TORONTO – Toronto’s theatre district will undergo dramatic change over the next decade.
David Mirvish, son of the late theatre mogul Ed Mirvish, is teaming up with world-renowned architect Frank Gehry to transform a stretch of King Street West.
The plan will include three new residential towers, “unlike anything that has been built in Toronto,” said Mirvish.
The two six-storey podiums below the towers will house a 60,000-square-foot public art gallery called the Mirvish Collection, containing contemporary abstract art, built up over the past 50 years by Mirvish and his wife.
The project will also include a new campus for OCAD University and planted terraces overlooking King St.
PRINCESS OF WALES THEATRE
In order to see the project through, all of the buildings west of the Royal Alexandra Theatre will be removed to make way for Gehry’s design, including the Princess of Wales Theatre, at 300 King St. W.
“If there were a way of completing this project without removing the Princess of Wales Theatre, we would have followed it,” said Mirvish, adding that it was a difficult decision, but to keep the theatre would have compromised Gehry’s plan and lessened the power of the project.
“It is a beautiful facility of which I am very proud, but it happens to be situated in the middle of the new project’s path.”
Mirvish opened the Princess of Wales Theatre in 1993 as a temporary facility to house Miss Saigon and other productions.
“I am not retreating from theatre. That’s what I do,” said Mirvish at a press conference on Monday morning, adding that having a theatre that sits unused is not better than having art galleries and campus facilities.
Mirvish said the artwork by Frank Stella, which was created specifically for the Princess of Wales Theatre, will be documented and saved. Stella will also work with Gehry to incorporate new artwork into his plan.
“The rhythm of urban development is pretty well established. Things are going to come down and things are going to go up,” said Stella to Global News on Monday. “It’s hard to go against the times.”
And while Stella said he would like to save some of the pieces, such as the oculus, in the Princess of Wales Theatre, he doesn’t think everything must be saved. “There are a lot of pieces in there, but it’s a little bit deceptive. Two or three of them are done by hand, but others are done mechanically, digitally, like a billboard.“
TIMELINE
The project will be completed in three phases over the next seven years.
The first phase will involve warehouse that currently stands at King St. and Ed Mirvish Way.
The second and third phases will involve the buildings on the city block bordered by King St., Pearl St., Ed Mirvish Way and John St.
HISTORY
In 1963, Toronto’s King Street West was a “wasteland of derelict industrial buildings and underused railway yards,” said Mirvish in a statement.
Ed Mirvish purchased the Royal Alex, the crown jewel amid the wasteland, and began a 50-year project of revitalizing the neighbourhood, buying many of the warehouses and converting them into restaurants, amenities “he felt complemented the theatregoing experience,” said Mirvish.
On Monday, Mirvish and Gehry officially unveiled their ambitious plan for the neighbourhood, which they feel will carry it into the future while preserving its heritage.
“These buildings will transform,” said Gehry. “We hope to deliver a streetscape evocative of old Toronto…something that creates excitement,” he said.
Gehry was born in Toronto, however his design for the latest Art Gallery of Ontario renovation, Transformation AGO, was his first project in Canada.
Some of his best known works include the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
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