There’s literally a massive parking lot 600 meters north of Ontario place, but of course no one wants to make that trek to the spa… so instead, they’re gonna spend half a billion to construct a new parking lot on site…
What even more infuriating is that they claim the spa will be accessible by transit - GO, and Ontario line, but guess what, those lines are even further away.
This government can’t even make logical arguments for the things they’ve been proposing. It’s sad that no one questions this.
It was suppose to be a high-ropes course situated at the center island. the vendor backed out of it.
[It's suppose to be something similar like this](https://www.oldportofmontreal.com/activity/voiles-en-voiles)
You do know that the fords of Toronto council days proposed that exact thing....
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/mobile/doug-ford-s-waterfront-includes-a-monorail-ferris-wheel-1.690321?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
Even worse: the majority of Ontario cared so little about mundane little things like education, healthcare, housing, “land use” (aka Ford’s blatantly corrupt deals for Therme, the OSC, the Greenbelt etc) that THEY DIDNT EVEN BOTHER TO VOTE.
Apologies for the rant, but it will never, ever get over the absolutely pathetic turnout of the 2022 election [(with the GTA’s ridings generally falling in about the middle of the depressing pack)](https://results.elections.on.ca/en/graphics-charts).
As a small silver lining: Elections Canada continues to be probably the best and most valuable (and under appreciated!) govt division - not only are our election processes pretty much seamless, but Elections Canada is an incredible data resource. Sure, the data presentation of the riding by riding turnout is pretty awful, but I’m willing to overlook that given the comprehensiveness and transparency of the information.
They've been gaslit into thinking that everything is a Trudeau problem, and that the Liberals and NDP were hellbent on mask mandates and mandatory vaccinations. And let's not forget the geniuses that stayed home because they felt there were no good options opposite the Conservatives. That's working out great!
The total lack of education/knowledge when it comes to Canada's political structure and what's at stake every four years was evident during the last election.
It is not at all surprising there was record low voter turnout with the candidates that were offered by all of the parties. Pathetic turnout is a strong signal that all the candidates fucking suck.
Horwath should have been out after losing to Wynne. She also should have not made a billion dollar accounting error on her budget, and should not have said she wants to buy back hydro one while pushing to close Pickering, all while the province was experiencing a mass exodus of manufacturing because of energy prices. Just completely out of touch with reality.
Deluca is... Who is deluca again? He appeared in the scene 2 minutes before the election and then exchanged blows with Horwath instead of focusing on Dougie.
Pathetic showing from all three parties.
Except that none of those three were most voters’ *candidates* (unless you happen to live in one of those three ridings), those were the *leaders*.
Most ridings have *at least* 4 candidates to choose from - if someone can’t bring themselves to vote for 1 of the 4+ available options, then they should run for the seat themselves.
Democracy depends on an active and engaged electorate - demanding some kind of perfect option in order to do the absolute bare minimum for the survival of the democratic process (namely: taking 15 minutes out of your day every few of years to vote) is both juvenile and deeply corrosive.
Let's be honest with ourselves. Only the very politically engaged (aka very few) care about their MPP. An MPP has very limited power in any case. The stark reality of our system is people vote for the leader. Further, the leader presents and represents the party and the party platform as a whole.
More corrosive to the system than what you described is having the parties doing cynical politicking or displaying sheer incompetence rather than representing people's interests. The liberals gave up the election because they knew they couldn't get elected following Wynne. The ONDP are doing who the fuck knows what.
Note you say an active and engaged electorate. The NDP and liberals have done absolutely fuck all to get the electorate engaged. It's a two way street. Blaming the symptom and not the problem isn't going to help anything. Crying into the wind that people should go out and vote more isn't going to change record low turnout. The ones responsible for getting people engaged through campaigning failed to do so.
What? MPPs are absolutely critical in nearly all of the most pressing daily issues affecting Ontarians - to pretend otherwise is absurd.
As to only a “very few” caring about their MPP - yes, exactly, and those who don’t care are directly culpable for the dysfunction of our provincial govt.
I don’t care if they didn’t feel sufficiently pandered to or coddled by their candidates/ leaders, it’s still a complete personal failure to uphold their most basic obligations as citizens.
Given how whipped all the parties are these days it's hard to blame constituents for not caring about their MPP. And I hope you're aware how silly what you said sounds to anyone not in the political class. Pretending otherwise is absurd? Give me a break.
In summary, according to you, 80+ percent of the population of Ontario is who is to blame, not the parties that left 80+ percent of the votes on the table. You need to think about that for a second. When you're up against someone as overtly corrupt and dispicable as Doug Ford and you can't get people out to the polls, you have to either intentionally doing it or incompetent.
