A failure to launch
The Toronto Media Arts Centre opened on Queen St. W. after a long legal limbo, but its celebration may be short-lived
On a bleak day this spring, rainy and cool, Henry Faber and Jennie Robinson Faber (yes, they’re married) swing open the dusty glass door to 36 Lisgar St. Inside, concrete floors coated with the fine silt of ongoing construction are criss-crossed with footprints; here and there, doors dangle with wiring or are missing locks and knobs. Still, it’s something. “Our plan, when the summer comes, is to put up screens and do outdoor projections in the park,” Faber says, gesturing toward a bank of double-height windows and an expanse of public park to the north. Just inside on the main floor, Faber tracks footprints through the dust, tracing the outline of a hoped-for cafe. A local owner is ready to sign a lease for the space, Faber says, but it will have to wait. “The city doesn’t want us to do that yet,” he says. “So I guess we’ll see.”
Waiting and seeing, more than anything, has been the hallmark of the Toronto Media Arts Centre, a coalition of nonprofit arts organizations that the couple have led through a three-year legal standoff with the city over the right to occupy this, a 38,000-square-foot purpose-built space. Three years is only the short view: a deal for the space, to be built into the lower three floors of a condo highrise by developer Urbancorp to satisfy a city development charge for “community benefit” — was first struck in 2009.
Barred from occupying the space since the condo was completed for almost three years, TMAC and the city finally reached an interim occupancy agreement in February, which allows its four member groups to set up shop inside while the details are ironed out.
Since then, unfinished floors and all, TMAC has put it to good use. Earlier this month, it hosted a performance for the Images Festival, its first all-out public event. It seemed to embody the pent-up demand of nearly a decade of hoping: 300 people crowded a gallery on the second floor and the revelry that ensued lasted well into the night.
You’d be tempted to call it a grand opening, but that too will have to wait. The terms of the agreement were deemed confidential, but the Star has learned that among them are a requirement that TMAC have $2.5 million at its immediate disposal — $1.25 million in cash, $1.25 million in lease agreements with various partners — and that its business plan be approved by the city by June 5.
Should it fail to meet any of those requirements, interim takes on its full meaning. The agreement states that if the premises are not quickly vacated, the sheriff will evict its occupants: “TMAC has agreed to leave the space voluntarily and the City would either find an alternate arts organization to take the space, or would take ownership of it itself.”
The $1.25 million in cash is already in hand, Faber says. The lease agreements are a sticking point, owing to both TMAC’s interim status and a city edict not to allow commercial part- ners until the property status is resolved. He points to the cafe, which, under the terms of the city agreement, can’t sign a lease until ownership is finalized.
“So yes, I guess you could say we’re not quite celebrating anything yet,” Faber said, leaning on a construction barrier to the facility’s cinema, now just a cavernous cinderblock box. “We have the seats: they’re here and ready,” Robinson Faber says. “All we really need is to be able to say (the space) is ours.”
Being wary of investing too much while their status remains precarious is practical-minded, and TMAC’s history suggests such caution. When the deal was first struck in 2009, TMAC was seen as a beacon of new urban thinking.
Typically, under the city’s Section 37 provision, developers agree to invest in a feature for “community benefit,” such as a park or public sculpture, in exchange for easing height and density restrictions.
Here on Queen St. west of Dovercourt Rd. — a historic artistic hub being priced out by condo development — a local activist group proposed a new scheme: instead of a token gesture, why not build a permanent arts facility that the organizations would own outright, armouring them against gentrification? And so TMAC was born, though only one of its original members, the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, has had the patience to make it this far.
As the deadline for occupancy approached in 2015, it became clear that Urbancorp would not complete the project on time, triggering a clause in the deal that would revert the space to city ownership. On deadline day, the city took possession of the space and TMAC sued.
Shortly afterward, Urbancorp went bankrupt, casting even more doubt on what had become a quagmire: a shining example of right-minded urbanism tarnished beyond repair.
Even now, significant elements of the original deal are shifting. This week, city council voted to amend the original agreement to allow Urbancorp’s bankruptcy monitor to sell 8,000 square feet of TMAC’s total 38,000 square feet, presumably to satisfy a creditor. The city would not confirm and its report on the matter is sealed as “confidential,” which it attributes to the ongoing legal battle around the property.
(When asked by the Star, Pat Tobin, the city’s director of arts and culture services, said: “The decision authorizes the city to take action that will allow the monitors for Urbancorp to sell additional space that was not part of the Section 37 agreement.”)
And so, as TMAC prepares to shrink, the waiting continues.
On top of their legal wrangling, Faber runs Gamma Space , a non-profit collaborative workspace for digital media artists and web and game developers; Robinson Faber runs Dames Making Games, an allfemale video game collective.
Both have moved into the TMAC space and are carrying on as normal. The Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre occupies an airy office space, one of the few with finished floors. Charles Street Video, the fourth, has installed a climatecontrolled chamber here for its delicate, decades-old film archive.
This weekend, an audience for the Regent Park Film Festival will shuffle across the arts centre’s dusty floors, packing in for a symposium. TMAC will be doing what it’s supposed to do: providing space for cultural programming for financially challenged arts organizations in a city where real estate pressure chases all but the lucky few out.
Will TMAC itself prove to be among the lucky few?
That is the question of the hour and one it is doing its best to answer before it is answered on its behalf.
“We’re activating the space, we’re holding events, we’re showing people what it can be,” Robinson Faber said. “Wasn’t this the point?” On June 5, we all find out.