The province’s budget crisis now has a symbol: the empty shell of Ontario Place’s iconic Cinesphere, water park and amusement rides.

As first disclosed by the Star, the Liberals have also turned to former Progressive Conservative leader John Tory to lead a volunteer advisory panel to report back by May on the future of the 51-hectare white elephant.

“The park does not draw enough people to its gates to keep it sustainable in its current form,” Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said Wednesday at Queen’s Park.

Senior officials insist the land would not be sold off outright nor is a casino likely to be built there — though they concede gambling facilities could open at adjacent city-owned Exhibition Place, which has better parking and transit access.

Ontario Place’s Atlantis Pavilion, the Molson Amphitheatre and marina will remain open while the familiar white geodesic dome that houses the Cinesphere, one of the world’s first IMAX theatres, is shuttered along with the Soak City water park, and the various rides.

Tourism Minister Michael Chan said Tory — and David Livingston, president and CEO of Infrastructure Ontario, among others — would “crunch the data” from ideas submitted to the government in September 2010 as part of a formal request for information from prospective developers and partners.

There were 36 proposals — none of which the government can reveal because some involve proprietary information from competing firms — ranging from condos to a floating hotel, casino and other attractions.

“Ontario Place has been studied to death,” said Chan, adding he wants the site available for the 2015 Pan Am Games and totally renewed by 2017 in time for Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations.

For his part, Tory said he seeks “something as dynamic and forward-looking as Ontario Place was in 1971,” borrowing from ideas in public spaces like Chicago’s Millennium Park.

“You want to do it in a way that will create jobs, is going to create an attraction, is going to add to this city and to this province and is going to be financially viable. So in that sense the paper is blank … there’s no preconceived notion,” he said.

Tory, PC leader from 2004 until 2009 and runner-up to David Miller in the 2003 Toronto mayoral contest, could also be able to break the traditional logjam with city hall, which owns and operates Exhibition Place.

“You wouldn’t develop one side of the street into something new and not talk to the people on the other side of the street, so hopefully those discussions will bear some fruit,” said the Newstalk 1010 host and CivicAction chair.

Councillor Mark Grimes, chair of Exhibition Place, welcomed Tory’s appointment, saying it helps toward the “physical integration” of the two waterfront properties through closer city-provincial cooperation.

“It should be looked at as one property, but not with one taking over the other,” said Grimes. “I would love to work with the province and John Tory as chair.”

Ontario Place was a pet project of Tory’s mentor, former PC premier Bill Davis, who governed from 1971 to 1985.

“John Tory is a good guy who wears a Toronto and an Ontario hat first and foremost before a partisan hat,” said PC MPP Peter Shurman (Thornhill).

NDP MPP Gilles Bisson said Tory is “an honourable man,” but he expressed alarm that a public asset may be privatized.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

But Ontario Place board chair Joe Halstead touted the “the beginning of a new era.”

Underutilized for decades, attendance has sunk to as low as 300,000 visitors a year, down from its 1970s heyday when annual crowds of 2.5 million made it an institution.

With files from Rob Ferguson and David Rider

Read more about: