SPACE WARS
Arts group finally gets the OK to move into its new home — but it must satisfy a range of provisions,
The city of Toronto announced Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with the Toronto Media Arts Cluster (TMAC), a coalition of local arts charities, that would allow the group to move into its long-contested space on Lisgar St. in the city’s west end.
For TMAC, as good news goes, it’s a “yes, but:” The terms of the agreement will require TMAC to satisfy a range of provisions and obligations to take permanent ownership of the space, which was built for them in the base of a condominium tower as part of a city cultural development program. Should TMAC fail to meet the provisions, it has agreed to vacate and give up all future legal claim on the space. Details of the agreement have not been disclosed, pending court approval.
Henry Faber, the group’s president, suggested that the deal could indeed prove to be too onerous for TMAC to meet, “but had we not agreed to these terms, we would have had zero chance of finally taking ownership,” he said. “But I’m hopeful, because we were able to do significantly more than anyone thought we could. This is where we’ve landed with the best opportunity to provide what the community asked for.”
It’s the most recent chapter in the turbulent history of a purpose-built arts and culture space which was intended to be a beacon of change, illuminating how the city can extract community benefits from developers in exchange for easing height restrictions on their projects.
In 2015, the city barred TMAC from occupying the facility when the developer, UrbanCorp., failed to complete it by the May 3 deadline. TMAC promptly sued the city and UrbanCorp. for breach of contract, and the space has gone empty ever since.
Complicating the situation, UrbanCorp. has since gone bankrupt. Its bankruptcy trustee has since presided over routinely allowed TMAC access to the facility for practical purposes such as fundraising tours. In December, TMAC filed a motion to occupy the space “on an interim basis” until a permanent legal resolution could be reached.
The new agreement will give them that right, pending court approval. The pact lets TMAC occupy the facility on an interim basis, over which it must prove to the city that it “will be able to successfully operate the Cultural Space for the benefit of the community.”
“The deal was always under the expectation that TMAC would be able to fulfil certain things,” said Ward 18 Councillor Ana Bailao, who has been involved with the project since the beginning. “The shell would be provided, but we need to know they’ll be able to animate it.”
Bailao referred specifically to the facility’s theatre, which has gone unused since construction was completed three and a half years ago. She said that TMAC would not have to fully open the space to public programming within the time frame provided, but it would have to demonstrate the financial ability to do so.
Should the agreement be approved, TMAC will gain immediate occupancy of “a portion” of the 36,000square-foot facility. The deal does not describe how much of the space TMAC will be able to use.
The facility, built into the ground floors of the Edge condo project on Lisgar St., was to be an emblem of fresh thinking regarding the city’s Section 37 development charge, which typically requires a project to provide a “community benefit” equal to 1 per cent of its construction costs in exchange for an easement of height restrictions beyond the city’s official plan.
Usually, that meant a piece of public art or the construction of a nearby park. But in the Queen West area, an arts hotbed, an activist group called Active 18 brokered a deal in 2011 where the “community benefit” would be a permanent, multi-faceted arts facility owned by the nonprofit arts groups that occupied it.
The project was seen as groundbreaking amid a skyrocketing property market and rampant gentrification of the neighbourhood around it. But between the striking of the deal and the completion of construction, TMAC’s membership changed several times. Its original roster included long-standing organizations such as the Images Festival and the Toronto Photographer’s Workshop Gallery, who dropped out as negotiations dragged on.
The current group came to be led by a cluster of non-profit digital-culture organizations that included Dames Making Games, and a gender-equity based video game collective and Gamma Space, a co-working game design incubator, as well as long-established groups Charles Street Video and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. Both DMG and Gamma Space lost their spaces at the end of December when their leases expired; Charles Street is in a temporary space owned by the Toronto Arts Council, while the CFMDC lost its lease in November.
Court approval is expected to be granted by mid-February.