Beginning in September, the Sony Centre will be renamed Meridian Hall and the Toronto Centre for the Arts in North York will become the Meridian Arts Centre as part of a $30.75-million deal with the city.

Those behind the agreement say they don’t expect Toronto theatregoers to get mixed up by the similar names.

“Are we worried about people getting confused? I’m not worried about confusion between both of those facilities, and very clearly, when you look at the type of programming that is happening in each of those facilities, they are different,” said Wade Stayzer, Meridian Credit Union senior vice-president and chief member experience officer.

Grant Ramsay, media relations officer for TO Live, which represents the theatres, said the transformation will take place Sept. 15, following a marketing strategy to ensure the new names are well understood by patrons and tourists.

“A full digital strategy will also be revealed to ensure that patrons enjoy a seamless experience when visiting our venues,” Ramsay said.

Civic Theatres Toronto, which consists of three city-owned facilities — the Toronto Centre for the Arts (with four theatres), St. Lawrence Centre (with two theatres) and the Sony Centre theatre — secured the strategic partnership and naming-rights agreement with Meridian Credit Union.

What do you think?

Civic Theatres is also rebranding as TO Live, a name that better represents the organization and reflects the next phase of the organization’s plans to grow, according to Clyde Wagner, president and CEO. At the same time, TO Live is announcing the creation of the TO Live Foundation, which will help it fundraise and work with the community.

Civic Theatres Toronto was created in 2015 to find efficiencies and ways to improve the underperforming theatres.

On Monday, both Wagner and Stayzer said the naming-rights deal is about more than just renaming the buildings, as the companies plan to find ways to work together.

“It’s a key tenet of ours to contribute and give back, and help to build stronger communities. So if you look across from Ottawa to Vaughan to St. Catharines to Barrie, there are what I would call significant community assets to bear the Meridian name and, even more than that, signify the very strong partnerships between our people on the ground and our organizations,” said Stayzer.

“When this was presented to us, this just fit very well with what we want to do, as well as what Clyde and his team are trying to do.”

The deal will see the money split over the next 15 years and will help TO Live take the next steps toward preserving the city-owned cultural assets under its stewardship.

Wagner, who was recruited from the Luminato arts festival, said that while a lot work has been done behind the scenes, this is the next step.

Read more:

Opinion | Martin Knelman: Report pushes merger for three city-owned theatres

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

“ When we started three years ago, these were three separate entities, three separate businesses, the Sony Centre, the St. Lawrence Centre and the Toronto Centre for the Arts,” he said.

“In the past two years, we’ve been doing a lot of work under the hood, amalgamating these companies, bringing the staffs together, creating one institution, with one system of booking, of marketing … which is a way of leveraging efficiency, to do better for the city and taxpayer.”

The Sony Centre has picked up some concerts with the current Massey Hall renovation underway. All together there were 613 performances with over 493,000 attendance at all the theatres last year. In 2019, they are anticipating more than 500,000 attendees and 774 performances. Wagner also points to the 2019 budget growing to $28.1 million — an increase of almost $4 million over 2018 — while the organization’s subsidy remains at $5.3 million, which is down $600,000 from 2017.