Ex-power station may be torn down
[attach]4548[/attach]The Richard L. Hearn generating station at 440 Unwin Ave. is a huge 60-year-old building with features that could not be recreated today even if someone wanted to.
So why is there talk of tearing it down?
First opened in 1951, the port lands-area plant originally burned coal and later natural gas to produce electricity. When its power generating days were over the building found a second life as a place to produce movies.
Recently, scenes from films such as RED and Silent Hill were shot at the site.
“The film business is booming,” said Paul Vaughan, president of Studios of America the company that holds a longterm lease on the site from Ontario Power Generation Corporation. “We’ve got three or four Hollywood features that are vying for space and they’re competing against each other.”
Still, Studios of America applied for a demolition permit for the site and received it this past December. However, Vaughan said his intentions are to repurpose the site rather than destroy it.
“We got the demo permit simply as a last resort if we couldn’t repurpose and use it as it was,” he said. “Adaptive reuse has always been our plan.”
Vaughan said his company receives reuse proposals for the property on a monthly basis. Turning the Hearn into a retail centre, a museum, offices, a sports complex or an indoor storage facility have been pitched to him.
“People are, I guess, taken by the building and the potential it represents and they just take it upon themselves to present unsolicited proposals of what should happen there,” he said.
One of the most attractive features of the building, Vaughan said, is a four metre thick concrete slab at the base of the building.
“The big value they see in it is the footprint, the floor slab that sits under the building which occupies (2.3 hectares),” he said. “It couldn’t be replaced today either technically, financially or environmentally.”
Preventing the proposals from going ahead is the size of the building. The 650,000 cubic metres of space is too large for any one use. One of the more popular ideas has been that of installing ice rinks at the facility but even then, only a quarter of the building would be in use, according to Vaughan.
“We could put four ice pads in one room in that building,” he said.
Michael Williams, general manager of Toronto’s economic development and culture division, said the Hearn would likely have to be repurposed for more than one use due to its size. However, getting separate entities to come together to create a practical proposal is difficult to do.
“It’s a very big site, which is exciting because then you can put in a mix of uses,” Williams said. “But putting in a mix of uses creates a coordination challenge.”
Vaughan said he is unclear what the future holds for the Hearn. Some of the possibilities he mentioned were some sort of joint venture to repurpose the site or even a public/private partnership with the city. He made it clear though, that he does not intend to have the building demolished unless a better use for the property is brought forth.
“That would only be a last resort,” said Vaughan. “We (leased) it because we saw it as an adaptive reuse opportunity and we still look at that as the best alternative of all.”