Another hotel, new parkade and food building occupy CNE top exec's mind

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As excited as CNE CEO Darrell Brown is about Friday’s opening of The Ex, he also has major concerns about its future space and development, which he shared with the Sun on Wednesday during the CNE food preview day.

Another hotel beside the already existing Hotel X on exhibition grounds

“A definitive thing that’s going to happen is a phase-two hotel development. So that’s 360,000 square feet that’s (gone). I don’t know what they’re going to call it but there’s an e-gaming facility and a hotel. One of the unfortunate things with that is the original developer design had them on top of one another and city planning said they wanted them split so they put them side by side. It doubled the footprint.”

Dedicated parking spaces for the redevelopment of Ontario Place

“The other, more immediate concern is parking and the commitment by the city to allow for construction of parking for Ontario Place on Exhibition Place. And the province, at least through Infrastrucure Ontario, behind closed doors stating a preference for an above-ground facility and we’re absolutely opposed to an above-ground parkade on these grounds. We commissioned plans ourselves back in 2015 and 2019 that would have underground parking constructed so that BMO (Field) would have full connectivity to Ontario Place. That’s what should happen. But right now the province is saying it’s too expensive.”

The food building’s lease runs out in 2027

“We built the food building. We paid for it. We’ve been the exclusive occupant since 1954, but there’s been an expressed desire on the part of the city to develop that building and so it’s not clear. It’s still three years out. We’re looking at ways of developing proposals. We agree it needs redevelopment but we want to be part of it, not excluded from it.”