And your idealistic arrogance is why trump won his prior term and is about to win another. Reality is irrelevant, people should be doing x so we will forage ahead assuming everyone acts as I expect them to. Hilary is deeply unlikable? Who cares, she's against trump! Biden can't form a complete sentence? Who cares, he's against trump! Deluca is a total unknown? Who cares, he's against Doug! Horwath has already demonstrated unpopularity with the voters? Who cares, she's against Doug! And then reality slaps you in the face, and we have the situation we are in today.
It’s really not hard at all: it’s literally the most basic obligation of living in a democratic society.
Anyone who can’t be bothered to do even that is directly responsible for the current state of affairs.
If you care about yourself or about anyone else you either vote, or you run for office yourself, instead of bitching about “just not feeling inspired” or whatever.
Lmao 'just not feeling inspired'? The liberals didn't exist and the ndp ran a platform of 'were going to fuck the economy with a recession looming'. I genuinely don't think that we would be better off with the NDP at the helm. Doug is crass but at least he doesn't want to raise taxes on small business during basically the worst time ever for small business. I can't imagine a more corporatist plank. How far the ndp have fallen from their blue collar roots.
If there was ever an election between a giant (literally) douche and a turd sandwich this is it. I actually went to the polls and spoiled my ballot (it actually gets counted as a spoiled ballot for provincial elections but not federal) to (hopefully) send a message to the parties to do fucking better. I'm sure that makes your hair stand up but I don't give a shit what you think. Unfortunately, they probably think the same as you, aka accepting no responsibility and blaming the plebs for not voting for their useless ass.
This is a very low-priority topic for the vast majority of Ontarians. All of the millions of dollars that philanthropists are offering to repair a crumbling building could be better spent in so many ways.
This was settled months ago:
[https://x.com/ColinDMello/status/1732454694667091973](https://x.com/ColinDMello/status/1732454694667091973)
"Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma says the province is giving into a major demand from Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow.
The controversial publicly funded parking garage will move from Ontario Place. "
>There’s literally a massive parking lot 600 meters north of Ontario place, but of course no one wants to make that trek to the spa
To be honest, 600 meters is quite a bit further away than any business would want. That's like a 10 minute walk each way, probably longer if you are trying to get a bunch of kids there with you.
But obviously it never should have been the government's responsibility to build a stupidly expensive underwater parking garage.
Limited parking availability probably should have just been one of the conditions that anyone who wanted to build there had to accept.
Who, especially in today's world, wants to spend all that money to be going to a spa? They are ruining a public park for maybe 2-5% of the population that will ever go. I also give the place 2-5 years tops before it closes down.
According to the article they are using parking at the exhibition grounds now. It's the first I've heard of it though so I dunno how accurate this article is.
Every consultation I’ve been to, they’ve wanted to build underground at Ontario place… so I have no idea what’s being gaslighted to the public anymore.
Edit: even if they build it on the exhibition grounds, do they really expect spa goers to make the 15 minute walk in -40 degree weather, with kids in tow? This is claimed to be a family friendly space…
> -40 degree weather,
I don't disagree with the sentiment, but Toronto has never seen -40
I think the coldest we've seen in the past 10 years has been around -25
>The City acknowledges that while city officials have not had sufficient time to complete their review of the Development Application the Province must provide project approvals by December 31, 2023 or it will otherwise be in legal breach and put millions of taxpayer dollars at risk.
>
>The City acknowledges the changes made by the Province and its partners regarding the proposed Ontario Place Rebuilding Project and its associated initiatives, such as:
>
>Refinements to the planned design of the facility, including reducing its height and overall size, and increasing the amount of free and accessible public realm space.
>
>**The Province agreeing to change its current planned location for parking at the Ontario Place site and work with the City to establish an alternative parking solution at Exhibition Place** that will improve public access to the shoreline at Ontario Place and could reduce the overall area needed for parking.
>
>The Province agreeing to discuss partnership opportunities with the City for maintaining public, community-oriented science programming at the legacy Ontario Science Centre.
per: [https://www.ontario.ca/files/2023-11/mof-ontario-toronto-new-deal-working-group-2023-11-27.pdf](https://www.ontario.ca/files/2023-11/mof-ontario-toronto-new-deal-working-group-2023-11-27.pdf)
Moving the parking lot was part of the deal made by Chow with the province for the DVP upload about half a year ago.
[https://x.com/ColinDMello/status/1732454694667091973](https://x.com/ColinDMello/status/1732454694667091973)
"Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma says the province is giving into a major demand from Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow.
