Many fond memories are tied to Ontario Place. From concerts at the Forum or an afternoon at Children's Village, in its heyday Ontario Place was seen as a state-of-art lakeside attraction.
That heyday may have passed for the park, but it's hoped a major revamp or even a complete rework of the site will keep people coming back for another 40 years.
"The park, next year, will be 40 years old and it has not had a major refurbishment in those 40 years," said Tim Casey, the general manager of Ontario Place. "There have been significant changes, but not something encompassing the entire park."
So, Ontario Place is looking for anyone to share their new and innovative ideas to develop a state-of-the-art, year-round waterfront attraction with an even wider demographic.
"There are a lot of people who use the park and have used it for years. Some people are new to it, but they all have ideas," Casey said. "There is no monopoly on what might be a good idea. So what we are looking for is what people feel would be an appropriate vision for the park."
Whether it means keeping the iconic Cinesphere and refurbishing or tearing down the pods, allowing residential opportunities or growing the marina, there are big changes in store for the 94 acres (including water lots) located a mere four kilometres west of downtown Toronto.
"When this park opened up it was really considered extremely innovative. When it opened in 1971 there really wasn't anything from an entertainment standpoint on the waterfront," explained Casey.
Ontario Place was conceived under Ontario Premier Bill Davis and it was considered quite innovative in its time. It featured a five-pod pavilion complex, an open-air forum, pedal boats, a marina, restaurants and the world's first permanent IMAX theatre, the Cinesphere.
"The province at that time was displaying its innovativeness and this had a sort of high-tech look in those days," Casey said.
Architect Eberhard Zeidler designed the sphere and the pods with the incorporation of the three artificial "barrier islands" made from city landfill. The Children's Village was designed by Eric McMillan; the glass pagoda building was designed by Raymond Moriyama.
The Wilderness Adventure water ride was added to Ontario Place about 35 years ago and remains a popular attraction. Today there is a massive water park, known as Heritage Court, effect theatres and the popular Atom Blaster sponge ball game. Even without all the attractions, Ontario Place offers some beautiful views of Lake Ontario.
But, because of the age of the park decisions needed to be made about much of the park's infrastructure, which has reached the end of its useful life so "we have to refurbish it or replace it," he said.
Ontario Place has issued a Request for Information (RFI) to obtain ideas that consider opportunities for partnerships, environmental leadership, and integration with Toronto's Waterfront.
"We want people's ideas on how we should develop Ontario Place," he said. "Designers can treat Ontario Place as a blank slate. We want an all encompassing vision for how that should be developed and what it should look like."
Currently attracting close to one million people annually, Casey said the hope is to broaden the demographic.
"We haven't closed the door on anything," Casey said. "We have put some criteria on it: it has to be sustainable over the long term, wherever possible we would like to see it encompass other activities that would be good for the province and aspects related to education and recreation... we would like it to have a significant greening component and we would like it to show off provincial innovation perhaps in how it is designed or what is encompassed in it."
Some of the pods are mothballed at the present time and it would be quite costly to renovate them so Casey said they are waiting to see how the pods will fit into the broader scheme of the park.
"We continue to work at improving the park all the time, but we do it with an eye towards the fact that there will be major changes coming," Casey said. "We want to get the full park back into operation, but we want to lay out the plan before they put more time and money into refurbishing elements of the park."
The RFI documents are available at www.mwww.merx.com where a description of the RFI is also available.
The deadline for submissions is Sept. 10.