ontario Place, Toronto’s lakeside recreational playground, has changed the name of its popular summer concert venue, Ontario Place Forum.
The new name is Ontario Place Molson Forum.
For short, it will be known as Molson Forum.
The renaming is part of Ontario Place’s announcement that Toronto’s MCA Concerts, which is partially owned by Molson, will help finance a new $12-million concert facility to take the place of the existing facility.
The new facility, scheduled for completion by June 1993, will have 9,000 fixed seats and seating for another 9,000 on the surrounding grass.
The existing forum holds 7,300 in the fixed seats and on the grass.
Molson will be Molson Forum’s primary sponsor, responsible, through mca, for booking about 80% of the musical groups that appear.
Like its predecessor, the new forum will be open May to October.
Meanwhile, Labatt Breweries of Canada, in tandem with its BCL Entertainment, is seeking permission to build a $70-million domed recreational and sports facility on the grounds of Toronto’s historic Canadian National Exhibition.
Labatt holds a 47% interest in bcl.
The proposed facility, which is yet to be named, would seat 30,000 and would replace the existing Canadian National Exhibition Stadium.
Designed as a multi-use centre, it would contain a 20,000-seat indoor building for major sports and entertainment events, a 10,000-seat seasonal concert bowl and a 3,200-seat theatre.
Jim Monaco, director of communication at bcl, says many of the details of the proposal are still being worked out – including the way in which bcl will sell sponsorship rights to advertisers.
Monaco says the eventual plan could allow for either long-term or short-term sponsorships.
Coca-Cola will likely become one of the facility’s eventual sponsors, since the Toronto-based soft drink marketer is already a sponsor of bcl’s affiliate company, Concert Production International.
bcl submitted its proposal for a new stadium in response to a proposal call by the cne’s board of governors.
The board has yet to give final approval to the bce proposal.
