Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada<\/a> conference, speaking alongside First Nations leaders at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, located at 255 Front St. W.<\/p>\nHe said his government is moving forward with plans for a new facility after being told by the convention centre\u2019s board that the current centre ranks 24th out of 25 worldwide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is unacceptable. When you have a world-class province, a world-class city, we\u2019re going to build a world-class convention centre,\u201d Ford said. \u201cSmaller cities are getting international conventions over us, that\u2019s stopping.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ford also criticized the layout of the existing centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe aren\u2019t going to have a convention centre that goes up, that goes down, that goes sideways, you cross the road, that\u2019s not a convention centre. We\u2019re going to build a world-class, 2 million-square-foot, state-of-the-art convention centre,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The premier confirmed the new centre will remain in Toronto and that the current Metro Toronto Convention Centre will continue operations during construction. He emphasized that the current facility\u2019s size is causing the city to lose conventions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason it has to be 2 million [square feet] is that we\u2019re losing so many conventions. I spent 20 years in Chicago; they have a few million square feet in the McCormick Centre, but we\u2019re going to build something much better than the McCormick Centre,\u201d Ford said.<\/p>\n
Ford also drew attention last week at a Toronto Region Board of Trade dinner, where he first called the Metro Toronto Convention Centre one of the worst in the world.<\/p>\n
He said details on the new centre\u2019s design and exact location will be announced later, and while he expects the project to cost a few billion dollars, no specific price has been confirmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What to know Premier Doug Ford reiterates plans to build a new two-million-square-foot \u201cworld-class\u201d convention centre in Toronto.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,13743,202824,3302],"class_list":{"0":"post-510051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-doug-ford","11":"tag-metro-toronto-convention-centre","12":"tag-toronto"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}