Post (Toronto Magazine)
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Saturday, February 17, 2007
Michael A. Lee-Chin, 56, the man whose name adorns Toronto's nuttiest piece of new architecture, does not tire of telling the story of his first meeting with Hilary Weston. Why should he? It's a great story: the kid from Jamaica, son of an unwed mom who worked in a grocery store, meets the woman of privilege, married to Canada's wealthiest grocer.
Today, excitement is building to the June 2 opening of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, the colossal confection in aluminum, glass and steel that now abuts the Bloor Street side of the Royal Ontario Museum. As workers scrambled this week to finish the drywall and the floors, Lee- Chin (who plans to fly his mother and his eight siblings up from Jamaica for the opening) took time to talk about how he got his name on the ROM.
"I was in Burlington, minding my own business," says Lee-Chin, who owns AIC, the mutual fund company. "SARS was the topic of the day, and President Bush was sabre-rattling in Iraq. Everybody was in a funk. Hilary called me. She was the chairperson of the ROM Foundation. We made a plan to meet on Tuesday, March 8, 2003, at 2 p.m.
"The Forbes billionaires list had just come out and was on the newsstands in the U.S. The night before my meeting with Hilary, someone sent it to me. I was leafing through it, and I saw a photograph of Hilary and Galen Weston in the centrefold, juxtaposed beside myself."
The next day, when Weston came to Burlington, Lee-Chin showed her their photos in Forbes. He also told her that in 1964 Galen's brother, Grainger Weston, gave Lee-Chin his first summer job at his hotel in Jamaica, mowing the lawns; he also gave the boy his second summer job, cleaning the engine room of a cruise ship that travelled between Miami, Jamaica and the Bahamas.
"It was hot, noisy and dirty," Lee- Chin recalls.
At the end of the summer, Lee-Chin said, his boss gave him his first helicopter ride, as a treat for hard work.
Fast-forward almost 40 years, and Lee-Chin is atop AIC, which manages $9-billion of Canadians' savings with this simple slogan: "Buy. Hold. And Prosper." He has a mansion in Miami, a Ferrari, a corporate jet and a 12-hectare estate in Hamilton. He also owns Jamaica's largest bank.
So we can forgive him if a trace of a satisfied smile crossed his lips when Weston came to see him, to ask him for $30-million for the Royal Ontario Museum. Of course, he said yes.
The tale fits with the new image the ROM seeks to portray. Long a kind of WASPy dowager from Rosedale, the museum under William Thorsell (who is wisely vacationing in the Caribbean this week) wants to reach out and connect with the city. Lee-Chin, the immigrant made good, is the perfect front man for that effort. Now, if only the 200 workers on site can get the thing done on time.
I spent several hours this week in the skin of the crystal, as it were, with David Palmer, president of the ROM Board of Governors, Al Shaikoli, head of ROM facilities, and John Martin, who has worked five years here, heading the Vanbots Construction team building the Crystal.
The Crystal inside is filled with scaffolding. The huge steel beams, connecting at crazy angles everywhere, are coated with Cementus, a fire-retardant material.
Workers on the scaffolding are busy attaching steel studs to the inner shell of the Crystal, to which they screw the drywall. Yes, forget about seeing those glorious beams when you come in. Drywall and plaster will cover everything, apparently to appease the fire marshal. Right now, 80 drywallers from Marel are at work on the site.
"It's coming, Al, it's coming," one worker says, recognizing Shaikoli.
"Faster, faster," Shaikoli says. (On Wednesday the snow forced 80 workers, who are putting the cladding on the outside of the building, to stay home.)
Raising the money to build the Crystal turned out to be the easy part (although the price tag rose from $200-million to $250-million, which means that, with $219-million raised so far, the ROM is still $31-million short of what it needs to finish the job.) The tricky job is turning New York architect Daniel Libeskind's sketch on a napkin into an actual museum.
"Steel prices doubled," says Palmer. "The volume of steel used in the design also doubled. The costs went up 18% over four years. We had to turn Libeskind's drawing into an architectural design and then a schematic design. We had 3,000 pieces, each one unique, of steel, about 3,500 tonnes in all."
