As night fell in Toronto on Wednesday, October 2, its residents drifting to sleep, a group of construction workers were just getting started. They wore protective gear and carried chainsaws, and for the next 24 hours they swarmed Ontario Place, the city’s most prized public park, cutting down more than 850 trees—home to upwards of 100 unsuspecting bird and animal species, including Canada geese, mallards, beavers, and chipmunks—spanning 16 acres.
The park, which stretches across two artificial islands off the shore of the idyllic Lake Ontario, is in the process of being turned into a seven-story-high, $500 million spa, which will be run by the Austrian company Therme Group. The company operates similar facilities across Austria as well as in Bucharest and Frankfurt, and plans to open locations in Manchester and Inchon. Their Toronto iteration, whose main domed glass building will house hot and cold plunges, mineral pools, saunas, restaurants, and a water park, is expected to measure the size of a football stadium on the West Island.
Supporters of the Therme Group deal, which was approved in 2021 following the Ontario provincial government’s request for proposals, see it as a promising step toward revitalizing the waterfront. “The attendance had gone down, down, and down,” says John Tory, Toronto’s mayor from 2014 to 2023. “And the condition of the place had gone down, down, and down.”
Opponents, meanwhile, criticize the project for prioritizing private commercial interests over public and environmental concerns. “It’s as if they were cutting down half of Central Park,” says one art curator and Toronto resident. “Can you imagine what that does to a city?”
The Golden Years
Ontario Place dates back to 1967, when Montreal’s Expo 67 fair, commemorating Canada’s 100th anniversary, inspired Torontonians to come up with their own patriotic ode. The state enlisted the renowned German-Canadian architect Eberhard Zeidler to build futuristic pods on stilts over the water, which would accommodate a “children’s village,” a water park, the Cinesphere—the world’s first permanent IMAX theater and the park’s crowning glory—and a surrounding nature reserve, designed by the Canadian landscape architect Michael Hough. The project was completed four years later.
“The combination of the two [architects] was extraordinary,” says Ken Greenberg, a Toronto-based urban designer and architect. “And for a long time, it delighted the public.”
“The landscape was meant to reflect different places in Ontario,” adds Norman Di Pasquale, the co-chair of the nonprofit group Ontario Place for All. “You could go into a place called Moose Hollow and feel like you were in the Algonquin.”
When it opened, the world hailed the park as a masterpiece. “It looks … like a world’s fair, only better,” The New York Times wrote in 1971. In the 1980s, water slides, park rides, and other attractions were added to the site, and visitors poured in from across the province.
By 2010, though, Canada’s Wonderland, another Toronto amusement park, had eclipsed Ontario Place in size and profits. The amusement park was eventually shuttered in 2012 (though the surrounding parkland remained open to the public), and many of the futuristic pods envisioned by Zeidler became dilapidated.
But the community never left—according to Ontario Place Corporation, the park saw 596,000 visitors last year. “It [was] the meet-up spot for my pandemic social bubble,” Ali Weinstein, a filmmaker and Toronto native, wrote for CBC. “The space felt endless and magical.”
So when Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, announced plans to lease the space to Therme Group for 95 years, uproar ensued. People organized protests and rallies, and demonstrators used what is now known as the “World’s longest blackboard,” a half-mile-long public chalkboard, to voice their opposition. TikTok videos referring to the project as greenwashing have gone viral.
“It’s as if they were cutting down half of Central Park. Can you imagine what that does to a city?”
But most opponents of the project to whom I spoke failed to note that the Therme Group’s proposed designs also include nearly 16 acres of public space—including rooftop trails and botanical gardens—up from the current 12.5 acres. According to a Therme spokesman, all trees cut down will be replaced at a two-to-one ratio, and steps such as putting up bird hotels will be taken to preserve the existing eco-system.
Chief Claire Sault, of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, an Indigenous community supporting the development, believes much of the uproar stems from misinformation. “We still encounter the colonial mindset at times, which resists companies properly engaging with First Nations,” she says. “There’s probably some jealousy.... I’m sure there are many reasons for it.”
Money seems to be another. Based on the lease terms made public last week, Greenberg estimates the project will cost the government more than $1 billion, which will go toward site preparations and the construction of a 1,600-car parking lot for spa visitors. “Nobody can understand why this subsidizing of this private enterprise that nobody seems to want is taking place,” he says. (A spokesperson for Therme Canada specified that the company has not applied for any subsidies and stated: “As the artificial island is provincial property, the province is responsible for upgrading site services, including water, gas, and electricity.”)
Opponents of the development are also calling it elitist. Admission to the spa will cost $30, which includes basic amenities such as towels and plastic flip-flops; additional services, like massages, will incur an extra fee. “I refer to it as a switch from res publica [Latin for “public space”] to res privata,” says Greenberg. “Just money talks for these people,” Di Pasquale adds.
According to Di Pasquale, Therme Group’s leaders have refused to meet with Ontario Place for All intermediaries to discuss halting the development or moving it elsewhere. (A spokesperson for the company stated that despite being active on social media, Ontario Place for All representatives have not reached out to Therme Canada.)
