Item - 2024.SC11.18

The Scarborough Community Council recommends that:

1. City Council direct the City Manager to assess the use of space at Scarborough Civic Centre and following this review, explore the potential to create a Strategic Plan by 2025 for the Scarborough Civic Centre, in alignment with the City’s Workplace Modernization Program, that:

a. addresses local needs including access to low cost, or possibly free community space;
b. involves the public and Scarborough Community Council;
c. explores key strategic priorities including economic development and innovation, culture, recreation, not-for-profits, and associated amenities;
d. consults past work to inform short, medium and long term site and area plans, including the Our Scarborough Centre (OurSC) Study;

e. generates revenue to support the ongoing State of Good Repair of the Civic Centre; and

f. involve and explore conversations with Scarborough TDSB Trustees to advance this Strategic Plan, as we share space at the Civic Centre with the Toronto District School Board.

Last September our iconic Scarborough Civic Centre embarked on its golden anniversary marking fifty years at the center of Scarborough's civic life. Lillian Allen, Toronto’s Poet Laureate, spoke of our Centre as a, “gathering place, a circle that radiates in the name of service to community,” as we seek to, “build our caring vision of Scarborough, filled with a bursting energy of hope, prosperity and joyousness.” Enabling this bold vision of our Centre as a transformational hub will require careful planning and some investments; but the ongoing potential of our civic space should be unlocked for the benefit of future generations of Scarberians.

This motion calls for the creation of a Strategic Plan by 2025 that will ensure the ongoing community usage and vibrancy of the Scarborough Civic Centre in a cost-effective manner.