Imagine that you notice a leak in the roof of your home.
Do you: a) put a bucket under the drip; b) patch or replace the roof; or c) scramble to immediately abandon the house, fence off the entire property, and seek temporary accommodations until you can build a new place to live somewhere else in a few years.Â
In the case of the Ontario Science Centre, Doug Ford’s government has chosen option C.
The analogy was suggested to Star reporters by Elsa Lam, the editor of Canadian Architect magazine, looking into the roof assessment the provincial government said justified the immediate closure of the Ontario Science Centre last week. The opinion Lam and others, including both the architecture firm that built the place and the consultants the province is relying on, are a far cry from the Ford government’s claims of an emergency threatening life and limb.
The report did not recommend immediate closure. It said a small percentage of the roof should be replaced immediately, the rest monitored and replaced eventually.Â
The cost (between $500,000 and $7 million this year, and something like $25 million total over the next decade) is peanuts compared to the possible $1 billion this same provincial government is planning to spend in order to sell booze in corner stores a year ahead of schedule, or the tens of billions they’re spending on a subway line originally pitched as delivering riders to the Science Centre, or the maybe $500 million they may spend to build a parking lot at the Science Centre’s planned new site.Â
The roof is in disrepair, but it is not some five-alarm emergency on the verge of imminent collapse.Â
The building was not condemned — it was abandoned.
That is, the Science Centre was not suddenly forced by physical circumstances to move out. The provincial government chose to move it out because they wanted to. And only the timing is a surprise: the move to a dramatically smaller facility at Ontario Place to open by 2028 was announced long ago.Â
The frenzied shuttering of the current home only makes sense, I think, if the Ford government started with the conclusion that they wanted to get the heck out. And thus see no value in spending even a single penny to maintain the building. And in the face of a public outcry, they’ve decided to get out sooner rather than later (cementing the impression there’s no going back).
Here’s the thing: if the building is going to be put to any future use, these repairs are going to need to be done. There are no savings in moving out now, unless the building is going to be torn down.
Perhaps more so than Ford and his gang anticipated, a lot of people in Ontario love that building. It is massive (more than twice the square footage of the Royal Ontario Museum, for instance), situated in a location of natural beauty, and serves as an attraction that anchors a neighbourhood. Tastes in building styles vary, but it is a significant and globally influential example of mid-century institutional architecture built by one of Canada’s foremost architects.
Moreover, many of us have deep attachments to it. A friend I was speaking to had lived across the street after his family moved here from Poland when he was a child, and he’d go often after school during hours when admission was free. “For a time, it was my favourite place in the whole world,” he said. I have heard similar sentiments from a lot of people. Mayor Olivia Chow reported this week the city had heard from 35,000 Torontonians upset about the sudden closure.
So can the building so many people love be saved? Maybe put to a new purpose?
Toronto city council took up that question Thursday. The complication is the city doesn’t want to be on the hook for paying for repairs resulting from provincial neglect. The mayor and city council are hoping there’s a contractual way to force the province to pay for it — and have asked for a report on options for the site. Chow told me in a podcast appearance Friday that the “new deal for Toronto” she struck with Ford last year included negotiations over keeping science programming at the site, and she’ll continue to pursue that — expecting that the province would need to fund such a project.Â
But spending money on it is one thing it seems Ford’s government won’t consider. I mean, they wouldn’t even put a bucket under a leak, so to speak, keeping the building in service long enough to move out properly. What are the chances they’re going to spend that money (and more) just to give the building away?
This beloved place has been abandoned by choice. It would be a shame if it is now condemned by budget restraints.
