Libeskind gets another deal in Toronto, transforming the 45-year-old arts complex – the troubled Hummingbird Centre - into a multi-use facility. (Toronto Star )
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ROM's maestro tackles city arts centre

MARTIN KNELMAN

Daniel Libeskind has agreed to reinvent the Hummingbird Centre, the Toronto Star has learned.

The deal with Libeskind, one of the world's most celebrated architects, will be announced today by Daniel Brambilla, CEO of the city-owned Hummingbird Centre.

No price tag will be announced, but the cost of the project, including a residential tower, is certain to soar beyond $100 million.

This is the latest and most startling development in the five-year saga of the Hummingbird's struggle to stave off extinction after its two principal tenants — the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada — move into their new home, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts (now under construction at Queen St. W. and University Ave.) by the middle of next year.

Libeskind's challenge: to transform the 45-year-old arts complex — which opened as the O'Keefe Centre in October 1960, with the world premiere of Camelot — into a multi-use facility. The goal is to celebrate Toronto's diversity while assuring long-term financial viability, even when its 3,200-seat theatre is dark for many nights of the year after the departure of the opera and ballet companies.

Its protectors say the city would be making a terrible mistake if it decides to shoot the Hummingbird.

In fact, in the course of its crusade to be born again, the centre has been going through architects the way Barbara Amiel goes through shoes and handbags. Prior to the Libeskind deal, three different sets of architectural plans for a makeover have been commissioned and announced since 2000.

The latest one, featuring a slender 50-storey residential tower off Yonge St. at the south end of the complex, was designed by the Toronto architectural firm HOK and presented to city council last July. It was under discussion with community groups as recently as last month.

Both the HOK plan and a proposal designed by Toronto architect Thomas Payne in 2003 added spaces for new revenue-producing activities at the centre, in addition to theatrical and musical presentations in its auditorium.

Brambilla was hired in 2002 after the city asked the Hummingbird board to come up with a master plan to save the theatre without allowing it to become a financial burden. The city provided funds to help the centre develop a proposal.

His conclusion: Additional programming for the theatre was not enough.

Instead, Brambilla wanted to create a TV dinner theatre, a tourist centre and a museum celebrating Toronto's diversity.

To finance all of this, he needed a commercial development partner, and he wanted the city to allow him to use the centre's air rights, worth about $20 million.

Now after two years of dealing with other architects and trying to win approval from city hall, Brambilla has decided he needs an architectural star.

He and his development partner, Castlepoint Realty Partners Ltd., believe that Libeskind alone is capable of contributing the razzle-dazzle, the marquee name and the financial clout that will allow them to attract investors and win the approval of Toronto City Council.

Libeskind, who became an international superstar with the opening of his Jewish Museum in Berlin in 2001, is now even better known as the master architect of the World Trade Center redevelopment in New York City, winning a competition that included many of the world's top architects.

And in Toronto, he's known as the mastermind behind the glittering crystal extension that promises to transform the Royal Ontario Museum.

With the Hummingbird deal, Libeskind emerges as the prophet of a new Toronto, putting his stamp on two of the city's most defining intersections — Bloor St. W. at Queen's Park Cres. (the ROM) and Front and Yonge Sts. (the Hummingbird).

His name is sure to help Brambilla stave off naysayers who suggest the Hummingbird has had its day and should be closed. Those who favour keeping it going say the city needs a multi-purpose auditorium with a seat count midway between other soft-seat theatres and the mammoth Air Canada Centre.

As well, its exterior is considered a heritage gem, even if the acoustics of the auditorium leave much to be desired.

And from an economic point of view, its survival is considered essential to restaurants, shops and hotels in the area.