Toronto Ontario Place | ?m | ?s | Infrastructure ON

[generalcanada]

...so the claim here is that the absence of a poll backs the government's position. I mean, that's a pretty spurious assertion where democracy is concerned, to put it mildly.

I mean the base assumption is that Ontario Place is a waterpark that people from across ontario visited right? I know because I was one of them.
That cant be denied can it?

 

[DSC]

the fact there isnt shows that most people truely do not care the slightest about this.

Ontario Place for all has some decent fundraising. go ask abascus to do some polling across ontario if they really want to dispute the idea that people would travel across ontario to visit this.

I do not know whether most people in Ontario (or Toronto) either know or care about Ontario Place but the fact that a large area of public greenspace is (probably) going to be turned into a less green space in a City core that needs more not less green with less public space (and a huge parking lot, built at public expense) is just wrong. Yes, OP has been underused and under managed for decades but we REALLY could do better.

 

[generalcanada]

2.9 million visited Ontario Place in 2022: internal letter

Critics of the PCs' redevelopment said last year's visitor total shows a private spa — part of plans to attract 4 to 6 million visitors a year — isn't necessary

www.cambridgetoday.ca

funny while searching up unrelated sources i found this from 10 minutes ago
a letter from the ontario place corporation saying 3 million visited ontario place.
Interestingly he does cite cirque du soleil. To note, that it pretty much ran the entire summer which would have added lots of attendance. Id love to see the attendance for 2019.
If true this kills all the arguments for therme as a "bigger attraction"

which brings up a new and interesting point. What if we used the east island? what if we used the drive in area. It would be tight being super close to Trillium park
Hell maybe combine it with the budweiser stage redevelopment and connect it better than it would be
I remember from the documents that theres a long-term unrelated plan to turn it into a childrens playground. pretty sure thats still the plan

 

[Northern Light]

.....which brings up a new and interesting point. What if we used the east island? what if we used the drive in area. It would be tight being super close to Trillium park
Hell maybe combine it with the budweiser stage redevelopment and connect it better than it would be

In respect of the East Island, if you precluded touching the landscape (the green) then the footprint would probably too tight for Therme, as conceived.

If you could incorporate thew works/admin areas of OP and a smidge of the landscape, you'd be getting close; though, whether that would be an ideal solution is questionable.

But its in the ballpark size wise:

One of the challenges here though, any regrading of the Island, and/or expansion of it, triggers the need for soil removals and major tree removals etc.

I remember from the documents that theres a long-term unrelated plan to turn it into a childrens playground. pretty sure thats still the plan

The plan was for an 'adventure' playscape featuring things like Ziplines, that would have been a paid access facility.

That proponent, pulled out.

 

[generalcanada]

The plan was for an 'adventure' playscape featuring things like Ziplines, that would have been a paid access facility.

That proponent, pulled out.

No that was separate. This i can easily source. ill bring pictures up front too
That said Im pretty sure their location was either the east marina village or "hough hill". that was awhile ago though

https://engageontarioplace.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ESR_Final-Draft_Jun23_EN_AODA-1.pdf

 

[adma]

I mean the base assumption is that Ontario Place is a waterpark that people from across ontario visited right? I know because I was one of them.
That cant be denied can it?

Re your framing it in terms of "waterpark": I think I addressed that whole issue here...

Ontario Place | ?m | ?s | Infrastructure Ontar

Litterally any nimby could use that argument. status quo of not building a 25 storey condo: no construction noise, no traffic impacts, no new people moving into the neighborhood If "status quo" has to be always considered then we get things like this...

urbantoronto.ca

 

[picard102]

a City core that needs more not less green

This area is well served with green space, if the core needs more green space, build more green space in the core, not the South West corner of the core flanked by massive parks.

 

[generalcanada]

May I tell you something--raw juvenile nostalgia isn't always the best perspective to bring to the table. Other than the bumper boats (you're talking about the ones below the pods, right?), none of those were "original" OP features, they were features added on to "justify" the place as a public facility. They could have been anyplace. Even your use of the term "theme park" reflects a skewed notion of the role OP played (and disregards the fact that the term "theme park" has often been a *negative* metaphor in architectural and planning terms). Maybe it's what you remember fondly; but it's also a reminder of how too many eggs in the fondly-remembered-childhood basket can be a formula for civic philistinism, because of some absent-mindedly patronizing notion that kids are generally too young and too blissfully ignorant to know any better. (Which reminds me of how in my erstwhile garage-sale ventures w/my mother, our rule of thumb tended to be to avoid any house with a whole lot of 80s-onward toys and "kid's stuff" Like, the contemporary "kid-o-sphere" being an alibi for so much plastic kitsch and junk, it's not funny.)

