Ontario Place: what should be on it?

Ontario Place has been closed to the public for longer than most of the people arguing about it have lived here.

Where it stands: Therme’s 95-year lease on the West Island lets it build a seven-storey, 65,000-square-metre indoor spa and waterpark, with construction able to start this spring, and it has promised $200 million of public works around it. The province’s five-storey parking garage sits on the provincial books. In February the province awarded a $1.04-billion contract for the new Ontario Science Centre on the site; it broke ground in May and is due to open in 2029: a mainland building, a pod complex, and a rebuilt Cinesphere. The old Science Centre in Don Mills has been shut since June 2024, and a small interim version was set to open at Harbourfront Centre this summer.

The case for is that the site sat derelict for a decade because nobody could make the numbers work on a purely public scheme, and that an anchor tenant paying rent is what unlocks the park beside it.

The case against is about what the public is getting for what it is putting in: a lease measured in generations, a parking garage on the public books, and a waterfront where the best of the site is behind a ticket price.

There is also a quieter argument, which is simply that this is the last large piece of undeveloped public waterfront in the region, and once it is leased it is leased for a very long time.

Sources: Daily Commercial News, the Science Centre breaks ground · UrbanToronto, the $1.04-billion contract · The Trillium, the five-storey garage · insauga, the spa moves forward