Luminato is transforming the Hearn Generating Station into a massive multi-arts hub

Some of Toronto’s coolest cultural hubs were never originally meant to be destinations for the city’s creative class: Artscape Youngplace was a public school, MoCCA’s new home in the Junction was an auto-parts factory, the Power Plant was, well, a power plant.

Now Luminato is joining in the fun. The 10-year-old arts fest just announced its plans to turn the long-decommissioned Hearn Generation Station into its 2016 festival hub. The massive Port Lands space (it’s 23 million cubic feet) will house the entire ticketed program in June. By then, the empty complex, which Luminato used for its fundraising gala and Unsound Festival earlier this year, will have become a multi-disciplinary mecca, complete with a theatre, music stage, site-specific performance space, restaurants and bars.

To help with the house cleaning, Luminato is tapping Partisans, the architecture firm behind the Union Station revitalization and Bar Raval, and Charcoalblue, an acoustics consultancy firm. We anticipate good things—and, we can only hope, better sound and sightlines than the nearby Sound Academy.