OverActive Media has recently revealed details of its new $500 million, 7,000-seat performance venue located in Toronto. The project, which includes a theatre-style entertainment venue and hotel complex, will be built in the heart of the historic CNE Grounds.
The facility will be positioned on four acres on the north side of Lakeshore Boulevard, across from the Ontario Place lands. Populous’s design is meant to reflect a modern expression of a new age of theatre for sports and entertainment.
"The design of the theatre was neither conceived as a sports arena nor an opera house, rather, a new typology that straddles the two – a state-of-the-art performance venue. The theatre architecture creates a merger of the old and the new," said Jonathan Mallie, Senior Principal and Lead Designer, Populous, in a release. "The old channeling the rhythmic repetition of historic landmark theatres, and the new, integrating the progressive forms of avant-garde twenty-first-century design. In combination, a symbiotic balance delivers a one-of-a-kind theatre experience, unique to Toronto and the world."
The purpose-built venue will host over 200 events per year with the majority of the events being music and entertainment bookings. The new venue will also be home to Toronto’s two professional eSports teams (Toronto Ultra of the Call of Duty League and Toronto Defiant of the Overwatch League), which are owned by OverActive Media. The new venue will be leveraged to position Toronto as a destination of choice for the global industry of gaming and eSports.
The venue, which has yet to be named, is slated for completion in 2025.
Related Stories
| Oct 13, 2010
Community center under way in NYC seeks LEED Platinum
A curving, 550-foot-long glass arcade dubbed the “Wall of Light” is the standout architectural and sustainable feature of the Battery Park City Community Center, a 60,000-sf complex located in a two-tower residential Lower Manhattan complex. Hanrahan Meyers Architects designed the glass arcade to act as a passive energy system, bringing natural light into all interior spaces.
| Oct 13, 2010
Bookworms in Silver Spring getting new library
The residents of Silver Spring, Md., will soon have a new 112,000-sf library. The project is aiming for LEED Silver certification.
| Oct 12, 2010
Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.
| Oct 12, 2010
Richmond CenterStage, Richmond, Va.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Bronze Award. The Richmond CenterStage opened in 1928 in the Virginia capital as a grand movie palace named Loew’s Theatre. It was reinvented in 1983 as a performing arts center known as Carpenter Theatre and hobbled along until 2004, when the crumbling venue was mercifully shuttered.
| Oct 12, 2010
Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Gartner Auditorium was originally designed by Marcel Breuer and completed, in 1971, as part of his Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Despite that lofty provenance, the Gartner was never a perfect music venue.
| Sep 13, 2010
Stadium Scores Big with Cowboys' Fans
Jerry Jones, controversial billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, wanted the team's new stadium in Arlington, Texas, to really amp up the fan experience. The organization spent $1.2 billion building a massive three-million-sf arena that seats 80,000 (with room for another 20,000) and has more than 300 private suites, some at field level-a first for an NFL stadium.
| Aug 11, 2010
JE Dunn, Balfour Beatty among country's biggest institutional building contractors, according to BD+C's Giants 300 report
A ranking of the Top 50 Institutional Contractors based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit http://www.BDCnetwork.com/Giants
| Aug 11, 2010
Jacobs, Arup, AECOM top BD+C's ranking of the nation's 75 largest international design firms
A ranking of the Top 75 International Design Firms based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit http://www.BDCnetwork.com/Giants
| Aug 11, 2010
Clark Group, Mortenson among nation's busiest state/local government contractors, according to BD+C's Giants 300 report
A ranking of the Top 40 State/Local Government Contractors based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit /giants
