Nu Maple Leaf Gardens

Product:STAR Date:12-02-2009Desk: NEW-0003-CMYK/01-12-09/22:11:46

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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2009

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GREATER TORONTO

Gardens ushers in the future

Union Station’s big reno: Grin while you bear it PAUL MOLONEY CITY HALL BUREAU

CHRISTOPHER HUME

T

he Maple Leafs may be dead, but long live Maple Leaf Gardens. According to the terms of an innovative plan announced Tuesday, the 78-year-old Carlton St. Cavern will soon be reborn as a supermarket and university athletic facility. Several floors will be added along with underground parking. The exteriors will be cleaned up and the building generally returned to the land of the living. This is about as happy an ending as can be arranged in a situation such as this, one that involves a heritage structure that can no longer be used for its intended purpose. The more typical response would have been to tear down the unneeded building, perhaps keep a facade or two, and start from scratch. This time, however, that was not to be the case. Instead, an unusual partnership was created involving Loblaw, Ryerson University and the federal government. No less a personage than federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was on hand Tuesday to announce that the Gardens project will receive $20 million in infrastructure funding. Even more impressive, last spring the Ryerson student body voted to increase its athletic fee by $126 annually to help pay for it. This will mean another $20 million for the $60 million transformation of the Gardens into a mixed-use centre. Loblaw heir and chairman Galen Weston, who owns the building, will also contribute $5 million to Ryerson. Such uses do not usually coexist in the same building, but welcome to the future. This is the way it’s going to be in the years ahead, when pressure to take advantage of every available bit of space will grow intense. Indeed, one of the most obvious precedents is Ryerson’s own Ted Rogers School of Management at Dundas and Bay. It’s the building with a Canadian Tire at street level, a parking garage above, and above that, classrooms. Like Maple Leaf Gardens, it isn’t much to look at architecturally, but it more than earns its keep urbanistically. Engineers must now span the Gardens horizontally to make new floors and excavate deep enough to accommodate one floor of underground parking. At the same time, many rows of seating will be removed to make way for Loblaw in the space occupied by the rink. When the building reopens in the spring of 2011, the interior will be all but unrecognizable. Ryerson’s NHL-size rink will be on the top floor, just beneath the domed roof. The familiar Art Deco exteriors will remain, with some of the windows opened up. No one could call the Gardens beautiful, but that hardly matters. It is a shrine, a remnant of a time when hockey was played by teams, not corporations. It also happens to be one of the most famous buildings in Canada. Ryerson president Sheldon Levy has had his eye on it since arriving at Ryerson in 2004. However, until the student athletic fee was imposed, his quest seemed doomed. “That was the tipping point,” he explains. “After that, Galen came on board and now, today, the federal government.” It helped, of course, that like almost every middle-aged Torontonian, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has memories of the building. It would be surprising if he didn’t. As well as the Leafs and Whipper Billy Watson, Elvis performed there, along with the Beatles, the Stones and everyone in between. Built in less than six months, at the height of the Great Depression, the Gardens was considered a marvel of construction. In its next incarnation, it will be a marvel of cooperation.

Christopher Hume can be reached at [email protected]

DAVID COOPER/TORONTO STAR

Government, Ryerson and Loblaw officials gather at the Gardens Tuesday to announce plans for its future.

IN AISLE 4, PC MEMORIES OF STANLEY CUP? Maple Leaf Gardens will reopen in the spring of 2011 as both a multiuse sports complex for Ryerson University and a flagship Loblaws grocery store. The project was formally announced Tuesday with a

$20 million injection from the federal government as part of the economic stimulus plan. Ryerson and Loblaw Cos. Ltd. say they intend to preserve the “historical integrity” of the building, but it will be pretty well

gutted inside. The exterior will remain mostly unchanged, but the historic building will be a shell of its former self. Here’s how builders say it will be redesigned:

RYERSON ATHLETIC FACILITY NHL-size ice rink with 3,500 seats; a four-lane, 200-metre running track; basketball and volleyball courts with bleacher seating for more than 1,200; and a gym and fitness centre.

ICE LEVEL Will be dug up to build an underground parking garage. Ice sheet will be reconstructed on top of the second floor.

ROOF Remains the same.

ENTRANCES Ryerson will use the Carlton St. main entrance, while Loblaws will have its entrance on Church St.

MEMORABILIA The famed marquee entrance facing Carlton St. LOBLAWS 70,000-square-foot, will remain, but the fate of the classic score clock, no longer street-level grocery store, and a functional, is undetermined. Building will include a small musestand-alone Joe Fresh Style studio um showcasing the history of Maple Leaf Gardens. Remaining store on the second floor. seats and other leftover memorabilia will be auctioned off to help pay for the retrofit. COMPLIED BY BRENDAN KENNEDY AND LOUISE BROWN

Union Station users should brace for a long haul as the $640 million renovation of the historic transportation hub gets going in spring. The work, including excavating a large new lower level to house shops and restaurants, will take until 2015. Though it’s a big project, it’s not overly complex, said Graham Brown, president of Carillion Construction Inc., whose Vanbots division was named Tuesday as general contractor. “Probably the biggest challenge . . . is dealing with the 65 million people a year that come through this concourse, and making sure that life goes on as well as it has to date, during the period of construction.” Commuters will encounter lots of construction hoarding, Brown said. “We’ll make that hoarding attractive, we’ll try and make it amusing in places so people bear with us during construction.” When the revitalization is complete, the new Union Station will rank with the best in the U.S. and Europe, vowed Mayor David Miller. “This is a huge transportation hub. There will be a new wonderful canopy over the platforms so there will be light. Secondly, it’ll be like some of the American stations where there is wonderful retail and it becomes a destination in itself.” Though about a quarter of a million people pass through each day, they tend not to linger in the station now. But that will change, said George Schott, president of Osmington Inc., whose subsidiary Redcliff (Union Station) Inc. will lease, manage and operate the retail space in the station, just steps from the adjoining Air Canada Centre. “We’re going to give them a reason to spend some time there,” he said. “They can’t possibly feed and entertain the number of people they get at the Air Canada Centre for hockey games and basketball games and entertainment events. “We’re going to give them an alternative. It’s nice and close, and they can walk underground.” Toronto acquired Union Station in 2000 from the railways, then subsequently tried and failed to find renovation partners. The current deal has the federal government contributing $164.5 million; with $172 million coming from the province to purchase the new GO Transit concourses and lease head office space for GO.

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