Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Despite its prime location in the heart of downtown Toronto, the MaRS Discovery District Tower is struggling to find tenants leading to a big bailout by the Ontario government.

The Ontario government has a projected budget deficit for 2014-2015 in the tune of $12.5 billion dollars. But they somehow found roughly $309-million to buy out the American developer for the troubled site.

The MaRS Discovery District Tower was supposed to be a place where bright minds would come together to come up with high-tech businesses. But the building is only 31% occupied. So, Queen’s Park bought out American real estate firm, Alexandria Real Estate that was overseeing the property.

Infrastructure Minister Brad Duguid said $224-million will go towards a loan Queen’s Park gave MaRS back in 2011 that was supposed to be used to build another building and be paid back with rental costs. And we may see bureaucrats filling in those vacancies in the building. During the provincial election, Kathleen Wynne’s government came under fire after the Progressive Conservatives found leaked info of a then proposed bailout of MaRS that was around $477-million. The opposition sounded off after the news broke that the bailout was official.

NDP MPP Catherine Fife: “We’ve been down this road before with the gas plants. And I think our job is to follow what the Auditor General is going to come out with and estimates — meet next week and we’re going to ask some hard questions of this government.”

PC MPP Vic Fedeli: “The $309 million they announced today is only an ante. It is hundreds of millions of dollars more, just as the whistleblowers told us back in June.”

Some of those extra costs Vic Fedeli hinted could be another $275-million in operating shortfalls, improvement costs and amortization.