“It’s crazy that they would so publicly support a cause that is so similar to what they’re going against,” Di Pasquale adds, referring to Therme’s mission statement to be “a global pioneer of inclusive well-being.”
“I refer to it as a switch from res publica [Latin for “public space”] to res privata.”
This year, the group organized a talk at COP26, the U.N. climate-change conference. “When you arrive at Therme you will see our care and consideration for all things nature,” the company Instagram read. “Therme,” Di Pasquale counters, “transformed the West Island into a giant mud ball.” (According to a spokesperson for Therme Canada, the company does not yet have access to the site; the Province of Ontario is still in the process of upgrading essential infrastructure, including sewage, water, and electrical and gas services.)
Therme Group has also long positioned itself as a proponent of the arts. In 2017, the group partnered with the Frieze art fair to fund the Serpentine Pavilion, an annual architectural commission, from 2018 to 2022. Through their in-house art program, they’ve collaborated with everyone from contemporary artists Theaster Gates and Sonia Boyce to performance-art specialists Studio Drift. Yet, as Greenberg points out, they are overshadowing “an amazing design collaboration between Michael Hough and Eberhard Zeidler.” (A company representative clarified that the Zeidler Pods and Cinesphere are outside of Therme’s leased areas.)
The hypocrisy that DiPasquale, Greenberg, and others who oppose the plan are accusing Therme of isn’t limited to the company’s policies. They point to the group’s president and chief strategy officer in North America, Robert Hammond, who teaches meditation classes in his free time—and has been known to champion causes similar to the one he’s now standing against.
In 2016, he co-produced a documentary, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, on the community-design advocate Jane Jacobs. Hammond is also a co-founder of Manhattan’s High Line, a 1.45-mile-long elevated railway line turned public park. More recently, he spearheaded a campaign against the construction of a casino opposite the High Line, arguing it would encroach on existing affordable housing units—not to mention ruin the views. “They’re using almost the exact same arguments we’re using,” Di Pasquale notes.
“I think it’s a really different case,” says Hammond, who clarified that he is not directly overseeing the Toronto development, as his focus is on U.S. operations. “[With the casino] they are trying to reduce … affordable housing.… [In Therme’s case] the city put out a request for a proposal to look for a use there. I think this is by far the best use you could have…. It’s about wellness. It’s a glass structure that when you look in, is going to be green inside.”
There are also allegations that Therme Group has not been as transparent as it could have been with the project. Last year, Canadian M.P. Chris Glover stated that he was “concerned” about a redevelopment process that has been “shrouded in secrecy.” And on October 19, Ontario’s New Democratic Party leader, Marit Stiles, asked the province’s integrity commissioner to look into the spa deal. In the written release, the party stated that “[they] have reason to believe that Therme received preferential treatment from this government,” arguing that the lease process was unusual compared to other government deals, as no fairness monitor—an independent third-party observer responsible for ensuring a transparent selection process—was present. “This mega-spa is a mega-scam,” Bonnie Crombie, the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, said in a statement on October 16.
(A spokesperson for Therme Canada reiterated that “the company was selected through an open, competitive RFP process by the Province of Ontario,” and that “any suggestions to the contrary [are] false and misrepresent the integrity of the Province’s selection framework.”)
Art-world veterans Simon de Pury and Hans Ulrich Obrist, who sat on the Therme Art advisory board until recently, have abruptly quit. And just last week, Mark Lawson, Therme’s vice president of communications (and former deputy chief of staff for Ford), also announced he would be leaving his post at the end of the year. “After nearly three years,” he wrote in a statement, “I’ve decided to leave Therme Canada … as the project enters a new phase.” (De Pury and Lawson did not respond to Air Mail’s request for comment; Obrist declined to comment.)
On his Instagram profile, Hammond states that he is “working to bring the Baths of Caracalla to US.” He says, “I’d always been obsessed with Roman baths, and I couldn’t understand why, 2,000 years later, we couldn’t have something like that in our cities—not out by the airport but in our cities.”
Despite all the pushback, the project will likely succeed. In June, Ontario courts dismissed local environmental groups’ attempts at an injunction. Even though 30,000 Toronto residents have signed petitions to stop the takeover since then, the development is showing no signs of slowing down.
“I think the people will really appreciate it when it’s all completed,” Tory says. “If you want to build a great province, then you have to make investments that are at least partially public to stimulate the private-sector investment that can come along with it.”
“In New York,” Hammond adds, “the High Line had a lot of opposition. Brooklyn Bridge Park had a lot of opposition…. And people love these places now.”
“We still have something to fight over,” Di Pasquale counters, “and we intend to fight.”
It’s hard to know what the original Ontario Place architects would make of this squabble. In 2016, Zeidler, who died two years ago, told The New York Times: “[The park] needs a strong mind to say, ‘Here we do something, and we do something right.’”
Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at Air Mail
