Premier Doug Ford called any repairs to the Ontario Science Centre building “foolish,” as he addressed the site’s closure for the first time Wednesday.
“That place is absolutely just a total mess, from top to bottom, to front to back, to every single building,” Ford said at a news conference in Etobicoke Wednesday.
Fixing the building would be “a foolish decision,” he said. Ford said he understands that people are “passionate” about the building — but the new science centre will be “modernized.”
Fords comments come after weeks of public outcry over the abrupt shuttering of the building on June 21 and cancellations of programming, including summer camps.
The province said at the time of the closure that the building’s roof is in danger of collapse come winter and pointed to an engineering report it commissioned from Rimkus Consulting Group that outlines repair needs.
That’s why it said it moved to close the building now. It will be fully decommissioned by late October. The science centre will be eventually moved to Ontario Place and an interim location will be found until then, the province said.
However, CBC Toronto spoke to several engineers last month who said the province’s messaging and what’s in the Rimkus report do not match and the building’s closure could have been avoided.
Questions have swirled for the past week about why the Ontario Science Centre was suddenly and permanently closed on June 21. But four engineers and architects told CBC’s Bobby Hristova that what’s been said about the reports, and what’s in the reports, don’t match — and closing the building could’ve been avoided.
Those experts found that no more than six per cent of the roof panels are at high risk of collapse.
But Ford doubled down on the government’s messaging Wednesday.
He said there are “issues all over” the building and said the building is not safe. “‘I’m just not going to chance kids or people to be in there,” he said.
Instead, the province will build a “state of the art” facility that will be bigger and more appealing to tourists, he said.
When asked about offers from individuals to pay for the costs of fixing the building, Ford didn’t answer the question and instead talked about the new facility.
The province has said repairing and eventually replacing all roof panels — regardless of their risk level — would cost between $22 million and $40 million and would take over two years to complete.
Ash Milton, a spokesperson for the Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma, told CBC Toronto earlier this month that the full capital investment to fix the building would be $478 million.