Now, if we're going to go into "10-year-old perspectives", I knew OP in the beginning. In many ways, what it offered in the beginning would seem thin gruel for the young visitor--not much more than a picturesque park to promenade in, pods to promenade up and down and across, pavilions w/so-so carny food and carbonated beverages, bumper boats and stuff, the Forum, and "North Of Superior" at the Cinesphere. Yet for all the prosaic offerings, something felt "worth the childhood visit"--the architectural ooh and aah, the roaming around the Hough landscape, or past the yachts and to the end of the long pier. Though maybe a bit "is that it?" after a couple of visits, unless one was going to a Forum show. But still, one might say that I could intuit the "Zeidler magic" even if I was too young to know who Zeidler was.

But the next year, it had something kid-friendly added--the original Children's Village, which was much more "integral" to the original vision (i.e. at that juncture, you couldn't imagine it anyplace *other* than Ontario Place; it really did feel like an extension of the layout, and the "vibe").

The year after *that*, though (or was it two years, can't recall), Children's Village added the water attractions. Which I never warmed to, mainly because I wasn't into the youthful hassle of changing in and out of bathing suits--but maybe that says something deeper, because water-park attractions do tend to be standalone by their nature, they're not as "come as you are". They're the narcissistic stuff of the proverbial Mt Splashmore or more mercenary "Action Park" affairs. They don't quite feel like "civic benefits" except by proxy.

And in due time, the compartmentalized splashiness of the water attractions came to overshadow the post-hippie dustiness of the original Children's Village. And in effect, the "theme parking" of OP began there, for better or worse.

Unfortunately, there's some casual notion out there that's been baked in over the past few decades that kids should *only* exist, and grow up within, an insulated kid-o-sphere, and the big non-kid outside world ought to be helicopter-parented away. Like the notion of their sitting at any kind of figurative "adult table"--or be witness to and fascinated by a world beyond their own kid-o-sphere--opens them up to "harmful contaminants"; or maybe just traumatizes and upsets them.

But here's a pre-Ontario Place anecdote of my own. As a young child, I lived off Roncesvalles--and even when we moved away, my grandparents still lived off Roncesvalles. And as a young child, I liked to go to High Park, to the playground, to the zoo.

Emphasis on the "go to" part. That is, I liked the *process* of going to the playground and the zoo, the walk down High Park Blvd, etc. I took pleasure in the connective fabric, the ritual passage, the world beyond myself. It wasn't just about the coordinates of the playground and the zoo; it was also about the connective fabric, and the awareness of infinite fabric beyond--park trails to explore, nooks and crannies to explore, etc. It was all about the symbiosis, about being fascinated by how it was all put together. The kid stuff could allow me to be a kid; the stuff beyond could enable a kid to be wise beyond one's years, and the two existed in a fine balance.

It was that same symbiosis that made a youthful family shopping trip to Loblaws & Towers as satisfying as one to High Park (and even when it was by car, looking out the window). And it was that same symbiosis that made a trip to Ontario Place pleasurable even when its kid offerings were more limited.

But once *everything*, positive-memory-wise, is front-loaded upon the log flume, the "atom blaster building", the bumper boats...it's a meagre thing.

As a kid, I can say that I "got Zeidler and Hough", much as I "got John Howard" in High Park, even if it was simply by osmosis. But I don't get the impression that you did...

What i got from this wall of text is that living in the city as a kid is awesome which it is. But theres a massive difference between that and living in the suburbs. Sure to you ontario place probably wasnt anything to scoff at. but remember the GTA is more than just the city of Toronto.

For example you might look at the cn tower and be like "eh whatever i see it every day" but for someone who lives in hamilton, Oshawa or hell even Barrie, you come into Toronto and youre just amazed. Even so called "ugly" buildings by UT standards seem mezmerizing.

I never went to high park, I never went to the don valley, Thats because parks arent something you drive into the city to visit. The only time we went to downtown toronto is for a jays/leafs game

No one from Whitby (where i grew up) visits coronation, the park beside my building that I go to all the time. No one visits it willingly.