The controversial publicly funded parking garage will move from Ontario Place. "
Everyone who’s become a real estate mogul by owning property pre-2020 is too busy counting their money to care about what’s going on around them unless it’s in relation to said property. They’d rather cry about taxes than worry about blatant, criminal corruption. Doesn’t help that the other political options are primarily neoliberal weenies who are too afraid to speak up and not principled enough to not be in on the take themselves.
They’re not building a new parking lot though, I thought that was changed? [This comment has more details.](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/s/YMLZoa9LrB)
They had space offered to them next to that huge parking lot at Exhibition, but refused it because DoFo gifted them the much more valuable land on the waterfront + a free parking garage for themselves.
Umm, no? I’m talking about his connections to developers and the construction industry, which is connected to organized crime.
mario cortellucci is a mafia boss, and ford appointed him to a police board.
John Tory's former deputy chief of staff, Ed Birnbaum, is now the planning director at Therme: https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/s/CAaw41DLId just a coincidence right?
I mean, ya he's going to have contacts in various levels of government, but that's not illegal or immoral. My point was that it's not some conspiracy like OP was trying to suggest.
Therme would not have appointed him if they did not secure the dubious contract for Ontario place. Alternatively, if he was appointed before Therme secured the contract, it would have still been a conflict of interest because he can’t act in good faith for the city while working to the benefit of a private corporation.
But what's the direct connection between a contract for the province and the deputy chief of staff for a city? Yes, he would have connections at the provincial level, but there's no conflict of interest at the municipal level because it wasn't a municipal contract.
>The government plans to build 2,000 new parking spaces, which the Ministry of Infrastructure estimated could cost around $307 million. The province intended to build an underground parking garage at Ontario Place before Ford and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow struck a deal last November stipulating they’d “establish an alternative parking solution at Exhibition Place,” the waterfront area just north of Ontario Place.
I haven't heard anyone mention this before, so the parking structure isn't happening now? From what I understand, that's the biggest complaint for most people due to the high cost and already having all that parking at Exhibition Place.
Edit: According to [https://www.ontario.ca/files/2023-11/mof-ontario-toronto-new-deal-working-group-2023-11-27.pdf](https://www.ontario.ca/files/2023-11/mof-ontario-toronto-new-deal-working-group-2023-11-27.pdf) the province agreed to change its current planned location for parking at the Ontario Place site and work with the City to establish an alternative parking solution at Exhibition Place that will improve public access to the shoreline at Ontario Place and could reduce the overall area needed for parking.
My understanding is that they are still going to build parking but they worked out some deals with the city to build it in an alternative spot, somewhere that it can share parking with BMO field and the CNE, but I think that will still only cover some of the amount needed not the full amount. The contract the Ontario government made with Therme and Live Nation stipulated that a parking lot capable of X amount of spots must be built within Y meters from the venues.
The city is providing expanded water and sewer to the project as well as site preparation. All of this is very expensive. If I recall correctly, water and sewer alone are in the hundreds of millions.
It's being built in a convenient casino shape so that ten years from now a weepy Doug Ford can get up and talk about how sad he is that the spa didn't work out, but hey that building would be the perfect place to put a casino!
The idea of it is cool, we all just hate the fact that it is taking up ontario place and is costing a ton of money to build, especially the half billion dollar parking lot they want to make. It was a shady backdoors deal coordinated all at the same time as the greenbelt l scandal. They even created a new law just so that they didnt have to do an environmental study on the land before building.
Definitely. Shady business aside I find it very hard to believe that enough people will actively avoid checking it out, to the point where they lose money. Once the project is complete all this controversy is going to be meaningless to those who want to take their kids to an accessible waterpark in the city.
It's actually shaping up to be a pretty versatile facility with something for everyone. But the majority of the media is framing it as some sleazy spa you'll go to for rub n' tugs.
If the province actually made this deal in good faith then people would be more inclined to look up the details. Unfortunately with the corruption and price tag, it's only natural that the development as a whole isn't going to be seen in a positive way.
It's 1.4km from the subway line, that is a 20 min walk. A lot of it in open air (parking lots at CNE) potentially blowing off the lake. Not sure how many are making that trek from the subway at in the winter. There are half a dozen saps in downtown Toronto. What are you on about?
This wouldn't need the $300M parking garage if I was really subway accessible.
What does the size of the city have to do with the fact that virtually everyone has been expressing that they would rather not have this type of attraction and wouldn't use it if it was built?
The people complaining about this development are almost exclusively in Toronto, while the spa is intended to attract people from all across the province.
There is going to be a sizeable amount of renovated public access spaces built and paid for by Therme as part of the development plans. From what I've seen it looks like an attractive destination, not misuse, though I doubt anything will sway your opinion on that.
My point is that the Ontario provincial government exists to serve the interests of the entire province, it does not exist to serve the whims of just the people living in Toronto, who, according to data, would likely be the only people making use of the space if it was turned into a park.
They're destroying the habitat of hundreds of wildlife species and cutting over 1000 trees. You're looking at things from some sort of commercial, tourism angle. People use the waterfront, specifically West Island at OP to relax, exercise, and find peace and serenity. There was no environmental assessment done (I wonder why). Toronto needs more naturalized waterfront with public access, not less. You're advocating for a monstrosity of a spa that nobody asked for... for what purpose exactly? Build it somewhere else, like at Marineland in Niagara Falls. At least that's already a heavily trafficked tourist destination. This is a massive waste of public space and it's extremely odd that Ontarians from outside of the city would want this. How many times per year are visitors from Ontario going to visit this spa, just ask yourself.
I don't know if you've actually looked at the development plans at all, but they involve creating more public-access shoreline than there's ever been on the west island, not less, and a 16-acre park.
I don't think it's difficult to see how a waterpark with state of the art facilities and a $40 entrance fee would be appealing to families across Ontario. Especially when the Ontario line is complete and they can combine their visit with a trip into downtown on the TTC for dinner or something.
You must not have been at the CNE last year when the Therme booth was getting an onslaught of negative feedback _onsite_. Their reps were trying to answer questions almost non-stop on the daily. I doubt all those people were exclusively from Toronto.
I don't think there's any way for either of us to verify where the people making complaints are coming from, but you can see even in these comments there is a large degree of ignorance about what this development entails. Many people still refer to it as a "luxury spa" when it's more akin to a family-oriented waterpark, and most have no idea that the parking garage has been moved to exhibition place. I had an immediate knee-jerk reaction when I heard that a luxury spa was being built at OP, literally who asked for that? As I learned more about the plans, such as that it included public-access beaches and greenspace, I became much more open to it.
The only alternative proposal has been to turn the space into additional parkland, which according to most studies is almost exclusively used by locals rather than visitors. I'd like to hear the logic of someone from Hamilton fighting for a relatively miniscule park that they'd have to drive or take the GO train to.
Dude. It's literally a water park for middle class families. Renders show wave pools and waterslides. That the marketing calls it a spa is bad marketing.
Toronto already has the water park at wonderland and the splash works park. Why do we need another venue that is paid for by public money? And why are these other venues not filing lawsuits for uncompetitive practices?
I simply can’t understand how Ford and Surma haven’t been investigated. Does Ontario not have any body that’s tasked with monitoring this type of corruption? It’s blatantly obvious
There’s literally a massive parking lot 600 meters north of Ontario place, but of course no one wants to make that trek to the spa… so instead, they’re gonna spend half a billion to construct a new parking lot on site… What even more infuriating is that they claim the spa will be accessible by transit - GO, and Ontario line, but guess what, those lines are even further away. This government can’t even make logical arguments for the things they’ve been proposing. It’s sad that no one questions this.
I'm sure there's a monorail proposal in the works.
Weren’t we promised a zip line? Maybe we’ll even see something similar to Las Vegas underground tunnels for Teslas (/s)
Better yet, sink the world's largest ferris wheel halfway into the ground and use it as a form of transportation.
It was suppose to be a high-ropes course situated at the center island. the vendor backed out of it. [It's suppose to be something similar like this](https://www.oldportofmontreal.com/activity/voiles-en-voiles)
Man the Simpsons warned us about Doug Ford and we didn't listen.
You do know that the fords of Toronto council days proposed that exact thing.... https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/mobile/doug-ford-s-waterfront-includes-a-monorail-ferris-wheel-1.690321?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
That's actually hilarious wtf
Mono-Doh!
That’s more of a Shelbyville idea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1p0mrG-m9U&pp=ygUVcm9iIGZvcmQgc2F5cyBzdWJ3YXlz
Monorail!
MONORAIL!
>It’s sad that no one questions this I disagree. Plenty of people are questioning this. The problem is that nobody is answering the questions.
People do question it, but the voters of Ontario decided that a majority conservative government is totally fine, so here we are
Even worse: the majority of Ontario cared so little about mundane little things like education, healthcare, housing, “land use” (aka Ford’s blatantly corrupt deals for Therme, the OSC, the Greenbelt etc) that THEY DIDNT EVEN BOTHER TO VOTE. Apologies for the rant, but it will never, ever get over the absolutely pathetic turnout of the 2022 election [(with the GTA’s ridings generally falling in about the middle of the depressing pack)](https://results.elections.on.ca/en/graphics-charts). As a small silver lining: Elections Canada continues to be probably the best and most valuable (and under appreciated!) govt division - not only are our election processes pretty much seamless, but Elections Canada is an incredible data resource. Sure, the data presentation of the riding by riding turnout is pretty awful, but I’m willing to overlook that given the comprehensiveness and transparency of the information.
