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All bets off for Lightbox launch date
SIMON HOUPT AND JAMES ADAMS
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
September 11, 2008 at 2:14 AM EDT
The artistic director of Bell Lightbox, the gleaming $196-million future home of the Toronto International Film Festival, indicated yesterday that the high-tech, five-cinema facility is unlikely to open in time to host the festival's 2010 edition.
“We've committed to having some kind of relationship with Bell Lightbox and the Festival in 2010,†said Noah Cowan, who until last year served as co-All bets off for Lightbox launch datedirector of TIFF with Piers Handling. “Whether we're going to utilize all of our cinemas, some of our cinemas, none of our cinemas – if we can only use the first floor, the beautiful gallery – so be it.â€
Cowan's caution is a sharp change from the festival's most recent statements, in which it had pledged to use the 35th-anniversary edition as a coming-out party for the new headquarters, with gala red-carpet events and star-studded screenings.
But the building's construction has been hampered by delays that Cowan portrayed as unavoidable, including poor weather last winter, and there may be more delays in the future. “Who knows?†he said. “If we have two mild winters, things might speed up; if we have two crappy winters, then things might slow down. So, honestly, until we're kind of into winter '09-'10, we're not going to really know, we're not going to be able to predict the opening date.â€
Representatives for the Daniels Group said last week that the 378 suites in the 41-storey Festival Tower condominium due to rise above Bell Lightbox should be ready for occupancy by the fall of 2010. Cowan noted that the festival will not be able to take possession of its new home until that construction is complete, after which it will take “months and months and months†to ensure that the facility is ready for use.
Lightbox is intended to be a showpiece of interactive technology in which a single master-control suite will be able to broadcast video or film images to as many as 70 screens scattered throughout the complex.
Cowan made his comments during a hard-hat tour yesterday afternoon.
The project to create a purpose-built home for TIFF has been fraught with hiccups and delays since the spring of 2003, when the festival announced that it was partnering with Toronto-born film producer-director Ivan Reitman and his family, as well as developers the Daniels Group to erect a building on downtown land owned by the Reitmans.
At that time, festival officials were predicting that construction would start by early 2005 in Toronto's Entertainment District, with completion by September, 2006. However, groundbreaking occurred only in February, 2007, with actual construction starting in earnest in April that year. Even at that, expectations were high that the headquarters – called Bell Lightbox, thanks to an investment of “upwards of $30-million†by Bell Canada, announced in September, 2005 – could be finished by late 2009 and be ready for operations by the spring of 2010.
Fundraising has been a major hurdle for the Lightbox. It still has to raise almost $50-million in its $196-million capital/endowment campaign. TIFF recently hired Inspire, a Toronto-based fundraising consultancy firm specializing in helping non-profits, to fatten its coffers. Taking the lead on TIFF's file is Inspire partner Sandy MacKenzie, who previously had been vice-president of the Renaissance ROM campaign for the Royal Ontario Museum.
A veteran TIFF observer with close ties to the Bell Lightbox campaign said last week that the festival's efforts to find private-sector support have been “hurt†by the fact that “it's not been an organization trained and bred to raise money.†Efforts to raise money in such show-business centres as New York and Los Angeles have been largely unsuccessful, forcing TIFF to focus its attention on the Toronto market, which, in the past five years, has seen hundreds of millions of private and corporate dollars poured into other major cultural projects such as the ROM, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Conservatory of Music.
TIFF, for all its prestige as a tourism draw and a major international cultural marker, has not found a galvanizing personality to rally its fundraising efforts, as the Canadian Opera Company had with the late Richard Bradshaw and the ROM had with former Ontario lieutenant-governor Hilary Weston.
In the meantime, there are still many naming opportunities available at the Lightbox, including those for its four biggest theatres. (One theatre, the smallest, seating 75, had naming rights purchased in the past year by NBC Universal Canada for more than $1.5-million.) The total seating capacity of all five theatres is 1,375, with the largest boasting a capacity of 550.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080911.wlightbox11/BNStory/tiff2008/
SIMON HOUPT AND JAMES ADAMS
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
September 11, 2008 at 2:14 AM EDT
The artistic director of Bell Lightbox, the gleaming $196-million future home of the Toronto International Film Festival, indicated yesterday that the high-tech, five-cinema facility is unlikely to open in time to host the festival's 2010 edition.