I think I might be significantly older than you. the waterpark, atom blaster and log flume ride were there the 1st time i visited....id say mid-late 2000s?

as for the rest of your post, kids dont do stuff on their own because they cant, not by themselves anyway, not out of "insulating a child" but litterally because its not safe to do anything in the suburbs
Watch NJB for reasons why on that

 

[adma]

What i got from this wall of text is that living in the city as a kid is awesome which it is. But theres a massive difference between that and living in the suburbs. Sure to you ontario place probably wasnt anything to scoff at. but remember the GTA is more than just the city of Toronto.

For example you might look at the cn tower and be like "eh whatever i see it every day" but for someone who lives in hamilton, Oshawa or hell even Barrie, you come into Toronto and youre just amazed. Even so called "ugly" buildings by UT standards seem mezmerizing.

I never went to high park, I never went to the don valley, Thats because parks arent something you drive into the city to visit. The only time we went to downtown toronto is for a jays/leafs game

No one from Whitby (where i grew up) visits coronation, the park beside my building that I go to all the time. No one visits it willingly.

I think I might be significantly older than you. the waterpark, atom blaster and log flume ride were there the 1st time i visited....id say mid-late 2000s?

as for the rest of your post, kids dont do stuff on their own because they cant, not by themselves anyway, not out of "insulating a child" but litterally because its not safe to do anything in the suburbs
Watch NJB for reasons why on that

First, re "significantly older", note my "Now, if we're going to go into "10-year-old perspectives", I knew OP in the beginning.". That is, it's not about it being a perspective from 10 years ago; rather, it's a perspective from one who was 10 years old around the time OP opened.

And secondly, re the "kids doing stuff on their own" point: actually, looking back at that original post, I can see how one can be misled, because what I neglected to mention is that my childhood walks to High Park were ***accompanied***. ***I went with parents, grandparents, elders***. I was too young to go on my own; and I wasn't exactly *encouraged* to do so. And likewise at Ontario Place: about as "unaccompanied" as I was there was within the assigned realm of Children's Village; I knew well enough to not break those bounds.

However, being accompanied did not prevent me from going with my eyes open. Which is how I came to be captivated by the "getting there" at least as much as by the "being there"--and indeed, one might say that whether passively or actively, my elders "whetted my curiosity"; and in turn, my whetted curiosity could stimulate *their* curiosity, to the point where in High Park we might have been "exploring together". "Going places" as a mutual, rather than individual, act of pleasure.

In fact, I think there's a bit of a fallacy that the *only* pleasure a child can have is within a free-form, free-movement "kidspace" super-coordinate--the kid's stuff at OP, or the playground at High Park where it was basically me, free, w/my elders watching from the edge, as it typically is in kid's play areas. And as if "accompaniment"--the act of being in tow of elders--effectively neuters the child, offering nothing more than a supervisory tether: "tune out for the duration until we get to the destination".

No, accompaniment *can* stimulate. Indeed, the accompanying elder can provide wisdom that a child cannot generate by his/herself, and the child can provide incentive to the elder. Even within the suburbs; and even within the "necessary" confines of a car--sort of like, the "driving around and seeing things" model. And "kids on their own" is overrated, at least as a single-loaded model for childhood pleasure--and particularly if we're in an age where "free-range kids" are an extinct concept...

 

[generalcanada]

First, re "significantly older", note my "Now, if we're going to go into "10-year-old perspectives", I knew OP in the beginning.". That is, it's not about it being a perspective from 10 years ago; rather, it's a perspective from one who was 10 years old around the time OP opened.

And secondly, re the "kids doing stuff on their own" point: actually, looking back at that original post, I can see how one can be misled, because what I neglected to mention is that my childhood walks to High Park were ***accompanied***. ***I went with parents, grandparents, elders***. I was too young to go on my own; and I wasn't exactly *encouraged* to do so. And likewise at Ontario Place: about as "unaccompanied" as I was there was within the assigned realm of Children's Village; I knew well enough to not break those bounds.

However, being accompanied did not prevent me from going with my eyes open. Which is how I came to be captivated by the "getting there" at least as much as by the "being there"--and indeed, one might say that whether passively or actively, my elders "whetted my curiosity"; and in turn, my whetted curiosity could stimulate *their* curiosity, to the point where in High Park we might have been "exploring together". "Going places" as a mutual, rather than individual, act of pleasure.

In fact, I think there's a bit of a fallacy that the *only* pleasure a child can have is within a free-form, free-movement "kidspace" super-coordinate--the kid's stuff at OP, or the playground at High Park where it was basically me, free, w/my elders watching from the edge, as it typically is in kid's play areas. And as if "accompaniment"--the act of being in tow of elders--effectively neuters the child, offering nothing more than a supervisory tether: "tune out for the duration until we get to the destination".

