32 Lisgar and the City’s Illusion of Inclusion

In May 2025, the City of Toronto held a "Town Hall" meeting about the future of 32 Lisgar Street, a purpose-built media arts facility in Toronto's West Queen West neighborhood that sits largely unused. City representatives invited attendees to "dream big" about possibilities for the space while presenting plans for a new operator selection process. The complex history of the site and the community's decade-long struggle to realize its original purpose went unacknowledged.

The 32 Lisgar space represents one of Toronto's most significant Section 37 community benefits: Approximately 38,000 square feet of arts space secured through a density bonus that allowed the developer, Urbancorp, to build taller towers in exchange for providing this cultural amenity.

For many in attendance, the invitation to imagine new futures for the space felt hollow without first addressing what had already been dreamed about, planned for, and achieved through years of community effort.

A timeline of displacement

This disconnect was obvious from the presentation's opening moments, when City staff claimed they had "secured" the space in January 2022. Audience members quickly pointed out that the building had been secured many years earlier through agreements with TMAC and Urbancorp, with the City as a party to these arrangements. This timeline distortion erases the story of how this community benefit has remained largely inaccessible to the very community that long struggled to bring it to life.

So, let’s look at the actual dates:

  • In 2011, TMAC signed a Letter of Intent with developer Urbancorp for the space, intended as a community arts benefit under Section 37 of the Planning Act.
  • In 2012, following strict due diligence, City Council unanimously approved TMAC as the operator and owner of the space at 32 Lisgar.
  • In 2014, the Agreement of Purchase and Sale (APS) was fully executed between TMAC, Urbancorp, and the City of Toronto.
  • By 2015, the building was substantially complete, but Urbancorp refused to close the transaction at the direction of the City.
  • In 2018, after winning an injunction, TMAC was finally allowed to occupy the space under a license agreement while legal proceedings continued.
  • From 2018-2021, TMAC operated the space successfully (exactly as its business plan projected), with 115 community partners collaborating on 50+ exhibitions, 475+ free festivals, educational programs, and other public events, welcoming 30,000+ visitors.
  • In June 2021, TMAC was forced to vacate the premises after the City continued to drag out legal proceedings, effectively draining the charity of its funds.

(Not to mention the decades of organizing by the pioneering media arts organizations who first created the cluster. Check out the timeline page.)

When city staff claim they "secured" the space in 2022, they're skipping over a decade of community dreaming, investment, planning, and work. The space wasn't an empty shell that needed the City's imagination. It was a thriving community arts hub that the City dismantled.

The abandoned promise of community ownership

Now completely absent from the City’s proposal is a genuine community ownership structure. The facility was never about just renting space to artists; it was about building community equity through collaborative self-governance.

The original TMAC deal was groundbreaking.

The original APS (executed in 2014) established a structure that would have given TMAC actual ownership of the building:

  • TMAC would purchase the property for $1,562,972
  • Instead of requiring a cash payment (which would have been impossible for an arts charity), Urbancorp would provide vendor-take-back (VTB) mortgage financing
  • TMAC would make affordable monthly payments of $10,000 over a 25-year term
  • TMAC would gradually build equity in the building, providing long-term stability for the arts community
  • Most importantly, TMAC - not the City - would own the building, with community organizations collectively governing the space

This ownership structure was not a fluke, but carefully designed to create permanent, affordable space. The $10,000 monthly mortgage payment was calculated based on TMAC's financial modeling to be sustainable through membership fees, rental income, and operational funding. It meant a path to permanent community ownership, not perpetual tenancy.

This ownership structure was paired with a collaborative governance model that included representatives from both member organizations and the local community (such as the Lisgar Park Stewardship Committee), so that decisions about the space reflected actual neighbourhood needs and priorities. This model created real community accountability, not just a mirage of consultation.

The City's current proposal strips away this ownership component entirely. Instead, they're offering a 25-year lease with "nominal rent" ($2/year) but requiring tenants to pay all operating costs and capital improvement expenses. So arts organizations will pay much more than they would have under the original mortgage agreement, build no equity, and ultimately improve a City-owned asset that they'll never own.

The theater: Turnkey to tenant burden

City staff made the claim that funding for the theater "went away," implying that TMAC was responsible for this loss.

In reality, the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC), a founding member of TMAC, secured a $310,000 capital grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation specifically earmarked for the theater fit-out. Additionally, CFMDC secured federal funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage for the space. These funds were contingent on TMAC having ownership and control of the space, as outlined in the original agreement. When the City redirected ownership away from TMAC, these funding sources evaporated.

The City had originally committed to ensuring the building was delivered "turnkey" with a completed theater. The APS stipulated that Urbancorp was responsible for delivering a completed facility. When Urbancorp failed to complete the theater, the City should have held them accountable. Instead, it allowed Urbancorp to walk away from its obligations while still enjoying the benefits of the $69.2 million density bonus it received.

Now, the City suggests that the new tenant should be responsible for completing the theater within five years - shifting the developer's original obligation onto the community organizations that were supposed to benefit. This is a complete inversion of the original agreement's intent.

