A long-vacant heritage building on Toronto’s waterfront will reopen this fall as a new arts and culture hub after a $20-million restoration project.
The Canada Ireland Foundation announced Wednesday that the Corleck, a restored multipurpose arts centre at the foot of Bathurst Street, will officially open Nov. 18 with the Canadian premiere of Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy “Endgame,” performed by Ireland’s Druid Theatre Company.
It’s the first major event hosted at the 9,600-square-foot venue on Eireann Quay, adjacent to Ireland Park. The facility has been under a soft launch this spring, with gatherings tied to the Luminato Festival and an Irish theatre festival.
The opening caps a years-long effort to transform the former administrative offices of the Canada Malting Silos into a multi-use cultural space for theatre, music, visual arts and community programming. It will also house the CIF’s offices and conference rooms.
The restoration of the early modernist building next to the Billy Bishop airport terminal is part of a larger revitalization of the Eireann Quay neighbourhood.
“I always describe it as it is the most beautiful building you have walked past and never noticed,” the CIF’s executive director William Peat told the Star.
“It’s industrial, so it doesn’t have big flourishes, but it has that beautiful yellow brick that’s synonymous with Toronto.”
The CIF signed a lease with the City of Toronto in 2021 to redevelop the vacant two-and-a-half storey building, which had sat mostly unused since the 1980s.
Earlier this year, Canadian Heritage announced funding through the Cultural Spaces Fund to complete the venue’s performance infrastructure, including lighting, sound and staging systems. Ontario contributed $2.2 million, while the City of Toronto invested $4.4 million toward the renovations. Peat said the Irish government provided about $3 million, with other amounts coming from private donors.
“Endgame,” directed by Tony Award winner Garry Hynes, will showcase the main auditorium which will seat just over 100 people for each performance, running through Nov. 28. Tickets are on sale Thursday through the Canada Ireland Foundation website.
“It’s going to be an incredibly intimate experience,“said Peat. “You will never sit so close to actors who are at such top of their game.”
Peat said the Corleck spaces are intended to welcome “everyone in the city of Toronto,” with the capability of hosting weddings and conferences, as well as performances.
“It’s not an ethnospecific bastion of Irish culture,” he added.
The venue will play a central role in next year’s Canada-Ireland 180, a series of events marking the 180th anniversary of the arrival of Irish Famine refugees in Canada.