No, accompaniment *can* stimulate. Indeed, the accompanying elder can provide wisdom that a child cannot generate by his/herself, and the child can provide incentive to the elder. Even within the suburbs; and even within the "necessary" confines of a car--sort of like, the "driving around and seeing things" model. And "kids on their own" is overrated, at least as a single-loaded model for childhood pleasure--and particularly if we're in an age where "free-range kids" are an extinct concept...

ive read this a few times tryiing to figure out what you are trying to say in terms of OP?
That theme parks/waterparks arent actually good in terms of children attractions?
can you clarify?

 

[Northern Light]

......

I never went to high park, I never went to the don valley, Thats because parks arent something you drive into the city to visit. The only time we went to downtown toronto is for a jays/leafs game

No one from Whitby (where i grew up) visits coronation, the park beside my building that I go to all the time. No one visits it willingly.

Funny, though I grew up in East York, I visited Whitby plenty, to go to Family Kartways and Cullen Garden Miniature Village in particular.

But I also went downtown every single week by transit; from age 9, by myself, to have dinner w/parents on Friday nights.

You seem to have led a sheltered life.

I think I might be significantly older than you. the waterpark, atom blaster and log flume ride were there the 1st time i visited....id say mid-late 2000s?

LOL, I'm not sure anyone is older than Adma..............but you most certainly are not.

as for the rest of your post, kids dont do stuff on their own because they cant, not by themselves anyway, not out of "insulating a child" but litterally because its not safe to do anything in the suburbs
Watch NJB for reasons why on that

Again, I went downtown, on my own at 9 years old, the year I got my house keys, had to go home after school, feed the cats, then head back out to grab the subway to go meet my folks for dinner.

This everthing is unsafe if you're under 30 nonesense is a a non-starter.

 

[generalcanada]

Funny, though I drew up in East York, I visited Whitby plenty, to go to Family Kartways and Cullen Garden Miniature Village in particular.

But I also went downtown every single week by transit; from age 9, by myself, to have dinner w/parents on Friday nights.

You seem to have led a sheltered life.



LOL, I'm not sure anyone is older than Adma..............but you most certainly are not.



Again, I went downtown, on my own at 9 years old, the year I got my house keys, had to go home after school, feed the cats, then head back out to grab the subway to go meet my folks for dinner.

This everthing is unsafe if you're under 30 nonesense is a a non-starter.

Oh i just re-read that. I meant to say younger definitely not older LMAO

Id would argue that there is a significant difference from East York and Durham Region. Hell theres a massive difference between Dundas/Brock and Thickson/Taunton.
"The Suburbs" IMO mean places that require a car to move. Places where the best service available is 30 minute busses that take 10 minutes to walk to. Places where its litterally unsafe to bike anywhere but the sidewalk. Places where theese are needed. While I never seen them in Whitby, some intersections definitely were not meant for pedestrians and did in fact need them

Even today for kids in Whitby, if you need to get downtown Toronto on a weeknight to see a concert at 7 you would have a full 2 hour travel time leaving at 5 taking the bus.
While internet timelines are fuzzy. I know that the GO train wasn't even a word in whitby until the early 2010's
This is what i mean when I say you cant do anything in the suburbs as a kid. The requirement on your parent to drive you everywhere is why suburbs are unsafe

 

[adma]

Oh i just re-read that. I meant to say younger definitely not older LMAO

Id would argue that there is a significant difference from East York and Durham Region. Hell theres a massive difference between Dundas/Brock and Thickson/Taunton.
"The Suburbs" IMO mean places that require a car to move. Places where the best service available is 30 minute busses that take 10 minutes to walk to. Places where its litterally unsafe to bike anywhere but the sidewalk. Places where theese are needed. While I never seen them in Whitby, some intersections definitely were not meant for pedestrians and did in fact need them


Even today for kids in Whitby, if you need to get downtown Toronto on a weeknight to see a concert at 7 you would have a full 2 hour travel time leaving at 5 taking the bus.
While internet timelines are fuzzy. I know that the GO train wasn't even a word in whitby until the early 2010's
This is what i mean when I say you cant do anything in the suburbs as a kid. The requirement on your parent to drive you everywhere is why suburbs are unsafe

Well, I do admit something else here: I'm of a generation when it was common even in the suburbs for kids to walk, unaccompanied, to school. (Though for myself, at least, I knew I was "on a tether", and wasn't prone to going beyond that tether until my teens. So even on my own, when it came to solo freedom of movement, I was a "conservative" kid by my era's standards.)