Not only had TMAC secured specific funding for the cinema completion, but its business plan detailed exactly how the space would operate sustainably once completed. We developed staffing plans for cinema managers, projectionists, and front-of-house staff, with detailed projections showing the cinema would generate enough rental income to support its operation while remaining accessible to community groups at subsidized rates.

Severed benefits

Another telling moment was the surprised reaction from staff when community members pointed out that the 9,000 square feet of "commercial space" on the third floor was originally intended as part of the arts facility. The community benefit extracted from the developer was meant to be approximately 38,000 square feet, not the 30,000 square feet the City now claims.

The original APS is explicit: "The lands and premises... containing approximately 37,815 square feet of space... together with two (2) separate elevators and separate lobby..." This square footage was precisely measured and agreed upon by all parties.

This carving off of community space was agreed to and enabled by the City itself during Urbancorp’s bankruptcy proceedings in 2018. While TMAC was in the midst of its legal struggle with the City, about 8,000 square feet of the third floor was legally severed from the property for Urbancorp's bankruptcy trustee to sell on the commercial market, to appease its creditors.

The commercial space is now occupied by a commercial entity (and on the market for $6.85 million), rather than serving the community purpose for which it was originally intended. This is a major loss to the community: Approximately 21% of the original arts space has been repurposed for commercial use, with no explanation from the City, or compensation offered to the community.

Economics of exclusion

The original Letter of Intent between TMAC and Urbancorp (with the City as a party) explicitly stated: "It is understood that the intent is to minimize the operation costs to be paid by TMAC." This idea, that artists shouldn't bear the brunt of excessive operating costs, has been abandoned. Artists and arts organizations are being asked to assume all financial risk while gaining none of the long-term value or equity in the space. How can arts orgs afford to offer accessible programming under these conditions?

Under the original ownership model, TMAC would have had control over how costs were allocated and managed. The $10,000 monthly mortgage payment was fixed and predictable. Under the City's new lease model, tenants will face variable and potentially escalating operating costs with no control over how they're calculated or managed.

TMAC's business plan had meticulously calculated operating costs with plans to build reserves starting in Year 3. The model balanced earned revenue (memberships, rentals, service fees) with contributed income and sponsorships, with the highest priority placed on keeping the space open and accessible for artists. We validated this model during our occupancy, with real-world testing of rental rates, operational costs, and programming expenses.

Losing years of work and millions in funding

Vera Frenkel, a pioneering media artist and longtime Charles Street Video member and TMAC supporter, put it so well:

"Until the city acknowledges that open wound and takes responsibility, becomes accountable, and perhaps even offers compensation... everything we're hearing today is dreamlike."

While Pat Tobin acknowledged that “things could have been done differently,” he took no responsibility and offered no remedies for the harm caused. Hundreds of artists and multiple nonprofits had their work disrupted and their financial investments in the space lost when TMAC was forced out.

By 2015, TMAC had received $788,000 in public and private funding specifically tied to securing and operating the 32 Lisgar space. By March 2019, TMAC had secured an additional $2.285 million in funding commitments from partners including Virtualware, Beanfield Metroconnect, and Ubisoft - all contingent on TMAC obtaining title to the building. The City's actions forced us to vacate without any compensation or acknowledgment of our nearly $800,000 investment or our subsequent fundraising efforts.

Behind these funding commitments were years of relationship-building. TMAC had established formal partnerships with dozens of cultural organizations including Myseum of Toronto, OCAD University, Regent Park Film Festival, and many others. These weren't just paper agreements. They were real, extensive collaborations that were destroyed when TMAC was displaced.

Dreaming into doing

The invitation by City staff to "dream" about 32 Lisgar's future is empty misdirection when the fundamental issues with how this space has been managed continue to be ignored.

It creates an illusion of inclusion while eliding the City's role in dismantling the original community vision. It places the burden of imagination on artists while actively removing the material conditions necessary for those dreams to become reality.

To inspire this "dreaming," the City showed the room glossy examples of arts hubs from around the world: Phi Centre, FutureEverything/SeeSaw, Creative Land Trust, Wasps, Watershed, and New Inc. Each depends on billionaire backers, reliable and adequate arts council grants, or seven-figure foundation subsidies that just don’t exist in Toronto’s underfunded, hyper-gentrified cultural ecosystem. Transplanted here, these models would collapse under our stratospheric rents and chronically underfunded arts budgets. We must dream beyond these prototypes, face our realities, and root our vision in community ownership and resilient governance.

What we need isn't another request for proposals. It's a return to the original vision of community ownership. The City should:

  • Acknowledge its role in displacing TMAC and the harm caused to the arts community.
  • Restore the original community ownership model, either by conveying the building to a non-profit land trust or creating a similar structure to the original VTB mortgage arrangement.
  • Take responsibility for completing the theater as originally promised, using funds from the developer's density bonus.
  • Work with the community to develop a collaborative governance model that ensures this space truly benefits those it was meant to serve.

The building at 32 Lisgar represents millions of dollars in community benefit extracted from developers. It belongs to the community, not bureaucrats! More than 10 years after the APS was signed, it's time the City honored its original commitment to community ownership and governance of this neglected community space.

Until it does, any invitation to "dream" about this space rings hollow.