Toronto beats out Hamilton to house Canadian music hall of fame
TORONTO (CP) – Canadian music legends will soon be immortalized at a flashy music museum to be built in Toronto.
The city beat out nearby Hamilton to house the facility, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) was poised to announce Tuesday. “When you think of a Canadian music hall of fame, it could generate a somewhat dusty image and that is very far from what we’re shooting for. It’s going to be very high-energy,” Ross Reynolds, chairman of CARAS, said Monday.
“It will be much more interactive than the rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame (in Cleveland).”
The facility, expected to open in the summer of 2007, will be located at the bustling corner of Yonge and Dundas streets in the city’s downtown core.
It is expected to span three floors of a 10-storey building already under construction that will also include a record store, stereo store, movie theatres and restaurants.
Peter Tillmann, president of Spinning Wheel Designs and project director for the Toronto bid, likened the complex to an “entertainment-style project similar to Times Square, New York.”
“The outside of the building has been designed like a giant billboard,” he said.
“If you can imagine a 10-storey-high billboard with, say, 18 different types of television screens and monitors and flashing lights and all kinds of bells and whistles.”
Inside, the facility will take visitors “behind the scenes” of the music industry, Tillman said.
“There will be a lot of exhibits where people can interact and become their favourite musician so they can get into an editing suite, they can play an instrument, they can do some recording with their vocals, they can go in and see how instruments are made,” he said.
For more than 25 years, CARAS has been inducting musicians and industry leaders into a hall of fame, but has not had a “bricks-mortar” base.
Five cities – Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Sault Ste. Marie – originally bid on the project. All other candidates eventually dropped out or were eliminated except for Hamilton and Toronto.
Reynolds said Toronto was chosen because it draws so many visitors.
“The overriding driving factor here was the location and the traffic and the dynamism of that particular location,” he said.
Currently the hall exists in the virtual world only at www.juno-awards.ca. Each year new names are added at a ceremony folded into the televised Juno Awards.
The building is to be the Canadian equivalent to Cleveland’s famous structure – designed by renowned architect I.M. Pei – only it won’t be limited to those in the world of rock ‘n’ roll.
The project will cost about $40 million, with funds to come from corporate sponsors and the music industry as well as a mix of private and public sponsors.
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