Advertisement

Culture

Take a look at this shiny new concert venue landing in Toronto

Toronto concert venue OverActive

The pandemic killed tourism and events but it isn’t slowing down plans for a shiny new hotel and concert venue in Toronto.

OverActive Media unveiled designs today for a new $500-million venue to be built adjacent to BMO Field in Exhibition Place. The entertainment space, from multinational design firm Populous, looks like something out of the planet Coruscant from George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels, and it’s expecting to land along Lake Shore West in 2025.

“The design of the theatre was neither conceived as a sports arena nor an opera house,” says Populous senior principal and lead designer Jonathan Mallie, in a statement. “The theatre architecture creates a merger of the old and the new. The old channeling the rhythmic repetition of historic landmark theatres, and the new, integrating the progressive forms of avant-garde twenty-first-century design.”

Populous is also designing a Cinesphere-like entertainment space in London as well as the new Wembley Stadium and OVG Manchester, which will be the largest indoor arena in the United Kingdom.  

Courtesy of OverActive Media

“Today is another important step in the evolution of OverActive Media,” said president and CEO Chris Overholt in a statement. His eSports company owns two local franchises: Toronto defiant and Toronto Ultra, in the Overwatch and Call Of Duty league. The company’s investors include The Weeknd and Mitch Marner of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The venue will obviously be a home for both eSports teams. OverActive Media plans to host more than 200 events a year at the facility, with a focus on premium music and entertainment bookings but also hosting conventions, award shows, corporate events and product launches.

OverActive’s head of communications Paulo Senra says the venue 7,200-capacity venue will fill a hole in Toronto’s entertainment landscape. The city has a ridiculous gap between the 2,630 seats at Roy Thomson Hall and the 19,800 seats at Scotiabank Arena.

“We are building a world-leading, 21st century sports media and entertainment company and this best-in-class performance venue will be the chosen home for a new generation of fans that think differently about their entertainment choices and experiences.”

@nowtoronto

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted