Visitors exit the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto on June 21.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The Ontario government is shuttering the Ontario Science Centre’s half-century-old building in Toronto, after structural engineers concluded parts of its concrete roof could collapse this winter under the weight of snow.
The decision to close the building, which welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, is meant to allow staff to safely clear exhibits out of the facility by the end of October, the province’s Infrastructure Ontario agency said Friday, before any risk of snow.
The sudden vacating of the sprawling complex, opened in 1969 in Toronto’s Flemingdon Park area and designed by the late renowned architect Raymond Moriyama, is the latest twist in the pitched battle over the future of the attraction, which Premier Doug Ford’s government intends to move to its Ontario Place site on the waterfront.
Critics of the decision announced last year to move the Science Centre say the facility’s distinct building – for decades a standard destination for Toronto-area school trips – should be saved and that relocating is unfair to the surrounding community, which includes many immigrants and low-income families.
Many also say the relocation is aimed at helping to justify the government’s decision to allow Austrian-owned Therme Group to build a large waterpark and spa at Ontario Place, where the province has pledged to provide an underground parking lot expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Workers put up new gates and fencing at the entrance of the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto on June 21.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Opposition politicians and activists fighting to save the current Science Centre immediately questioned the rationale for the surprise shutdown. Liberal MPP Adil Shamji noted the engineering report the government released on Friday only labelled a small fraction of the roof panels as “critical risk” or “high risk” and argued the government could have done more to keep the Science Centre open.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles issued a statement saying the government cannot be trusted on this issue: “We all know the government’s real motive is to justify Doug Ford’s mega-spa vanity project at Ontario Place.”
The engineering report, prepared by the firm Rimkus Consulting Group, lists as its first recommendation that if the building’s high-risk roof panels are not replaced by Oct. 31, there should be “restricted access or full closure to prevent any persons from walking in areas where high risk panels are present.” As other options, it says shoring underneath panels or hoarding could be erected, with areas closed off. But the report does say the first option is the only way to eliminate all risk to staff and visitors.
Michael Lindsay, the president and CEO of Infrastructure Ontario, told reporters his agency’s view is that the engineering report strongly recommends closing the entire facility to replace all of its potentially problematic roof panels. He said the work would cost $40-million and take two to five years.
The decision to shut the Science Centre permanently, he said, also takes into account a long list of other deficiencies, including its ventilation and water systems, and the recent failure of a boiler that would have left the facility’s auditorium and great hall without heat this winter. Its long internal pedestrian bridge has been shut since 2022, requiring visitors to take shuttle buses to its exhibits.
Mr. Lindsay said Infrastructure Ontario became aware of reports out of Britain in late 2023 about problems with what is known reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), a material used from the 1950s to the 1970s – and of which much of the Science Centre’s roof is made. That prompted the agency, which is responsible for the province’s real estate portfolio, to hire Rimkus to re-examine the Science Centre’s roof, he said. Seventy-nine other provincial buildings with similar roofs are now being monitored for the same problem.
The government only received the report on the facility’s roof this week, Mr. Lindsay said, but it has been monitoring the roof for safety for months. The Science Centre’s board agreed to shut the building down on Thursday night. Barriers had already started to go up midday Friday around the building. But the decision blindsided employees, who were to be told at a town-hall meeting on Friday afternoon. The government would only say that there would be “no immediate job losses.”
Summer camps, about to start, will be moved to a nearby school. But parents, and all Science Centre members, will also be offered refunds. A wedding scheduled for Saturday would go ahead, but with a full refund. The Science Centre plans to look into offering mobile or pop-up exhibits – and intends to find a temporary home while the new facility at Ontario Place, which the government expects to open in 2028, is built.
In a statement, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said she is disappointed the Science Centre had been allowed to fall into disrepair, calling the closing a “painful loss.”
She and Mr. Ford, as part of a broader financial deal for Toronto last year, had agreed that the existing Science Centre building would still be used for some sort of science-based programming to benefit the local community. But Ontario officials said Friday that discussions with the city on the future of the Flemingdon Park site had yet to take place.
Jason Ash, co-chair of the citizens group Save Ontario’s Science Centre, rushed to the site Friday when he heard that fencing was going up. He dismissed the notion that the facility needed to close and vowed to keep fighting the government’s plans.
“It’s going to be a demo-viction, demolition by neglect, at the end of the day, if we don’t keep holding them to account,” Mr. Ash said in an interview.