Michael Murray<\/p>\n

SEPTEMBER 27TH, 2011<\/p>\n

The Toronto Standard.<\/p>\n

Toronto’s iconic Regal Constellation Hotel now languishes in a state of modernist limbo, of suspended demolition. We poke around inside the guts of a Toronto that once was.<\/p>\n

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Out by the airport,\u00a0<\/strong>the old Regal Constellation was the sort of hotel\u00a0from which a black sheep uncle might have sent you a schlocky, likely\u00a0sexist, postcard. The place had a Las Vegas, 1960’s vibe, as if trying\u00a0to project some sort of Rat-Pack zing out over Pearson Airport. The\u00a0rooftop signage had a hastily erected beach-strip quality to it, and\u00a0it wasn’t hard to imagine would-be wiseguys plotting their tiny\u00a0empires from a subterranean lair. Now the Regal Constellation, having been in some state of demolition\u00a0for the last eight years, is but a shell of itself. Built in 1962, it\u00a0had two 15-storey towers, an ever-optimistic 90,000 square feet of\u00a0conference space, a 6-storey atrium that suggested a future that would\u00a0never quite arrive, and of course, a Chinese Restaurant. