calimehtar said:
First off, I'm ambivalent about the spa for reasons that are pretty well articulated by generalcanada above. There isn't anything inherently evil about either private ownership or a spa. The sheer size of it, the publicly funded parking garage, the possiblity that something better could be there ... Sure ok.


But the debate about the spa is also a distraction from the catastrophic land use already evident there and at the cne. Why are we so upset about this parking garage when just on the other side of the expressway there are acres of surface parking which go unused 90% of the time. Where was the debate about medieval times or the Ontario place Marina?
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This is a whataboutism. I would love to see something useful on the Ex parking lots, but that's not being actively proposed. Ontario Place is being actively proposed, and a spa/waterpark and parking lot isn't going to improve the land use.
 
DirectionNorth said:
This is a whataboutism. I would love to see something useful on the Ex parking lots, but that's not being actively proposed. Ontario Place is being actively proposed, and a spa/waterpark and parking lot isn't going to improve the land use.
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But then candidates for mayor of Toronto don't have the power to do anything much at Ontario Place and they do at exhibition place, which is more than twice the size.
 
I think its funny like a year ago i suggested on here turning all of the ex's parking lots into housing, and i got flack for it because apperently the indy race is culturally significant or something

Exhibition Place

My point was that the parking lots arent used for anything other than the CNE, indy is just seating id bet they could find a way to put seating not on the parking lots. Royal winter fair? inside the horse palace or whatever it's called, marlies play inside. We dont NEED those parking lots, but...
urbantoronto.ca urbantoronto.ca

So based on that, we would see the same criticisms anyway
 
And to put my feelings into more concrete and specific recommendations - the only politically easy thing to do is make a park, the right thing is to look at the entire area from exhibition place to Ontario place as a whole, use about a third of it for amusement (a permanent replacement for the cne , stadium, food and drink...spa or no spa, science center or no science center) a third for connected parkland, and yeah take that lovely surface parking and make it into a mixed use neighbourhood.

How is that different from the current use? I think it would about double the space used for amusement, slightly increase the area allocated to park and completely eliminate surface parking which is about 1/2 the space at a combined Ontario place/exhibition place. The single story Enercare centre should be merged into the mixed use neighbourhood and all parking rebuilt underground
 
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calimehtar said:
Why are we so upset about this parking garage when just on the other side of the expressway there are acres of surface parking which go unused 90% of the time.
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Speaking of whataboutisms, what a great place to put that spa instead. I mean, that would kill a lot of nuisances birds with one stone...
 
Admiral Beez said:
London, UK has about four times the population of Toronto, but I challenge that our city does not have a quarter of the tourist attractions of London. And in London nearly every museum I list above was free of charge.
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In addition to being much larger, London has been continuously occupied for over 2,000 years. Not even a remotely comparable situation.
 
UtakataNoAnnex said:
Speaking of whataboutisms, what a great place to put that spa instead. I mean, that would kill a lot of nuisances birds with one stone...
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I am specifically attracted to the idea of the spa on the waterfront because it allows for a framed view of the lake (similar to how hot springs in Japan often take advantage of natural phenomena like the ocean or a river etc to give their clients something to peacefully contemplate while soaking). Therme anywhere else would render it nothing special, so that does not solve anything in my mind. Also, now you're leaving Ontario Place without an amusement park again?
 
A few interesting ideas came up at the Saturday city consultations that I thought I'd share to see what you all thought (if that's allowed):
1) Ontario Place as a whole - there are only 3 exits so having a dish wash & reuse program like Yorkdale used to have for all the food vendors so there'd be no take-out garbage.
2) Therme specific - suggesting they use native plants so we could experience Ontario summer in winter, not somewhere in the tropics (i.e. sumach instead of palms, snake grass, ferns, etc)
3) Therme specific - using some of that "greenhouse" effect to grow many/most of the veggies served at their internal restaurants
 
Distilled said:
In addition to being much larger, London has been continuously occupied for over 2,000 years. Not even a remotely comparable situation.
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With the notable exception of St. Paul‘s Cathedral from the 1700s, pretty much everything I visited is a 19th to 21st century attraction. Let’s not give Toronto a free pass.

Are you suggesting that with some more time our city may catch up? No charge entry into the ROM, AGO, Science Centre and other large museums would be a London-like start.
 
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Natika33 said:
I am specifically attracted to the idea of the spa on the waterfront because it allows for a framed view of the lake (similar to how hot springs in Japan often take advantage of natural phenomena like the ocean or a river etc to give their clients something to peacefully contemplate while soaking). Therme anywhere else would render it nothing special, so that does not solve anything in my mind. Also, now you're leaving Ontario Place without an amusement park again?
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Unless Therma plans to throw open it's doors to the public, it shouldn't be anywhere near OP proper as far as I am concerned. But I have no real objection if it used those surface parking lots just north of it. It's still will be a hop and a skip away from the waterfront...so nothing "special" would really being lost here, IMO.
 
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Admiral Beez said:
With the notable exception of St. Paul‘s Cathedral from the 1700s, pretty much everything I visited is a 19th to 21st century attraction. Let’s not give Toronto a free pass.

Are you suggesting that with some more time our city may catch up? No charge entry into the ROM, AGO, Science Centre and other large museums would be a London-like start.
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You’re understating the 19th century, London was the Imperial metropole during that era, and the wealth and treasures of the world, both honest and ill-gained, endlessly flowed into that city.
 
pw20 said:
If only Toronto was capital of a multi century imperial empire known for colonizing and looting 2/3rds of the world. Then we’d finally have more tourist attractions.
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Though we also seem to have fewer megarich on acquisitive sprees that subsequently bequeathed their collections (Chicago is a good counterexample); I think our governments are also relatively cheap when it comes to funding our institutions.

AoD
 
pw20 said:
If only Toronto was capital of a multi century imperial empire known for colonizing and looting 2/3rds of the world. Then we’d finally have more tourist attractions.
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I mean, the real joke here is that we are literally a product of the same colonization (Though I don't know how much Toronto history is in the British Museum).

But, yeah, the age of their tourist attractions notwithstanding, London has something like years of head start on us. Complaining about how much better their muesums are or how much more extensive their subway system is really misses the point.
Like, pretty much everything in London people visit is from the Victorian era or later? The Tower of London? Tower Bridge? Westminister Abbey? The Parliament buildings and Big Ben? This is just silly.
I mean, the Globe Theatre is a pretty new attraction and it's a replica of something from the 1500s so... this is not correct, nor relevant to the distribution of tourist attractions in a City that didn't exist until the early 1800s and which didn't properly achieve modern urbanity until the second half of the 20th Centry. One thing we can say for sure: the Roman Empire never set up shop here.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Ha, ok - so Lord did look into it a few years ago? Iorgot about that. Interesting stuff.

I'd be curious to see the more recent report but I guess that's why we're not likely to ever see it...
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IIRC there was a proposal was very much like the current Therme plan - entrance building on one side with a bridge to the main building on the West Island and renos of the pods.
 
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