A MEGAPROJECT’S
HEART
It’s personal for David Mirvish and Frank Gehry,
David Mirvish and Frank Gehry both made a memorably strong case during Monday’s media conference to unveil their controversial megaproject, which is intended to transform more than a block of King St. W. in Toronto’s Entertainment District into a brave new cultural mecca.
The project, it was clear, is extremely personal for both of them, not just another business deal. And its emotional resonance came through partly because the event was held at the Art Gallery of Ontario, which reopened four years ago after being transformed by Gehry.
“The folklore of my Canadian heritage has been well documented,” quipped Gehry, 83. “We all have an image of a Toronto that doesn’t exist anymore. All that is in my DNA and I hope it will come out in this project.”
Indeed, though the streets of this city were formative in the boyhood of Frank Goldberg (as he was before he changed his surname), the AGO makeover is the first and only Gehry building in Toronto.
His new Mirvish project would be his first from the ground up in Canada.
But, he cautioned, it’s always precarious to release designs at an early stage, because we are looking at works in progress, not finished buildings or even final designs.
Take the images of his six-storey podium, sweeping across one entire block on the north side of King St. east of John and continuing across half of the next block.
The model has what looks like crumpled paper indicating how the tall towers of the project will be linked to one another at the base.
Detractors making snap judgments from two-dimensional images have said it looks like garbage.
“Trust me, that’s not garbage,” said Gehry.
The podium, the first six floors of the complex, will have room for two major museums (one for David and Audrey Mirvish’s own sensational collection of abstract art going back to the breakthroughs of the 1960s, and another for OCAD University’s collection). But that’s not all.
There will be terraces, gardens, classy retail shops and restaurants.
It’s the three condo towers that will bring in the revenue to support the treasures in the podium, but they won’t be the usual dull boxes.
“With the towers,” Gehry explained, “we are trying to differentiate them so they relate to each other.”
One will be glass and another terra cotta (to suggest material used all over Toronto in former times).
And they do a bit of a dance with one another, slightly shimmering like the “Dancing House” building in Prague that Gehry co-designed.
Mirvish, speaking very personally, explained why this project is close to his heart. In the first phase of his career, at age 10, he worked Saturdays at Honest Ed’s and had lunch with his grandmother near the store. Phase 2 began when he was 18 and opened an art gallery, which led to his relationships with many great artists and the assembly of his exquisite collection. Then came the moment, three decades ago, when he told his father (who had bought the Royal Alexandra Theatre in 1962 and saved it from being turned into a parking lot): “Dad, I think I can do a better job than you of running the theatre.”
Probably no one will feel more pain over the demise of the Princess of Wales than Mirvish, who put his own money and ego into it
Ironically, the son of the man who saved a theatre from being demolished is now being attacked by those who are outraged that he is proposing to demolish another: the Princess of Wales, which David Mirvish himself created 19 years ago. “I’m involved in theatre and art and I believe that architecture tells us who we are,” he said Monday. And since Toronto’s big downtown theatres have many dark weeks, at the moment it is better to let one theatre close to make way for two great museums. But Mirvish is by no means retreating from the theatre. He owns three others. And if in five or 10 years, there is a need for a fourth, I have no doubt he will build it. Probably no one will feel more pain over the demise of the Princess of Wales than Mirvish, who put his own money and ego into it. But he is not doing this as a cynical cash grab. He is prepared to sacrifice a theatre because he thinks the new complex will enhance the culture of his city and his neighbourhood, and allow him to share his glorious art collection with the Toronto public. Hard to believe as cynics may find it, he is taking this on because he knows it’s the right thing to do, not just for himself and his family, but for the city. As for those who sneer at condominuims, Mirvish says: “I don’t feel we are building condominiums. To me, we are putting up three sculptures.” That’s why he has picked the architect who created such wonders of the world as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. “We know we can deliver an architectural project that is different and speaks to Toronto’s cultural history,” promised Gehry. “David’s commitment to art and architecture is why I’m here.” What these two are saying goes beyond hype and spin. They are offering Toronto a glorious opportunity. To turn it down would be a tragic mistake for the city. mknelman@thestar.ca