Last week, the province took the first step towards making
Ontario Place something other than a focus of nostalgia for people who remember when it meant something to them back in 1979.
Ontario Place Corporation, an agency of the provincial Ministry of Tourism and Culture, issued a request for information, or
RFI, seeking interest from developers interested in handling the planned re-birth of the 96-acre site, most of which was landfill, which opened in 1971.
According to Hugh Mansfield, whose
firm is handling the public relations, the RFI outlined five specific categories to be addressed in any new design, which he ranked in order of importance as education, culture, retail and dining, entertainment and a showcase for the province's efforts towards sustainability.
"There were a couple of contributing factors," Mansfield says of the motivation and timing of the project. "Attendance has dropped off dramatically, down 60 per cent from the mid-80s." He says that when the Place first opened, it drew between 2.8 and 2.9 million visitors a year, a number that's hovered for the past half dozen years at around a million, half of whom just go to the
amphitheatre, and the majority of the rest of whom stick to the water park.
There is no budget set yet, but Mansfield says they expect the project to be a public-private partnership, which he says may include naming rights, but will not result in any sale of provincial land.
The deadline for the RFI is Sept. 10, after which an RFQ (request for qualifications) will be issued, followed by an RFP (request for proposals). The winner of the contract will be announced in July, 2011.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Hugh Mansfield
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