Public Work Class Environment Assessment (Class EA) for Ontario Place is currently underway
Register here! **Alert: keep trying to register – today the website says registration is closed.**
We are very concerned about how much open access the public will have to Ontario Place and who will be responsible for designing, maintaining and controlling it.
The Province has hired an excellent team (including the designer of Trillium Park) to develop a Public Realm Master Plan for Ontario Place. Unfortunately, it seems that the Therme’s occupation puts the whole of the West Island off-limits for that team. This is unacceptable.
The Public Realm Master Plan was expected to unify the publicly accessible open space – that is what is normally meant by the public realm. Instead, a preliminary presentation to the Waterfront Design Review Panel in July 2022, raised concerns that a) public space on the West Island is not included in the Master Plan (because it falls within the Therme lease?) and 2) the lion’s share of what is left to the Master Planning team is taken up by the massive parking lots and paved event space.
Not much left to the talented landscape designers and not much left of Ontario Place for the Public to enjoy. See the image at the end of this bulletin for an illustration of the problem.
Online Consultation
An online consultation on the public realm design and Class EA will be open on the Province’s https://engageontarioplace.ca website as of October 25th.
Ontario Place for All reviewed and provided some suggestions for working around closed-ended questions for the online consultation one year ago. We will be doing the same with this new survey so stay tuned.
OP4A has a new letter for you to send from our website
Click here to send a letter from our website to Premier Ford, Neil Lumsden – the new Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport, Kinga Surma – Minister of Infrastructure, and Mayor Tory.
This letter urges the Province to rethink its plans for Ontario Place in light of the devastating impact of Therme on the Cultural Heritage of Ontario, including its natural environment and its legacy of democratizing access to the waterfront.
Amplify, Amplify, Amplify
Keep up the great work of amplifying your voice and the voices of journalists, urbanists, heritage experts and all those who care about the future of Ontario Place – share on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and your personal networks.
The rumble of discontent is getting louder. We need to make it roar!!!
Donate to Ontario Place For All
No matter how small, your donations help our work. We are all volunteers, but we still need financial resources to fight on your behalf. Donations are handled by Park People, one of our partner organizations.
Recent media pieces of interest
- Elizabeth Renzetti, What we lose when we lose Ontario Place, SpacingToronto, Sept 26/22
- Francesca Bouaoun, Ontario Place re-development: Paving over Paradise, SpacingToronto, Sept 7/22
- Alex Bozikovic, Ontario Place is a Park. Keep it that way, Globe and Mail, Oct 1/22 (for Globe subscribers)
More detail on the Public Realm Master Plan vs the publicly accessible space
This is an image From the joint Infrastructure Ontario, City and Public Realm Team presentation to the Waterfront Design Review Panel in July:
- The orange lines represent the areas that the tenants, Therme and Live Nation will occupy as gated areas.
- The purple lines around the West Island indicate areas that are or are proposed to be leased to Therme but must be “publicly accessible”. The Province has not defined public accessibility to this area. The Design Review Panel has raised concerns about the inadequate size of the publicly accessible zone.
- The green area is what has been given to the Public Realm Master Planning team. Not much to work with:
