A heritage schoolhouse from 1885 has been restored as a state-of-the-art museum and event space – a cornerstone of Aurora, Ont.’s new town square that serves multiple purposes within the municipality and its surrounding York Region.
Aurora, located 50 kilometres north of Toronto, is not alone when it comes to repurposing significant buildings into community gathering places, says Roland Rom Colthoff, director at Toronto firm RAW Design, the lead architect of the Aurora hub. Across Canada, community developments are happening as municipalities require developers to allocate funds toward building or retrofitting public community centres and cultural facilities, with the federal government offering incentives such as the Build Communities Strong Fund.
“As remote work has allowed more people to settle in smaller cities and towns for financial and quality of life reasons, these municipalities are realizing they should offer more than just cheap land,” Mr. Colthoff says “We believe that it is not enough to improve sidewalks or restore storefronts to revitalize these areas, but rather create shared spaces for events and public celebration. Creating a recognizable attraction can stimulate more downtown activity and attract investment.”
In addition to the Aurora Town Square, RAW has also been involved in creating Kitchener, Ont.’s Tannery District, a mixed-use office and retail area built around the century-old Lang Tannery industrial site, and Kingston, Ont.’s restored heritage Broom Factory, a new community meeting space in the city’s east end.
A new identity for Aurora’s downtown
The Town Square at 50 Victoria St., southeast of Yonge and Wellington streets, creates a downtown focus that Aurora has never had before, says Suzanne Haines, executive director of the Aurora Cultural Centre Board.
Since Ontario’s Highway 404 opened in 1985, new housing developments have been built in Aurora’s east end, causing its historic downtown along Yonge Street to suffer a loss of identity, she adds.
The town, which has a current population of 62,000, regularly ranks among the wealthiest communities in Ontario, driven by a strong local economy, according to Statistics Canada data.
Since the town hired Toronto consulting firm Planning Partnership to develop concepts in 2017, the project has significantly evolved. “I asked what I could ask for. They said ‘blue sky’ is a great place to start,” Ms. Haines recalls, indicating that the sky was the limit when it came to the design.
Initially, the town’s wishlist was for new event spaces to attract people back to downtown and stimulate economic growth, she says.
The multi-use theatre and public square replacing the property’s two-storey parking lot developed when RAW Design became involved in 2018. A high water table made it difficult to put parking underground, so instead the parking was moved to the edge of the site around the theatre, while the area between the school and library was transformed into the public square, Mr. Colthoff explains.
It’s all in the details
The schoolhouse, with its gleaming white oak floors and high ceilings decorated with pressed metal, had already become home to Aurora’s museum. Its restored, bright classrooms now host art classes, meetings and exhibits, with two of the gallery spaces aptly named Homeroom Galleries.
The major new attraction is the 250-seat Davide De Simone Performance Hall, named for the late patriarch of Aurora housing developer Royalpark Homes, one of the project’s donors. It features a studio-quality control room, and its seating by U.K.-based Audience Systems is on risers that can be retracted into the wall to create a flat floor for events, making it a multi-functional space.
Alongside the museum and event space is a newly built theatre that links to the modern Aurora library through an enclosed public walkway built atop the new public square. Since the entire complex opened in 2024, it has welcomed more than 300,000 visitors, according to Phil Rose, the Town of Aurora’s manager of cultural services.
A glass-enclosed walkway was added to provide all-season access between the theatre and Aurora’s 44,000-square foot main library, built in 2001, that faces Yonge Street. The walkway includes sofas and upholstered chairs overlooking the 29,000-square-foot outdoor event space, named Mirkopoulos Plateia (plaza,) after a project donor. It also includes a skating loop in the winter, Mr. Rose says.
The Aurora Town Square project budget was $59.7-million, $5-million of which came from donations, he says. While Aurora’s major project donor campaign, which sought donations of $50,000 and above, is officially over, the town is still seeking donations of $10,000-plus through a community campaign that’s intended for future expansion and facility upkeeps, he adds.
Future plans involve Victoria Hall to the north of the school and theatre. Built as a church in the 1870s, it later served as a library, though it’s currently undergoing renovations with a $2-million fund earmarked toward transforming it into an event attraction.
“The Town Square has been a great success in supporting the community and has become a regional attraction,” Ms. Haines says.
For instance, it’s attracting audiences and programming from outside Aurora, including Toronto-based arts organizations CONTACT Photography Festival and FabCollab. It’s also helping stimulate new cafés, restaurants and small business activity downtown.
“We’ve met our goals and we still have more blue-sky dreams.” Ms. Haines says.