Arena transforms into art, media studios.
Humber College opened its new Arts and Media Studios in the former Lakeshore Lions Arena on April 23. The arena underwent major construction with new classrooms, studios and small theatres along with a gymnasium. Here guests tour one of the small studios.
Staff photo/IAN KELSO
It's a $10-million reimagining of an historic landmark where generations and thousands of children learned to skate.
The former decades-old Lakeshore Lions Arena reopened Friday as the new Humber Arts and Media Studios after Humber College signed a 20-year lease with arena owner, Toronto District School Board (TDSB).
"Re-purposing this local landmark and the kind of partnership it represents with local school boards and cultural organizations is a great example of what can happen when a community works together," Humber College President John Davies said at the April 23 official opening.
Dance-rehearsal studios, a black box theatre and new gymnasium benefit not only Humber students, but the broader community, as well as TDSB schools. Community access will be available through TDSB permit at a preferential rate, TDSB chair and local trustee Bruce Davis has said of the deal, which he brokered.
In February, more than 700 Humber creative and performing arts, media studies and information technology students began classes at the retrofitted 53,000-sq.-ft. Birmingham Street arena. The facility boasts acting, cabaret (comedy), dance, film, media and television studios, rehearsal rooms, technical labs, scene and carpentry shops, a lecture hall and faculty offices.
In the deal, the TDSB gains 1,000 hours a year of access: 700 hours in the gym; 100 hours in the black box theatre, and 200 hours in the dance-rehearsal studios, Davis said.
"It's the nature of the arts that you create something out of nothing," Davis said. "Artists make us angry, sad, joyful. They confront us with changes that should go on in the world. What you're doing here is incubating men and women who for the next 50 years or more will challenge us."
"I'm in awe," Davis said repeatedly, as he acknowledged Sheila Penny, a professional architect and the board's head of facilities who spearheaded the project.
Davis also acknowledged Amber Morley, for keeping his "feet to the fire" in her years-long advocacy as a principal of the South Etobicoke Youth Assembly for a regulation-sized gymnasium for basketball play in the community.
That gym is part of the new Humber Media Studios.
"It's amazing. I'm so, so, so thrilled," Morley, 20, who plans to study public relations at Humber College this fall said in an interview. "Bruce himself is an amazing advocate. He kept us on the agenda. We're dying to get in there. We have so many programs. We're excited."
Farid Yazdani is already in there. He's a first-year Humber acting student.
"If someone had told me I'd spend $4,000 and get a $10-million school, I wouldn't have believed it," he said in an interview. This summer, Yazdani appears in the film, Camp Rock II. "They prepare us by giving us the shoes, but we've got to put them on and walk out in the world."
Recently, Humber leveraged $55 million in revitalization funding to open its Centre for Justice Leadership last fall, its new media studios, as well as the future replacement of its existing two-storey 'L' building, where the media and performing arts programs had operated.
The replacement 'L' building to be completed by March 2011 is being funded through government infrastructure grants, $30 million from the Ontario government, another $5 million from the feds.
The investment is part of more than a $2-billion economic stimulus plan by the Canadian and Ontario governments known as the Knowledge Infrastructure Program.
Etobicoke-Lakeshore MPP and Children and Youth Services Minister Laurel Broten lauded Davis, also an area resident, on the project.
"I can tell you when you have people who live here, work here and want to make a community a better place, great things happen. This is precisely what has happened on this Humber Lakeshore campus," Broten said. "...This community is an absolutely fantastic place to raise your family, to work in and live in. My commitment to this community over many years has been to work to revitalize our Lakeshore so it can be what we truly aspire for it to be. This project is indicative of the community's aspirations."
The Lions arena had been home for decades to Faustina Hockey, and for years was the practice rink for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Both now skate a block away in the new MasterCard Centre for Hockey Excellence on Kipling Avenue.