All counted, the addition to the museum involves fitting together one million pieces of hardware. This week, I saw workers welding pipe for the emergency sprinkler system and installing boxes for the fire alarms; the complexity of the job is scary.
Last summer, Martin travelled to Denver to visit the construction site of the addition to the Denver Art Gallery, another Libeskind building which looks, to the untrained eye, a lot like our Crystal. That building opened in October. He also flew to Berlin to look at Libeskind's Jewish Museum.
"Denver gave us confidence that we could do it in time," Martin says. "The geometry makes it very complicated," he says. "The nighttime entrance through the first floor is like a tunnel through a mountainside." Still, he vows, "the drywalling will be done by the end of April."
Libeskind has conceived a building where nothing is at 90 degrees to anything else. Even the floor of the main entrance in the Crystal is at a slight angle, rising from Bloor Street to the historic building, to avoid anyone having to climb a stair. Every wall and many ceilings are on wacky angles, which means workers had to train in rappelling in harnesses in order to work on the inside or outside. It's like one big rock-climbing expedition, only they're all getting paid to do it.
As my tour pauses in the future Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles and Costumes on the top floor of the easternmost crystal, Shaikoli looks out the window at a worker walking on the roof. Then he cries out in alarm.
"I have to talk to his boss," he says.
"That stupid guy! He almost slipped off."
As a construction site, the place has a refreshing informality: Workers are smoking (in a government funded building!), rock music blares and one guy in overalls, hard hat and harness is taking a nap, stretched out on a tall stack of sheets of Canadian Gypsum drywall.
One wonders, though, how easy it will be to display some of the museum's collection. I ask Francisco Alvarez, the museum's spokesman, how one hangs textiles in a gallery whose walls slope at 45-degree angles.
"Well, we don't have very many big pieces of textile," he says, but admits that, "Some of our curators don't like it very much."
Still, let's face it: It's hard to get everyone on board in this stodgy old town. One locations manager in the film business tells me he and his colleagues, when they saw the Crystal, commented, "Well, there goes that corner
for shooting." Prior to the Crystal, the corner of Bloor and Avenue Road featured a stately collection of old yellow brick buildings; now it has a zany box clad in aluminum and glass.
The flip side is that Toronto is building something unique, that transforms the ROM and makes it look like nothing else around.
"This is what we hope will be an irresistible attraction, that you will be aware of and which I am sure you will want to share with visitors," says Palmer.
Toronto will have to wait longer than June 2 to fully judge the success of the ROM's renaissance. While the Crystal is set to open on that date, most of its galleries will be empty for a 10- day "architectural opening." The gift shop on the main floor, ROM World Diner and Crystal Five Bistro Bar will then stay open while many galleries will close to install their exhibits.
Many of the beloved dinosaurs, for example, are in the custody of Research
Casting International, in St. Catharines; some were not posed in historically correct positions and will return when the Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs and the Age of Mammals reopen in December. The last galleries in the Crystal will open in April, 2008.
But for Lee-Chin, the big moment will be in June. Having missed the April, 2003, announcement of his $30- million donation (his mother was worried about SARS), he is determined to be here this time with his siblings and his mother. In a preview of his remarks for that occasion, Lee-Chin this week marvelled at his good fortune.
"I didn't choose the era in which I was born," he says. "Can you imagine if I was born 200 years earlier, I would be a slave. I would be chattel!
"I have a podium. I am an anomaly. I shouldn't be here today, given the statistics. What a podium I have to inspire others."
pkuitenbrouwer@nationalpost.com
March 19, 1914
Royal Ontario Museum opens to the public.
Oct. 12, 1933
ROM opens a new wing, with a beaux art main facade that places the main entrance on Queen's Park and completes the H-shape basic floor plan.
1955
The ROM, which had operated as five separate museums for archaeology, geology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology, becomes a single museum.
Oct. 26, 1968
McLaughlin Planetarium opens, a gift from Canadian automotive magnate Col. R. Samuel McLaughlin.
September, 1982
ROM opens the Queen Elizabeth Terrace Building, a $55-million addition on Bloor Street.