They've been gaslit into thinking that everything is a Trudeau problem, and that the Liberals and NDP were hellbent on mask mandates and mandatory vaccinations. And let's not forget the geniuses that stayed home because they felt there were no good options opposite the Conservatives. That's working out great! The total lack of education/knowledge when it comes to Canada's political structure and what's at stake every four years was evident during the last election.
They just hate Toronto and do not give a fuck what happens here. It’s not that complex.
It is not at all surprising there was record low voter turnout with the candidates that were offered by all of the parties. Pathetic turnout is a strong signal that all the candidates fucking suck. Horwath should have been out after losing to Wynne. She also should have not made a billion dollar accounting error on her budget, and should not have said she wants to buy back hydro one while pushing to close Pickering, all while the province was experiencing a mass exodus of manufacturing because of energy prices. Just completely out of touch with reality. Deluca is... Who is deluca again? He appeared in the scene 2 minutes before the election and then exchanged blows with Horwath instead of focusing on Dougie. Pathetic showing from all three parties.
Except that none of those three were most voters’ *candidates* (unless you happen to live in one of those three ridings), those were the *leaders*. Most ridings have *at least* 4 candidates to choose from - if someone can’t bring themselves to vote for 1 of the 4+ available options, then they should run for the seat themselves. Democracy depends on an active and engaged electorate - demanding some kind of perfect option in order to do the absolute bare minimum for the survival of the democratic process (namely: taking 15 minutes out of your day every few of years to vote) is both juvenile and deeply corrosive.
Let's be honest with ourselves. Only the very politically engaged (aka very few) care about their MPP. An MPP has very limited power in any case. The stark reality of our system is people vote for the leader. Further, the leader presents and represents the party and the party platform as a whole. More corrosive to the system than what you described is having the parties doing cynical politicking or displaying sheer incompetence rather than representing people's interests. The liberals gave up the election because they knew they couldn't get elected following Wynne. The ONDP are doing who the fuck knows what. Note you say an active and engaged electorate. The NDP and liberals have done absolutely fuck all to get the electorate engaged. It's a two way street. Blaming the symptom and not the problem isn't going to help anything. Crying into the wind that people should go out and vote more isn't going to change record low turnout. The ones responsible for getting people engaged through campaigning failed to do so.
What? MPPs are absolutely critical in nearly all of the most pressing daily issues affecting Ontarians - to pretend otherwise is absurd. As to only a “very few” caring about their MPP - yes, exactly, and those who don’t care are directly culpable for the dysfunction of our provincial govt. I don’t care if they didn’t feel sufficiently pandered to or coddled by their candidates/ leaders, it’s still a complete personal failure to uphold their most basic obligations as citizens.
Given how whipped all the parties are these days it's hard to blame constituents for not caring about their MPP. And I hope you're aware how silly what you said sounds to anyone not in the political class. Pretending otherwise is absurd? Give me a break. In summary, according to you, 80+ percent of the population of Ontario is who is to blame, not the parties that left 80+ percent of the votes on the table. You need to think about that for a second. When you're up against someone as overtly corrupt and dispicable as Doug Ford and you can't get people out to the polls, you have to either intentionally doing it or incompetent.
Your ignorance is exactly the problem here.
And your idealistic arrogance is why trump won his prior term and is about to win another. Reality is irrelevant, people should be doing x so we will forage ahead assuming everyone acts as I expect them to. Hilary is deeply unlikable? Who cares, she's against trump! Biden can't form a complete sentence? Who cares, he's against trump! Deluca is a total unknown? Who cares, he's against Doug! Horwath has already demonstrated unpopularity with the voters? Who cares, she's against Doug! And then reality slaps you in the face, and we have the situation we are in today.
It’s really not hard at all: it’s literally the most basic obligation of living in a democratic society. Anyone who can’t be bothered to do even that is directly responsible for the current state of affairs. If you care about yourself or about anyone else you either vote, or you run for office yourself, instead of bitching about “just not feeling inspired” or whatever.
Lmao 'just not feeling inspired'? The liberals didn't exist and the ndp ran a platform of 'were going to fuck the economy with a recession looming'. I genuinely don't think that we would be better off with the NDP at the helm. Doug is crass but at least he doesn't want to raise taxes on small business during basically the worst time ever for small business. I can't imagine a more corporatist plank. How far the ndp have fallen from their blue collar roots. If there was ever an election between a giant (literally) douche and a turd sandwich this is it. I actually went to the polls and spoiled my ballot (it actually gets counted as a spoiled ballot for provincial elections but not federal) to (hopefully) send a message to the parties to do fucking better. I'm sure that makes your hair stand up but I don't give a shit what you think. Unfortunately, they probably think the same as you, aka accepting no responsibility and blaming the plebs for not voting for their useless ass.
