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Stretching from Grosvenor to Wellesley, Toronto's Macdonald Block of office buildings is home to 15 of Ontario's ministries and 12 cabinet ministers, serving as the nerve centre for much of the Provincial government apparatus. Completed between 1968 and 1969, the Province has announced that the massive international style complex will undergo a comprehensive 8-year retrofit.
Connected by an expansive two-storey base building, the Macdonald Block's four towers range in height from 10 to 24 storeys, housing some 3,600 public service employees. Together with the art deco Whitney Block immediately to the west—which houses the offices of the premier—the institutional complex is set to be thoroughly renovated by 2024. With the bulk of the Macdonald Block's reconstruction taking place between 2019 and 2023, employees will vacate the complex in 2018, allowing core systems to be replaced.
The complex's electrical, water, cooling, and heating systems, are now nearing the end of their lifespans, and all of them set to be replaced by 2024. Meanwhile, the Whitney Block—completed in two phases in 1926 and 1932—will have its facade, windows, and heating systems replaced. Taken together, retrofit of both properties will also facilitate more efficient use of space, allowing the province to consolidate 380,000 ft² of leased Downtown office space into the Queen's Park complex.
The scope of project is informed by a recently completed third-party expert panel, which concluded that a large-scale retrofit of the properties would bring significant long-term savings, while improving working conditions for government employees. According to the Province, the operating and capital expenses required to maintain the buildings "would be reduced from an annual average of $144 million to $121 million over 50 years." Over the same time period, the total savings could reportedly amount up to $1 billion.
The retrofit will be carried out via a public-private partnership overseen by Infrastructure Ontario (IO). However, while the benefits of the retrofit have been estimated, the total cost of the logistically challenging retrofit is not yet known. In advance of the project's commencement, IO will establish a finalized register of all repairs, setting out a budget for the project. As reported in the Toronto Star, the retrofit is likely to cost "in the 'hundreds of millions of dollars.'" Despite the logistical difficulties inherent to a project of this scope, it is hoped that IO oversight will help ensure estimated costs are met, with the Crown corporation boasting a track record of "98 percent of projects being completed on budget."
Alongside the projected annual savings of over $20 million, the project is also being touted as a sustainability initiative. While the Province's recently released Climate Change Action Plan targets making the Provincial government's operations carbon neutral by 2018, the Macdonald Block reconstruction project—which will install much more efficient systems—is being cited as a step forward in reducing carbon emissions in the short and long-term.
