Before and after tree removal at Ontario Place on October 3, 2024. Photos courtesy of Professor Helen Stopps, Toronto Metropolitan University.

Amid 865 trees coming down, Province releases 95-year lease with Therme

To receive $3.8-5.2 million per year in rent and park maintenance, the Province has committed to spending over half a billion in public dollars now.

Under cover of darkness, Infrastructure Ontario began the removal of 865 trees at Ontario Place on the evening of Wednesday, October 2, 2024. Within a single day, workers had cut down the vast majority of those trees.

The work—which includes the removal of every single tree on the western portion of the waterfront site adjacent downtown Toronto—is part of the approximately $200-million in site preparations that taxpayers are funding to prepare the land for Therme, an Austrian spa company, to develop a stadium-sized indoor waterpark on the site.

The next day, October 3, the Province released the details of its 95-year lease with Therme, which journalists and grassroots organizations have been seeking for years to obtain through Freedom of Information requests. The timing, critics say, aimed to distract from the tree removal in progress.

Hours after the razing of the site began, Ontario Place Protectors filed an emergency injunction asking for the tree removal to stop, pending the hearing of the appeal of its case that questions the Province’s ability to assume sweeping powers over the site, including ignoring its own environmental and heritage laws in redeveloping it. However, the speed at which the work is being done may mean that there is little left to save, even if the injunction is granted and the appeal is successful.

Read more: Amid 865 trees coming down, Province releases 95-year lease with Therme – Canadian Architect, October 4, 2024

More Ontario Place news:

Before and after tree removal photos courtesy of Professor Helen Stopps, PhD, P.Eng, Assistant Professor, Department of Architectural Science, Toronto Metropolitan University. They can also be seen at higher resolution.

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