Rendering of the redevelopment of Ontario Place by Therme Group.Therme Group
This week, Therme Canada revealed more visuals of its controversial Ontario Place facility – a sprawling private spa complex on what used to be parkland.
The PR rollout emphasized “sustainable” and “inclusive” aspects of the design. But this is still the same disastrous project it’s always been. It is a private stadium-sized recreation facility that has no business existing on a waterfront, accompanied by an enormous parking garage. And it’s not getting better.
Begin with the substantive news this week: Ontario’s public parking garage is moving forward. The province has quietly opened a request for proposals for building 3,500 spaces in a 300-metre waterfront structure about the size of a shopping mall. (As you may recall, the province closed the Ontario Science Centre under false pretenses and moved it here to justify building this garage.) The bid process closes July 24, a breakneck pace for a project that will cost at minimum $400-million.
The garage and the Therme building will be elephants on this site, dwarfing the other components in size and budget. Each represents an affront to 50 years of waterfront revitalization efforts aimed at removing – not creating – barriers to the water.
Scale model of the Ontario Place redevelopment by Diamond Schmitt Architects in Toronto on July 7, 2025.Alex Bozikovic/The Globe and Mail
This week’s show-and-tell was misdirection. Therme invited journalists to the offices of Diamond Schmitt Architects (DSAI), which has a strong if diminishing reputation for public architecture. There, architect Gary McCluskie described Therme’s project as “an incredible facility and a resource for everyone in Toronto.”
The drawings on display, however, showed a malignant growth on the city. The Therme building now resembles something between a shopping mall and a giant tumor, a cluster of three bulbous masses that rise up to 11 storeys high.
It is smaller than before, but also uglier. Previous drawings featured misleading portrayals of huge trees and clear glass walls. This time, there’s less glass, less green and a lot of green-striped siding.
DSAI did not show standard architectural drawings with dimensions, the basic tools of professional accountability. I had to crouch down next to a physical model and see, for the first time, how the 43-metre-tall Therme building will tower over the waterfront. Therme and DSAI have managed to keep such views from the public, aided by a special legislation that exempts this project from normal planning, environmental and planning processes.
But here are some numbers. The West Island, until recently, was a 5.7-hectare public park – poorly maintained but alive and home to 800 trees. In its place, Therme aims to build a 3.2-hectare building with waterslides, indoor and outdoor pools, and thermal baths. This thing will be surrounded by 6.4 hectares of new landscape, some on a rooftop.
Do the math: 5.7 hectares of public space demolished, 6.4 hectares newly built. But the new public space exists in the shadow of an enormous private building. It is tightly constrained, and up to 30 per cent will be under Therme’s control.
For the landscape, the undistinguished landscape firm Studio TLA and the Indigenous-led Trophic Design worked with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This is at least partly a business relationship; Therme’s Adam Vaughan confirmed that MCFN have financial interests in the project.
The new strip of landscape around the waterpark includes four Indigenous placekeeping sites and some ecological improvements. But there is also lots of concrete, almost no shade and a compositionally weak design. This utterly lacks the spirit of place that was present in Michael Hough’s original landscape architecture for the site. Landscape architect Jeffrey Craft of Studio TLA sold it thus: “We’re making sure that the building functions as a system with the landscape, creating habitat that doesn’t exist now.”
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True. Nothing but bare earth exists on the West Island now because the province spent $40-million to bulldoze it.
Was that necessary? According to Mr. Vaughan, yes. “The shoreline was badly eroded,” he said at the design presentation. The existing buildings of Ontario Place “are almost falling over.” In this version of events, Therme is providing “an economic model” to pay for fixing the rest of the place and adding new park.
A view of the pods at Ontario Place in July, 2021. The West Island, until recently, was a 5.7-hectare public park home to 800 trees.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
But that is false. The province could have delivered parkland with cultural programming and a modest commercial component for relatively little money. Instead it is spending $2.237-billion (for now) on the current scheme, much of it for Therme. In return Therme’s direct payments will amount to just $163-million in today’s dollars, plus property management obligations and the gift of building the waterpark. This is not generosity. It’s a transaction, and a terrible one for the public.
The only acceptable way forward is to dump Therme, eliminate the parking garage and seek a new, more sensitive plan that balances public and private interests.
As one observer put it, talking about Ontario Place in 1995: “I don’t think the mandate here is to make money. I think the question of simply providing a public avenue for private sectors to make a lot of money is not right.” That was the late architect Jack Diamond, founder of Diamond Schmitt, and he was right. He would not have been impressed with this week’s news.