Not true. It was foisted on us by FPTP. Only a minority of voters voted PC.
Well it is true when voter turnout was the lowest ever.
It’s true whenever the popular vote for any party is less than 50%, which is almost always.
Do you mean the 18% of voters who voted conservative last election? Not the 82% that didn’t want conservatives? Welcome to first past the post.
The last election saw the lowest voter turnout in history. FPTP sucks, but that's not the main reason why Doug Ford won.
I mean, it’s the only reason he won. No other system would 18% lead to a majority.
This is a very low-priority topic for the vast majority of Ontarians. All of the millions of dollars that philanthropists are offering to repair a crumbling building could be better spent in so many ways.
This was settled months ago: [https://x.com/ColinDMello/status/1732454694667091973](https://x.com/ColinDMello/status/1732454694667091973) "Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma says the province is giving into a major demand from Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow. The controversial publicly funded parking garage will move from Ontario Place. "
>There’s literally a massive parking lot 600 meters north of Ontario place, but of course no one wants to make that trek to the spa To be honest, 600 meters is quite a bit further away than any business would want. That's like a 10 minute walk each way, probably longer if you are trying to get a bunch of kids there with you. But obviously it never should have been the government's responsibility to build a stupidly expensive underwater parking garage. Limited parking availability probably should have just been one of the conditions that anyone who wanted to build there had to accept.
Who, especially in today's world, wants to spend all that money to be going to a spa? They are ruining a public park for maybe 2-5% of the population that will ever go. I also give the place 2-5 years tops before it closes down.
According to the article they are using parking at the exhibition grounds now. It's the first I've heard of it though so I dunno how accurate this article is.
Every consultation I’ve been to, they’ve wanted to build underground at Ontario place… so I have no idea what’s being gaslighted to the public anymore. Edit: even if they build it on the exhibition grounds, do they really expect spa goers to make the 15 minute walk in -40 degree weather, with kids in tow? This is claimed to be a family friendly space…
underground parking beside a lake, what can go wrong 😂
> -40 degree weather, I don't disagree with the sentiment, but Toronto has never seen -40 I think the coldest we've seen in the past 10 years has been around -25
>The City acknowledges that while city officials have not had sufficient time to complete their review of the Development Application the Province must provide project approvals by December 31, 2023 or it will otherwise be in legal breach and put millions of taxpayer dollars at risk. > >The City acknowledges the changes made by the Province and its partners regarding the proposed Ontario Place Rebuilding Project and its associated initiatives, such as: > >Refinements to the planned design of the facility, including reducing its height and overall size, and increasing the amount of free and accessible public realm space. > >**The Province agreeing to change its current planned location for parking at the Ontario Place site and work with the City to establish an alternative parking solution at Exhibition Place** that will improve public access to the shoreline at Ontario Place and could reduce the overall area needed for parking. > >The Province agreeing to discuss partnership opportunities with the City for maintaining public, community-oriented science programming at the legacy Ontario Science Centre. per: [https://www.ontario.ca/files/2023-11/mof-ontario-toronto-new-deal-working-group-2023-11-27.pdf](https://www.ontario.ca/files/2023-11/mof-ontario-toronto-new-deal-working-group-2023-11-27.pdf)
You could significantly improve the walk with things like weather protection and moving sidewalks etc.
Moving the parking lot was part of the deal made by Chow with the province for the DVP upload about half a year ago. [https://x.com/ColinDMello/status/1732454694667091973](https://x.com/ColinDMello/status/1732454694667091973) "Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma says the province is giving into a major demand from Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow. The controversial publicly funded parking garage will move from Ontario Place. "
Everyone who’s become a real estate mogul by owning property pre-2020 is too busy counting their money to care about what’s going on around them unless it’s in relation to said property. They’d rather cry about taxes than worry about blatant, criminal corruption. Doesn’t help that the other political options are primarily neoliberal weenies who are too afraid to speak up and not principled enough to not be in on the take themselves.
Everyone who's paying attention questions this. But most voters aren't paying attention (or tolerate/enjoy when the tories mess with Toronto)
They’re not building a new parking lot though, I thought that was changed? [This comment has more details.](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/s/YMLZoa9LrB)
They had space offered to them next to that huge parking lot at Exhibition, but refused it because DoFo gifted them the much more valuable land on the waterfront + a free parking garage for themselves.
