Live Nation is going to make some big investments at Ontario Place over the next nine years
Ontario Place, the lakefront leisure destination in Toronto, is in desperate need of renovation and updating. While parts of it have remained operating, most of the park has been shut down for years as governments tried to figure out what to do with it.
This past week, some announcements were made. The changes won’t come fast–they may take until 2030–but at least something’s happening.
The big news for music fans is Live Nation’s plans. Their amphitheatre–now called the Budweiser Stage–has been in operation since May 1995 and could use some re-imagining. And it will be:
- The current amphitheare will be renovated to accomodate 20,000 people in an outdoor configuration, which is a little bigger than it is now.
- It will also be configurable for year-round use as an indoor facility with a capacity of 9,000.
The goal will be to accommodate one million visitors per year.
Cool. Make it so.
Why didn’t they show another image of what the supposed indoor configuration will look like?
I am a little suspicious of how plausible this thing would be in reality. There are NFL stadiums with large opening “windows” (Las Vegas for example), but I’m not sure of how that type of set-up could work for this big amphitheatre to have an enormous wall there in the winter that could be removed for the summer.
Rather than rebuilding in the present location, wouldn’t a new venue across the road much closer to the GO Train and TTC station be a better idea? I would not be surprised if that’s what eventually happens.
The other proposal from OverActiveMedia for the 7000-seat theatre at Exhibition Place is apparently a fantasy without enough money behind it.