The
Aga Khan and Prime Minister Harper were in town last week to break ground on the $300-million
Aga Khan Museum and
Ismaili Centre in the city's north end.
"His original hope was to locate this project in London, England," says an effervescently enthusiastic
Councillor John Parker, in whose ward the buildings and adjacent park are being built, "but things didn't work out there. Plan B was Wynford Drive, Ward 26." Parker calls the development his ward's largest "by a long shot."
The site, on which construction began last week, was formerly home to a Shell Oil office building and, more notably, the former headquarters of Bata Shoes, a building by
John B. Parkin that the
Toronto Star's Chris Hume wrote was "reminiscent of an ancient Greek temple. Unadorned yet poetic, the architecture pays homage to the past while extolling the virtues of the future," and the
Globe's Lisa Rochon described as "imperfect," "clumsy" and derivative.
According to Parker, the original plan was to build in two phases, but various delays in approvals convinced the developer, a local corporation put together by the Aga Khan, to build it all at once and much more quickly, starting several years later than planned, but finishing up by the original completion date, in 2013.
"Your average developer would move ahead on as many fronts as they could establish, and once they had a critical mass of construction approvals, would get to work building," Parker says. "This developer didn't want to make their first move until they had all their plans fully approved."
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Councillor John Parker
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