However, you're still going by the fallacy that doing stuff in the suburbs as a kid means doing stuff *on one's own* as a kid. Or that the only valid pleasure for a kid is a super-kid-targeted "free range" pleasure.

That is, yes--maybe you'd require a parent to drive you everywhere. But that doesn't mean the drive can't be meaningful--which is why, to me, even something as banal as a family shopping trip *by car* was a source of pleasure. Because *it* was a form of being "out and active" and better than vegetating at home.

That's why I referred to the "driving around and seeing stuff" model--where the pleasure, whether passively or actively stoked, was in the "seeing stuff": the lay of the land and how it's all put together. Or once at the shopping destination, the "stuff in the aisles", the displays, the presentations, the happenstances.

So, keeping in mind my own youthful *non*-free-range experience, I'm viewing a post-free-range-childhood era as opportunity, not as burden.

***However***, it also requires a re-thinking of what such "accompanied" travel consists of--something where there's more productive elder-and-child symbiosis. Like, I felt I was a youthful co-participant in a journey--however, the attitude these days is more that of children being precious cargo requiring insulation from the trauma of the journey, maybe through escapist "tools" like electronic games and the like. Thus the journey becomes as "disconnective" as if one were travelling in an ambulance. I looked outside the window; kids today look at their phones. That shouldn't be.

And as goeth "driving around and seeing stuff", so goeth "walking around and seeing stuff". Which is where a trip to Ontario Place kicks in. Sort of like, if your parents were the sort to treat a trip to Toronto as a simple trip to a Jays game and everything else in between being a non sequitur, then naturally, they'd be unequipped to treat a family trip to Ontario Place as anything more than a cheap Mount Splashmore event for the kids...

 

[Natika33]

Firstly, depending where and how you build on the Ex site, you can still see the lake. Moreover, Therme spas are (I gather) typically located in spaces much more like Markham or Whitby than Ontario Place. So water views are not crucial to their experience.

Those two things said, what many of us feel is that the design actually cuts off the public realm from the lake. Maybe some of that is subjective but if you're reducing the lake to a nice view out the window while you get a massage among the palm trees and waterslides, where there used to be a very purposely designed waterfront landscape, that "selling point" is severely compromised IMHO. Any proposal that reduces the lake to a "view" like a screensaver is precisely the sort of proposal that should not be given serious consideration.

The thing that has always made OP special isn't the flume ride or the Cinesphere or the old waterslides. It's how all of it, including the Zeidler buildings, the West Island and even the old Forum interfaced with the water. The idea that it would get replaced by a hermetically sealed, faux tropical environment that reduces the lake to a soothing view is precisely why many us believe it's not the right use for this site. YMMV, clearly.

You are describing what I envision completely opposite to how I see it. We are far more in agreement than you seem to think, you just appear to have a very clear vision of what a spa should look like that is not at all how spas need to be. I do not care what other locations of Therme do, nor do I intend to get a massage while looking out at the lake (is that even possible?). I would like an up front & close view/engagement with the lake while sitting in hot water similar to the hot springs I enjoyed while I lived in Japan. What you have described is effectively Go Spa, which I explicitly stated moving Therme off the water would be like. I do not want a hermetically sealed experience, I do want that feeling of interaction, and it's my contention that this design will offer that.

 

[Natika33]

I guess that is one location @Natika33 will not be visiting! If you can't see a lake out the window, what's the selling point of this??
Might as well be in Orangeville.
View attachment 510885

Or this?
View attachment 510886

At least this one has a fake, little stormwater pond! So to be fair, despite some us bashing them, saying there's no reason for them to locate the spa at Ontario Place, sometimes Therme spas are indeed on the "waterfront."
View attachment 510887

You are quite right I won't be visiting any of these. Despite being from the same parent company, they are much more inwardly designed. Furthermore, unlike many on this thread, I'm barely making ends meet, so a $40 entry ticket for a relaxing "holiday" in Toronto is far more in line with what I can afford than a plane ticket to Europe. But sure, keep assuming I want an elitist experience that cuts everyone else off from their precious small piece of lakefront property when in fact, exactly the opposite is true. I happen to think the park over the building is going to be an amazing asset for the public, with great views for free, the other redesigned outdoor free spaces will also be lovely, and the paid part is cheaper than any other similar experience yet actually better!