Miller to unveil new Will Alsop building
VAL ROSS
August 8, 2007
Toronto will continue to try to wrest back its title as media-production centre of Canada today when Mayor David Miller announces details of the next phase in the development of North America's largest studio and media-facilities cluster outside Los Angeles. With seven sound stages already under construction, the project will eventually bring 550,000 square feet of production offices and sound stages, and a 45,000-square-foot megastage, to the proposed Filmport district in the Port Lands.
"The film industry is important to Toronto, and we have to do everything we can to keep it here," Miller told The Globe and Mail yesterday.
The highlight of today's announcement will be the unveiling of a condo-hotel-office building by maverick British architect Will Alsop, based in part on an ill-fated project known as the Cloud, which he originally designed for Liverpool. "Alsop reinforces the idea of the creativity that's being expressed here," he said.
Financing is well in place. Filmport has powerful principal shareholders: the Rose Corporation and Comweb Corporation; this week, GE Real Estate, a global commercial real-estate firm, is expected to announce a $28.5-million loan for the complex's first phase.
The new facility has been in the works since before the high loonie dampened U.S. enthusiasm for making movies in Canada. It also predates federal and provincial policies that have encouraged other centres to siphon media production from Toronto. Last year, film and TV production in British Columbia outstripped that of Ontario -- $1.2-billion compared with $888-million. Within Ontario, cities such as Hamilton are also giving Toronto stiff competition.
Given such pressures, Filmport's backers, including Paul Bronfman, Sam Reisman and the Toronto Economic Development Corp. (TEDCO), which owns the 12-hectare site east of Cherry Street, could be said to be investing in hope. But Toronto is also hoping to reclaim media production through another project. Miller cited the new Corus Entertainment headquarters at the foot of Jarvis Street. The Corus building's architect is Toronto's own Jack Diamond. His site-specific building and Alsop's Liverpool transplant will, their backers hope, affirm Toronto's sex appeal, as did Diamond's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts and Alsop's playfully spotted Ontario College of Art & Design. "My new building will be a jolly sister to the OCAD building," Alsop promised. "And it will be a green building - we're taking that more and more seriously."