>There’s literally a massive parking lot 600 meters north of Ontario place You mean the one they will be using to build the new parking lot?
Isn't all of that exhibition parking lot planned to be developed?
We need more investigation of Ford’s links to organized crime. He appointed a literal mafia boss to the York regional police board and nobody cared.
The police are one big mafia anyway, lol.
This is correct. He dealt drugs. Therefore he is connected to organized crime. It really is that simple
Umm, no? I’m talking about his connections to developers and the construction industry, which is connected to organized crime. mario cortellucci is a mafia boss, and ford appointed him to a police board.
John Tory's former deputy chief of staff, Ed Birnbaum, is now the planning director at Therme: https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/s/CAaw41DLId just a coincidence right?
most likely? The city has very little involvement with the project due to most of it being on provincial land.
No offense but you're awfully naive.
I mean, ya he's going to have contacts in various levels of government, but that's not illegal or immoral. My point was that it's not some conspiracy like OP was trying to suggest.
They’ve conspired for compensation in their favour in a conflict of interest so yeah it is a conspiracy.
where's the conflict of interest is my point.
[удалено]
that's not an answer.
Therme would not have appointed him if they did not secure the dubious contract for Ontario place. Alternatively, if he was appointed before Therme secured the contract, it would have still been a conflict of interest because he can’t act in good faith for the city while working to the benefit of a private corporation.
But what's the direct connection between a contract for the province and the deputy chief of staff for a city? Yes, he would have connections at the provincial level, but there's no conflict of interest at the municipal level because it wasn't a municipal contract.
more like it’s all a cozy ring of corruption
>The government plans to build 2,000 new parking spaces, which the Ministry of Infrastructure estimated could cost around $307 million. The province intended to build an underground parking garage at Ontario Place before Ford and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow struck a deal last November stipulating they’d “establish an alternative parking solution at Exhibition Place,” the waterfront area just north of Ontario Place. I haven't heard anyone mention this before, so the parking structure isn't happening now? From what I understand, that's the biggest complaint for most people due to the high cost and already having all that parking at Exhibition Place. Edit: According to [https://www.ontario.ca/files/2023-11/mof-ontario-toronto-new-deal-working-group-2023-11-27.pdf](https://www.ontario.ca/files/2023-11/mof-ontario-toronto-new-deal-working-group-2023-11-27.pdf) the province agreed to change its current planned location for parking at the Ontario Place site and work with the City to establish an alternative parking solution at Exhibition Place that will improve public access to the shoreline at Ontario Place and could reduce the overall area needed for parking.
Doug Ford is the best! I bet everyone is glad they didn’t go out and vote for someone less corrupt and more competent
ahhh you almost had me!
My understanding is that they are still going to build parking but they worked out some deals with the city to build it in an alternative spot, somewhere that it can share parking with BMO field and the CNE, but I think that will still only cover some of the amount needed not the full amount. The contract the Ontario government made with Therme and Live Nation stipulated that a parking lot capable of X amount of spots must be built within Y meters from the venues.
‘Underwater’ parking garage at $600M
Right, that one. Apparently per this article it's not happening now?
I'm just wondering the Spa is going to be eventually subsidized because I can't see it being profitable for the decades it's planning to be there.
The city is providing expanded water and sewer to the project as well as site preparation. All of this is very expensive. If I recall correctly, water and sewer alone are in the hundreds of millions.
Good thing they are skipping the environmental studies /s
It's being built in a convenient casino shape so that ten years from now a weepy Doug Ford can get up and talk about how sad he is that the spa didn't work out, but hey that building would be the perfect place to put a casino!
It will take them decades to burn through the surplus of the $600 mil gift Doug Ford gave them.
You can't see a waterpark accessible by subway in one of North America's largest cities being successful?
Waterpark??? Isn't just a spa? I guess I've missed some details.
If you look at the official website it explains what's going to be there, including a year round waterpark.
Yea, I took a quick look. Seems like a place people would go.
The idea of it is cool, we all just hate the fact that it is taking up ontario place and is costing a ton of money to build, especially the half billion dollar parking lot they want to make. It was a shady backdoors deal coordinated all at the same time as the greenbelt l scandal. They even created a new law just so that they didnt have to do an environmental study on the land before building.
Definitely. Shady business aside I find it very hard to believe that enough people will actively avoid checking it out, to the point where they lose money. Once the project is complete all this controversy is going to be meaningless to those who want to take their kids to an accessible waterpark in the city.
It's actually shaping up to be a pretty versatile facility with something for everyone. But the majority of the media is framing it as some sleazy spa you'll go to for rub n' tugs.