“We've committed to having some kind of relationship with Bell Lightbox and the Festival in 2010,†said Noah Cowan, who until last year served as co-All bets off for Lightbox launch datedirector of TIFF with Piers Handling. “Whether we're going to utilize all of our cinemas, some of our cinemas, none of our cinemas – if we can only use the first floor, the beautiful gallery – so be it.â€
Cowan's caution is a sharp change from the festival's most recent statements, in which it had pledged to use the 35th-anniversary edition as a coming-out party for the new headquarters, with gala red-carpet events and star-studded screenings.
But the building's construction has been hampered by delays that Cowan portrayed as unavoidable, including poor weather last winter, and there may be more delays in the future. “Who knows?†he said. “If we have two mild winters, things might speed up; if we have two crappy winters, then things might slow down. So, honestly, until we're kind of into winter '09-'10, we're not going to really know, we're not going to be able to predict the opening date.â€
Representatives for the Daniels Group said last week that the 378 suites in the 41-storey Festival Tower condominium due to rise above Bell Lightbox should be ready for occupancy by the fall of 2010. Cowan noted that the festival will not be able to take possession of its new home until that construction is complete, after which it will take “months and months and months†to ensure that the facility is ready for use.
Lightbox is intended to be a showpiece of interactive technology in which a single master-control suite will be able to broadcast video or film images to as many as 70 screens scattered throughout the complex.
Cowan made his comments during a hard-hat tour yesterday afternoon.
The project to create a purpose-built home for TIFF has been fraught with hiccups and delays since the spring of 2003, when the festival announced that it was partnering with Toronto-born film producer-director Ivan Reitman and his family, as well as developers the Daniels Group to erect a building on downtown land owned by the Reitmans.
At that time, festival officials were predicting that construction would start by early 2005 in Toronto's Entertainment District, with completion by September, 2006. However, groundbreaking occurred only in February, 2007, with actual construction starting in earnest in April that year. Even at that, expectations were high that the headquarters – called Bell Lightbox, thanks to an investment of “upwards of $30-million†by Bell Canada, announced in September, 2005 – could be finished by late 2009 and be ready for operations by the spring of 2010.
Fundraising has been a major hurdle for the Lightbox. It still has to raise almost $50-million in its $196-million capital/endowment campaign. TIFF recently hired Inspire, a Toronto-based fundraising consultancy firm specializing in helping non-profits, to fatten its coffers. Taking the lead on TIFF's file is Inspire partner Sandy MacKenzie, who previously had been vice-president of the Renaissance ROM campaign for the Royal Ontario Museum.
A veteran TIFF observer with close ties to the Bell Lightbox campaign said last week that the festival's efforts to find private-sector support have been “hurt†by the fact that “it's not been an organization trained and bred to raise money.†Efforts to raise money in such show-business centres as New York and Los Angeles have been largely unsuccessful, forcing TIFF to focus its attention on the Toronto market, which, in the past five years, has seen hundreds of millions of private and corporate dollars poured into other major cultural projects such as the ROM, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Conservatory of Music.
TIFF, for all its prestige as a tourism draw and a major international cultural marker, has not found a galvanizing personality to rally its fundraising efforts, as the Canadian Opera Company had with the late Richard Bradshaw and the ROM had with former Ontario lieutenant-governor Hilary Weston.
In the meantime, there are still many naming opportunities available at the Lightbox, including those for its four biggest theatres. (One theatre, the smallest, seating 75, had naming rights purchased in the past year by NBC Universal Canada for more than $1.5-million.) The total seating capacity of all five theatres is 1,375, with the largest boasting a capacity of 550.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080911.wlightbox11/BNStory/tiff2008/
