Ontario Science Centre could be kept open and easily repaired, architect claims

A senior architect at the firm that designed the Ontario Science Centre says the provincial government has trumped up the findings in the engineering report it commissioned to justify the sudden shutdown of the 55-year-old building.

Brian Rudy of Moriyama Teshima Architects told reporters at Queen’s Park on Friday that the Science Centre could be safely kept open and that the facility’s needed roof repairs could be done in just a few months.

“It’s not the kind of bogeyman and immediate urgency that they’re trying to paint as a picture here,” said Mr. Rudy, whose firm was founded by the late Raymond Moriyama in 1958. Mr. Moriyama designed the Science Centre, which opened in 1969, as a project to celebrate Canada’s Centennial in 1967.

Mr. Rudy said his firm, which also designed the nearby Aga Khan Museum and the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, would oversee the urgent repair work at the Science Centre for free. And he said the firm has assembled construction, engineering and heritage experts who are also willing to work pro bono on the facility, although he said materials need to be paid for. A handful of tech world figures have said publicly they would donate money to cover some of the urgent renovation costs.

The government’s Infrastructure Ontario agency said last week an engineering report had concluded that without urgent repairs, parts of the Science Centre’s roof were in danger of collapsing this winter under the weight of a heavy snowfall.

This, the agency said, meant the facility needed to be shuttered within hours and that staff had until Oct. 31 to move exhibits to a yet-to-be-found temporary location. Infrastructure Ontario said the entire roof needed replacing, a job that could cost up to $40-million and take two to five years.

But critics have called these assertions into question, noting the engineering report also says performing only the most urgent short-term work could cost just over $500,000.

The Progressive Conservative government was already facing criticism for its previously announced plan to move the Ontario Science Centre to a new, smaller building, set to open in 2028, at its Ontario Place site on Toronto’s waterfront. The project also includes a planned private-sector spa and waterpark that has sparked controversy, along with a taxpayer-funded parking garage that critics say could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. Rudy said the recent engineering report on the existing Science Centre’s roof shows only 11 five-foot-wide concrete roof panels – out of thousands – in need of urgent repair in exhibition areas.

The work, he said, could easily be done safely by cordoning off affected zones over three to six months, with the entire roof replaced gradually over the next 10 years. He pointed to the Toronto Reference Library, a similarly large building that his firm designed, that was kept open as it underwent a full renovation.

Asked to respond, Ash Milton, a spokesperson for the Infrastructure Minister, said in an e-mailed statement that the government stood by both its cost estimates for the repairs and its analysis showing that moving the Science Centre would save $257-million over the next 50 years. (An auditor-general’s report said this figure had failed to account for a number of large extra costs, such as the proposed parking garage.)

Michael Lindsay, who heads Infrastructure Ontario, blamed the shutdown last week on the discovery of deterioration in roof panels made from what is known as reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC). The material has been cited as the cause of roof collapses in British schools in recent years. That prompted the agency, responsible for the province’s real estate portfolio, to hire engineers with Rimkus Consulting Group to re-examine the Science Centre’s roof.

But Mr. Rudy said the existence of RAAC, common in buildings from the 1950s to the 1970s, was already well-known at the Science Centre. He blamed the problems on faulty maintenance over the years that may have allowed the roof to be punctured and water to seep in.

The architect also cast doubt on the government’s repair cost estimates, noting the report says the roof repair could come in at the report’s low-end estimate of $22-million. He also said the government’s $478-million estimate for the total refurbishment of the Science Centre – including heating, air conditioning and other critical systems – was “grossly inflated.” He pegged the potential bill at between $200-million and $250-million for work he said had been put off for years.

Mr. Rudy appeared alongside local Liberal MPP Adil Shamji, who accused the government of cherry picking from the engineers’ report on the Science Centre’s roof to justify the move to Ontario Place.

“What the government is doing is taking details that are technically accurate but coming forward with a completely flawed interpretation,” the MPP said.