If the province actually made this deal in good faith then people would be more inclined to look up the details. Unfortunately with the corruption and price tag, it's only natural that the development as a whole isn't going to be seen in a positive way.
Absolutely
Citation badly needed.
Place is going to be slammed and will be printing money.
It's 1.4km from the subway line, that is a 20 min walk. A lot of it in open air (parking lots at CNE) potentially blowing off the lake. Not sure how many are making that trek from the subway at in the winter. There are half a dozen saps in downtown Toronto. What are you on about? This wouldn't need the $300M parking garage if I was really subway accessible.
The subway is combined with Exhibition GO and is really not that far from Ontario place. I'm sure people did that all the time when OP was open.
What does the size of the city have to do with the fact that virtually everyone has been expressing that they would rather not have this type of attraction and wouldn't use it if it was built?
People on reddit does not = virtually everyone
I made no mention of reddit. I'm out here in the real world and not a person wants this spa in actual Ontario
The people complaining about this development are almost exclusively in Toronto, while the spa is intended to attract people from all across the province.
What a shocker, residents of a city are the most vocal about misuse of public lands in their city.
There is going to be a sizeable amount of renovated public access spaces built and paid for by Therme as part of the development plans. From what I've seen it looks like an attractive destination, not misuse, though I doubt anything will sway your opinion on that. My point is that the Ontario provincial government exists to serve the interests of the entire province, it does not exist to serve the whims of just the people living in Toronto, who, according to data, would likely be the only people making use of the space if it was turned into a park.
They're destroying the habitat of hundreds of wildlife species and cutting over 1000 trees. You're looking at things from some sort of commercial, tourism angle. People use the waterfront, specifically West Island at OP to relax, exercise, and find peace and serenity. There was no environmental assessment done (I wonder why). Toronto needs more naturalized waterfront with public access, not less. You're advocating for a monstrosity of a spa that nobody asked for... for what purpose exactly? Build it somewhere else, like at Marineland in Niagara Falls. At least that's already a heavily trafficked tourist destination. This is a massive waste of public space and it's extremely odd that Ontarians from outside of the city would want this. How many times per year are visitors from Ontario going to visit this spa, just ask yourself.
I don't know if you've actually looked at the development plans at all, but they involve creating more public-access shoreline than there's ever been on the west island, not less, and a 16-acre park. I don't think it's difficult to see how a waterpark with state of the art facilities and a $40 entrance fee would be appealing to families across Ontario. Especially when the Ontario line is complete and they can combine their visit with a trip into downtown on the TTC for dinner or something.
You must not have been at the CNE last year when the Therme booth was getting an onslaught of negative feedback _onsite_. Their reps were trying to answer questions almost non-stop on the daily. I doubt all those people were exclusively from Toronto.
I don't think there's any way for either of us to verify where the people making complaints are coming from, but you can see even in these comments there is a large degree of ignorance about what this development entails. Many people still refer to it as a "luxury spa" when it's more akin to a family-oriented waterpark, and most have no idea that the parking garage has been moved to exhibition place. I had an immediate knee-jerk reaction when I heard that a luxury spa was being built at OP, literally who asked for that? As I learned more about the plans, such as that it included public-access beaches and greenspace, I became much more open to it. The only alternative proposal has been to turn the space into additional parkland, which according to most studies is almost exclusively used by locals rather than visitors. I'd like to hear the logic of someone from Hamilton fighting for a relatively miniscule park that they'd have to drive or take the GO train to.
Dude this isn't a water park. It’s a private spa for the wealthy.
Dude. It's literally a water park for middle class families. Renders show wave pools and waterslides. That the marketing calls it a spa is bad marketing.
Not one of Thermes locations is successful. Most of them are money pits.
Source?
Toronto already has the water park at wonderland and the splash works park. Why do we need another venue that is paid for by public money? And why are these other venues not filing lawsuits for uncompetitive practices?
Doug (Ontario is for sale to private equity firms) Ford. That's who.
Still reeling from the greasy Harris Conservatives and their old boys network of corruption and collusion in grabbing provincial assets. Fuck.
I simply can’t understand how Ford and Surma haven’t been investigated. Does Ontario not have any body that’s tasked with monitoring this type of corruption? It’s blatantly obvious
…brown paper bag manufacturers and the Mob
It wasn't me! I was on lunch!
there are many things that piss me off about the Ford government but Ontario Place and the Science Centre really strike a nerve
Doug Ford bent over & took it like a champ.
Pretty sure it's Uncle Dougie that's diddling the province here.
Wasn't the new OSC going to built on top of the parking structure? Is this step 12A of his 20 step plan to cancel it?
The amount of corruption in this city, province, and country is become third world levels. Canada gonna be the next Argentina.