The path to the shockingly sudden shutdown of the Ontario Science Centre after 55 years in operation began quietly last fall.
While controversy swirled over Premier Doug Ford’s plan to open a new science centre at Ontario Place in 2028 — and a spa — an engineering firm hired by the provincial agency Infrastructure Ontario sent experts to the iconic building as winter approached.
What they found prompted last week’s technical report detailing problems with poorly maintained and crumbling aerated concrete roof panels at risk of failing. Several pages of photos were included.
“We had received notification about the specific type of concrete and the specific type of panels being used around the world in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s,” Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma confirmed Monday.
“We had every intention on keeping the science centre open until the new science centre is built, but I cannot ignore the health and safety warning,” Surma added, pushing back at growing suspicions about the closure.
“I have an obligation to protect the public.”
Despite the report, which points to water infiltration of the concrete panels causing it to deteriorate and reinforcing bar inside it to rust, critics smell a rat over the closure and want it reversed.
They maintain it conveniently pads Ford’s narrative about the overall poor condition of the science centre following years of neglect by successive governments.
“We know what this is about — his vanity Ontario Place project,” New Democrat Leader Marit Stiles wrote on social media.
“Everything about this feels wrong,” said Liberal MPP Adil Shamji, whose riding of Don Valley East includes the science centre.
The centre’s days were already numbered: the government’s “business case” for a new one found it would cost $600 million more to fix up the existing building designed by the late architect Raymond Moriyama.
According to Ontario’s auditor general last December, “deferred maintenance projects that were at risk of critical failure have been repeatedly denied funding” at the science centre. They include 42 such projects since 2017, the year before Ford’s Progressive Conservatives took power.
What did the report find?
Last week’s 52-page engineering report by Rimkus Consulting Group concluded concrete panels used in the science centre are reaching the end of their lifespan, similar to those in more than 100 now-closed British schools of the same era.
As the Associated Press reported from London last September on the schools, this type of concrete panel can fail “with very little warning,” said Phil Purnell, a professor of materials and structures at the University of Leeds.
A deadline of Oct. 31 has been set to vacate the science centre, before another seasonal onslaught of rain and snow risks a collapse on staff and visitors, many of them schoolchildren.
Surma said the immediate closure to the public gives staff time to pack up and move to a temporary science centre — for which a request for proposals went out Monday — or to pop-up exhibitions being arranged.
“We have exhibits, we have animals, we have staff in the building. We have to essentially turn the building off,” she added. “It’s a job and we’re doing all of that planning now.”
Aware that the report would be questioned in today’s political climate, Infrastructure Ontario chief executive Michael Lindsay pledged it will be peer reviewed by another engineering firm, providing a second opinion of sorts.
One concrete panel is ‘critical’
While the report stated just one science centre roofing panel is in the “critical” category, six per cent of the panels are considered “high risk,” nine per cent are “medium risk” and the remaining 84 per cent are “low risk.”
But the authors warned “a significant snow or rain … could exceed the reduced load-carrying capacity of the distressed panels, placing them at an increased risk of sudden collapse.”
The recommendation? That the roof panels be replaced with steel decking, which would cost between $22 million and $40 million and take two to five years.
Officials said the lengthy time frame is because many of the roof panels are hard to reach because of the science centre’s unique location straddling a ravine.
The material in question — known as RAAC for reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete — was a popular choice in institutional and industrial buildings because of its light weight and thermal insulation capacities that also made it a good sound and fire barrier, the Rimkus report said.
It is made from an aerated blend of sand, Portland cement and aluminum powder and has increasingly come on the radar for problems as water seeps in.
“As a building material, RAAC has an overall reduced robustness compared to steel decks or traditional concrete, making it more susceptible to damage from impact and raising the risk of sudden failure,” the Rimkus report continues.
“Owner and facility managers are often not aware of the problems … until there is physical evidence of a failure or deterioration.”
“The consequences of RAAC failure include potential building damage and risk to public safety,” the report cautions.
About 80 other public buildings across Ontario with the same type of concrete are being examined to determine if further action is necessary.