November, 1995
ROM closes the McLaughlin Planetarium, due to a permanent reduction to the museum's operating grant.
Feb. 26, 2002
ROM chooses Daniel Libeskind as lead architect for Renaissance ROM.
March, 2003
The ROM demolishes the Queen Elizabeth Terrace Building to make way for architect Daniel Libeskind's new Crystal.
April 2, 2003
Michael Lee-Chin, the billionaire chairman of AIC mutual funds, donates $30-million to the ROM.
May, 2003
The Ming Tomb is moved to make way for the new building.
March, 2004
Work begins on what is now called the Michael A. Lee-Chin Crystal.
July 12, 2005
Topping off ceremony: The ROM puts up last steel beam for the new Crystal.
Nov. 7, 2005
ROM cancels plan for a 46-storey condo tower on site of the McLaughlin planetarium after intense public opposition. The plan would have netted theROM$30-million.
December, 2005
ROM opens 10 renovated galleries in its historic wings.
Jan. 5, 2007
ROM asks city to waive its $2,400 annual rent on the piece of the sky above Bloor Street sliced by Libeskind's Crystal. So far, no answer.
Jan. 18, 2007
Teck Cominco Ltd., the mining giant, gives the ROM $10-million, which will help create a new home for the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame.
June 2, 2007
Architectural opening and building dedication of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, including the ROM World Diner, ROM Museum Store and the Crystal Five Bistro Bar on the top floor of the new addition. Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World, 1690-1850, and History of History, an exhibition by Japanese contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, will open with the Crystal.
December, 2007
Dinosaurs return from restoration company in St. Catharines; galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs and Gallery of the Age of Mammals to open.
January, 2008
Gallery of South Asia and Gallery of West Asia to open.
April, 2008
Gallery of Textiles and Costume and Gallery of Africa, the Americas and Asia-Pacific open.
2007-2009
Ten new galleries are planned to open, including the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame and Schad Family Gallery of Life in Crisis (named for Robert Schad, the founder of Husky Injection Moulding Systems Ltd., who gave the ROM $12-million in November, 2006) and galleries for the East Roman Empire, Nubia, Rome, Byzantium and 20th-Century Design.
*****
The ROM Deconstructed
National Post
Saturday, February 17, 2007
The centrepiece of the ROM's renovation project is the Michael Lee- Chin Crystal, an abstract structure that will house seven spacious new galleries for the museum. The National Post presents a look inside what will surely become one of Toronto's most iconic buildings.
$250,000,000 The total project budget for Renaissance ROM, making it the largest cultural fundraising campaign in Canada's history. As of January, 2007, the campaiagn has raised a total of $249.6-million.
36.5 metres The height of tip of the Lee-Chin Crystal, equivalent to 10 storeys. It will overhang the Bloor Street sidewalk at a height of nine storeys above ground.
3,500 tons Amount of steel used to create the skeleton of the Lee-Chin Crystal. The bolts that hold the skeleton together collectively weighed 38 tons.
25% The amount of the Lee-Chin Crystal's exterior that will be glass. The remaining three-quarters will be extruded brushed aluminum cladding, three layers and three feet thick.
0 Number of right angles to the Lee-Chin Crystal, which is comprise of five interlocking, self-supporting structures of different geometric shapes.
- Architect Daniel Libeskind's initial concept for the ROM's expansion was sketched on a paper napkin while attending a family wedding at the Museum. Inspired by specimens from the Museum's gem and minerals collection, the design was quickly dubbed "the Crystal".
- Renaissance ROM is considered one of the most challenging construction projects currently underway in North America.
- During peak construction periods, approximately 250 workers will be onsite.
- Having to navigate sloped walls and difficult angles, workers had to train to use rappelling techniques in order to complete their work.
- Excluding bridges into the two Heritage buildings, the Lee-Chin Crystal is not attached to the original buildings.
- The number of objects on display at the ROM will nearly be doubled.
- Renaissance ROM is expected to raise annual attendance from 750,000 to between 1.3 million and 1.6 million visitors, and generate additional operating funds to restore necessary financial support.
