(TORONTO) A public meeting Monday evening at the University of Toronto attracted a capacity audience of more than 125 people and imaginative new ideas on the future of Ontario Place.
“Ontario Place has been left behind but we can’t go back and re-create it,” said Rita Davies, an urban planner and former head of Culture for the City of Toronto. “The possibilities for Ontario Place are boundless but however it changes it must be thoughtfully done.”
Monday’s meeting at Innis Town Hall presented the recommendations that grew out of a Dec. 1 design charrette at which design and landscape architects, urban planners, futurists and others gathered to imagine what Ontario Place might be now that it has been shut down by the provincial government, and how it may serve the social, economic, academic and cultural needs of Toronto and Ontario.
The December design charrette was organized in response to the recommendations of a special advisory panel, chaired by former Conservative MPP John Tory, which called for the development of condominiums and a hotel on almost half the land on which Ontario Place currently sits. Participants at that meeting unanimously rejected the idea of a casino at either Ontario Place or the adjacent Exhibition Place
.