The Ontario government is working on a master parking plan to serve the Ontario Place redevelopment. We just don’t know when it will be built, where or how much it will cost.
Discussions between the province and the City of Toronto are ongoing, Mayor Olivia Chow said on Wednesday.
“I’m working very closely with (Ontario Infrastructure) Minister Kinga Surma. We just had a sit-down conversation, where we had the map out, as to where’s the entrance, is it above ground or below ground, etc.,” Chow said. “We don't have all the final details yet, because it's complex. But the conversation in terms of how we could co-operate together is ongoing.”
Surma's press secretary said no final decisions have been made, as negotiations are still ongoing.
“The Ministry of Infrastructure is coordinating stakeholder meetings with the City of Toronto and Exhibition Place to move this work forward,” said Ash Milton.
Delays could mean Ontario taxpayers are on the hook for financial penalties, according to the provincial auditor general’s 2023 report on the Ontario Science Centre. If the province doesn't build the taxpayer-funded lot between 2028 and 2030, taxpayers will be on the hook for an unspecified penalty, the auditor found.
The Toronto new deal threw a wrench into the plans for an underground parking garage at Ontario Place that would serve the Therme spa, the revamped Budweiser Stage, and the new Ontario Science Centre.
Last November, the province agreed to move the structure across the street to Exhibition Place to “improve public access to the shoreline at Ontario Place” and “reduce the overall area needed for parking.”
“Maybe that’s not the best place to go, where we had it,” Premier Doug Ford said at the time. “So let’s move it. Let’s flip it over to Exhibition Stadium (and) have more open space towards the lake.”
In July, Ford added more confusion to the ongoing project when he said he was open to an above-ground lot.
The province has never revealed how much it’s budgeting for the structure, whatever form it takes. Informal estimates peg it in the hundreds of millions.
There’s also not much public information on how big it will be. A 2023 proposal from Ontario’s infrastructure ministry outlined the need for 2,700 spaces to fulfill the terms of the leases with the redevelopment partners.
According to the Altus Group’s 2024 construction cost guidelines, surface parking costs anywhere between $16 to $30 per square foot in the Greater Toronto Area.
An above-ground parking garage costs $140 to $210 per square foot, whereas underground parking costs $175 to $300 per square foot, with significant premiums for “unusual circumstances.”
Unusual circumstances can include having to deal with non-typical foundations due to soil quality, soil conditions that increase excavation costs, close proximity to other structures, and more.
When the Ford government first embarked on its plan to redevelop Ontario Place in 2019, it said parties interested in bidding on the project should account for the existing parking spots at Ontario Place and Exhibition Place.
The province originally said no public money would be spent on anything — like a new parking garage — other than what was needed to bring the dilapidated site up to par.
That changed after Infrastructure Ontario, the agency tasked with overseeing the project, started talking to the organizations that wanted to participate in the project.
"Multiple bidders, in fact, a significant number of them," said the amount of parking offered at Ontario Place and Exhibition Place "would need to be enhanced in order to suit their business needs or wants," Infrastructure Ontario CEO Michael Lindsay said last year during a committee hearing.
The change, he explained at the time, “was more with reference to multiple proponents ultimately coming back to us and saying that we needed to think about investments in parking," Lindsay added. "It certainly was not only Therme that came back to us and said that that was required."
Therme is the group behind the proposed spa and waterpark at Ontario Place.
Specific details of the parking garage were first revealed when Therme and the province submitted their plans to the City of Toronto in November 2023.
"Parking is a necessity at Ontario Place," Surma said at the same committee meeting.
Therme expects the province to pay for the garage, according to a 2022 interview Surma had with the Globe and Mail. In April 2023, Ford admitted the province will pay for a garage that will serve Therme, the science centre and the Live Nation concert venue.