The cost of relocating the Ontario Science Scentre to Ontario Place increased by $400 million in less than eight months, the province’s auditor general has found, throwing cold water on the government’s assertions that moving the tourist attraction would be cheaper than renovating the existing site.
When the Ford government announced a controversial plan to shutter and relocate the Ontario Science Centre in the spring of 2023, the province boasted that taxpayers would save $257 million, over a 50-year period, by closing the aging and poorly maintained site.
The preferred option, the government said, was to build a new science centre on the Ontario Place ground that, despite a smaller footprint, would fit all the “core programming” the science centre needs to meet its mandate.
A business case analysis suggested that keeping the science centre at the current site would cost $1.3 billion over 50 years, compared with $1.047 billion over 50 years to move it …