News   Nov 12, 2024
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News   Nov 12, 2024
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Harbourfront Centre

The ailing Harbourfront Centre is getting $10 million over two years in the federal budget.


Another stop-gap measure.

Lets recall that original federal promise, almost 3 generations ago, was an endowment to support Habourfront in perpetuity.

If, for argument's sake, we thought they only needed 5M beyond their routine grants each year, and that was what we wanted to fund through an endowment, a one-time grant of 125M would do the trick.

They were running on about 12M per year in 2022; so if we added that to the need, and said we need an endowment that will spin off 17M per year, we need 425M.

To me this is just such an easy fix, provide the endowment and walk away. No more annual transfers and Habourfront can spend their money as they see fit (within a statutory mandate) and not file endless reports and grant applications with Ottawa.

***

I like this solution, by the way, for other major arts facilities. If we agreed to match private philanthropic donations for endowments at 1 to 1, but for the next 5 years only to annual cap of 1B in Federal expenditures, we should be able to set up 10B in new arts endowments that would offset annual expenditures of 400M per year.

That wouldn't fix everyone's needs, or allow a wholesale elimination of federal grants, but it could really improve programming capacity, financial stability and streamline grant related processes.

If you wanted to exit transfers to major institutions entirely*, you could probably do that with a 10-year program and a 2B annual cap. (* excludes direct federal agencies/corps such as CBC and Telefilm)

That would spin off 1.6B per year.

Total department spending authority (Federal Heritage) was 2.4B in 2022-2023.
 
The ailing Harbourfront Centre is getting $10 million over two years in the federal budget.

Link dead but info is:

Supporting Harbourfront Centre Harbourfront Centre is Toronto’s waterfront home to arts, cultural, and recreational programming. Each year, Harbourfront Centre hosts more than 4,000 events, attracting world-renowned exhibitions and artists to the heart of the city. Harbourfront Centre introduces Toronto audiences to a broad range of programming not typically shown at commercial venues, positioning it as a key economic and cultural asset for the city, which attracts millions of visitors every year. Today, this Toronto institution is in need of repairs in order to continue welcoming visitors from Toronto and beyond. Budget 2024 proposes to provide $10 million over two years, starting in2024-25, to the Department of Canadian Heritage, to support Harbourfront Centre's ability to make critical capital repairs. From: p 241 of budget.
 
Taken 19 April. I think that this complex does a great job with the resources they get!

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Clearly you have not been paying attention. The skating rink and pool closed last year and is now a plaza. There are photos not far back in this thread - in fact just one page.
Thanks, it’s been about three decades since I skated or boated on that pond. It’s been out of sight, out of mind since then.
 
Finally, this dead spot is going to be put to use.

Now if only we could get the ice rink back, the bridge fixed, and a decent summertime outdoor hawker market, there might be more reason to visit this neglected area.
 

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