Consider it promised: Premier Doug Ford says his government will make Ontario Place the country’s top “tourist attraction.”
The premier stated that confidently on Monday, in response to a journalist’s question about his government’s plans to redevelop the site.
“Do you know what Ontario Place is going to be? It’s going to be world class,” Ford said. “Mark my words: it’s going to be the number 1 tourist attraction in all of Canada.”
If all goes according to the government’s and its partners’ plans, each of the three major new or renovated attractions planned at Ontario Place will be open by the start of the next decade. By then, based on the government’s and builders’ projections, the premier’s suggestion could come true — depending on how it's measured.
The Ford government projects four to six million people will visit Ontario Place each year after its redevelopment is completed. Coupled with its next door attraction-packed area, Exhibition Place and Ontario Place are projected to draw “12 million visitors annually by 2030,” according to a business case the government contracted last year.
Around 12 to 14 million people visit Niagara Falls, Canada’s top singular tourist attraction, each year, according to data published by a few different organizations.
More than four million people visit Banff National Park, the country’s most-visited park, each year.
Toronto’s CN Tower averages about one million visitors each year — but can see upwards of two million — according to a few different data sources.
The three main attractions planned at Ontario Place — Therme’s spa and waterpark, a new Ontario Science Centre, and Live Nation’s revamped concert venue — altogether hope to attract around four million visitors per year. Each plans to operate year-round.
Therme says on its website that its $350-million-plus spa and waterpark “is estimated to attract up to two million people a year.”
Live Nation hopes to attract “up to one million visitors” each year to attend shows at Budweiser Stage after its renovations after complete. The company plans to transform the 16,000-person capacity amphitheatre into a year-round venue accommodating up to 20,000 attendees per show.
The Ford government also hopes a new Ontario Science Centre built at Ontario Place will attract around one million visitors each year. The facility planned by the provincial government at Ontario Place is about half the square-footage of the recently closed 55-year-old centre. The government has promised that it’ll feature more overall exhibition space, however.
According to the science centre’s annual reports, the number of annual visitors it attracted fluctuated over the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, during which it peaked at 941,006 in 2016-17. Following the easing of pandemic restrictions, and prior to its closure in June, the science centre’s attendance was doing well, according to its board’s meeting minutes.
A summary of a September 2023 meeting said the science centre’s CEO shared data with the board showing it was “2-3 per cent behind pre-covid with revenue being over same attendance.”
“Reports from the Ministry note that our attendance is higher than AGO, ROM,” minutes from the board’s Sept. 19, 2023 meeting said.
The science centre had 884,837 visitors in 2018-19, its last full year unaffected by the pandemic, according to its annual reports.
Ontario Place is a 155-acre man-made group of islands in Lake Ontario, connected to Exhibition Place near downtown Toronto. During the 1970s, the decade it opened, more than three million people would visit the site in a good year, according to past news reports. By the 2010s, when the first significant upgrades in decades began at Ontario Place, typically less than one million people would visit the site.
Between when Trillium Park and William G. Davis Trail, 7.5 acres of new park space, were opened at Ontario Place in 2017, and the pandemic, visitor numbers showed signs of recovering.
The impacts of COVID-19 stalled that progress. In 2022, 2.9 million people visited Ontario Place, the chair of the agency that previously oversaw the site wrote in a letter to Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma. They were drawn to the site by “attending concerts, food festivals, the Lake Shore Inflatable Waterpark, screenings at the Cinesphere and Cirque du Soleil, spending time at the marina, as well as walking, running and biking through the park," the letter said.
While responding to a reporter’s question about Ontario Place on Monday, Ford linked its draw to Exhibition Place. The adjacent mainland site, which is controlled by the City of Toronto, is home to the Canadian National Exhibition, BMO Field, Medival Times, and more.
“We’re building a brand spanking new, state-of-the-art (science centre) … and in the right location — not in a sleepy little neighbourhood in the suburbs that no one goes to — but this is where all the action is,” the premier said. “Where the soccer is — the stadium — and Live Nation, the Exhibition. So, it’s just common sense; it’s a no-brainer.”
Thousands of new parking spots are also planned to be added at Exhibition Place as part of the redevelopment project. Exhibition Place is also set to be one of the terminal stops on the Ontario Line, the signature transit project being built by the Ford government.
The 2023 business case the government contracted to compare reinvesting in the current science centre to relocating it to Ontario Place said “projected attendance across the Exhibition Place/Ontario Place precinct is 12 million visitors annually by 2030.”
“Once they see it, people, their jaws will drop,” Ford said on Monday.
Pre-development work to prepare Ontario Place for its future attractions has been ongoing over much of the last year.
Earlier this month, the government agreed to briefly pause clearing trees, shrubs and buildings at the site in connection with a legal challenge that could more significantly affect its redevelopment. After hearing arguments in that case on Friday, a Superior Court judge promised to issue a decision by the end of this week. The pause on certain demolition work at the site is expected to continue until the judge releases her ruling.
