The Toronto museum, an idea that has been bantied about for years, seems to have found a home:
Rita Davies, city hall’s arts visionary, has set in motion a plan to build the museum on a 3.6 acre parcel of land at the foot of Bathurst St. adjacent to the giant Canada Malting Company silos.
“It’s a wonderful place that resonates with Toronto history and links it to the waterfront,” says Davies, director of culture for the city. “The people I’ve consulted are excited about it.”
One big plus about this site: It is already owned by the City of Toronto, which could save millions of dollars buying land.
Toronto city council will now be asked to designate the site for the museum and the launch board will put out a request for proposal from potential private development partners to help cover a cost of $150 million to $200 million.
Read the full article in today’s Star.
7 comments
Great Idea with a big price tag!
Fine, but why do they insist on leaving the Canada Malting silos there? They’re an ugly, decrepit, concrete eyesore. You want to talk about beautifying the waterfront – tear down Canada Malting and its western sister, Victory Soya Mills. Put parkland there instead. Instant improvement.
No! There is enough parkland — the silo’s will be good for something, at some point. There have been some proposals that didn’t take, but one will in the future. Next issue of spacing will have an article about exactly this.
I see the Canada Malting and the Victory silos as anchors so to speak of the Queen’s Quay waterfront, and monuments to the harbour’s more industrial past (sooner or later, Redpath will go). As Shawn says, there’s lots of parkland – the Music Garden (which I must say, is aging well, though it could use some maintenance), the new HtO beach, the boardwalks, etc. The Toronto Islands are an amazing park alone, and the ferry ride makes it even more special.
Better to have a diverse set of activities on the waterfront. A museum will be a 4-season activity, of which there is still little, apart from the skating rink and the Harbourfront theatre. It should be a welcome counterpoint to the inevitable “Project Symphony” piece of barely-adequate architecture at Jarvis.
I found Chicago’s waterfront, for the praise it gets, a tad too artifical. Plus LSD and the yacht clubs block access to the lake, I think Toronto could easily have something to challenge that Great Lakes rival within a few years.
Before we rip down the Canada Malting Co. buildings just think of Tate Modern Gallery in London and you will have an idea of what may be possible for those silos.
They are a unique structure and considering that they will be surrounded by all of those cookie cutter glass condo towers I think this is all the more reason to keep them. Toronto really does not have that many prominent heritage buildings and we can’t afford to junk the ones that are not that attractive.
It would be a bit ironic to create a Toronto Museum next to a major piece of history for our waterfront that we just tore down!
Sorry, I don’t believe that everything that’s old needs to be preserved because it represents a piece of our history. I could see a lot of old industrial structures cluttering up the city if that argument is applied to them once they reach a certain age.
I like the museum idea, I am just skeptical that these silos can be used in a way that residents or tourists will appreciate. I would like to see the plan, but I would be surprised if they can be resuscitated.
They are in poor shape, and weren’t as attractive to begin with as say, the old industrial structures at the Distillery or Brick Works. The 10+ storeys of crumbling concrete casts a depressing shadow over the surrounding area, heritage designation or not.
“I could see a lot of old industrial structures cluttering up the city if that argument is applied to them once they reach a certain age.”
And that’s bad?
Better the sublime than the saccharine middlebrow, y’know. Michael Snow as opposed to Andrew Lloyd Webber….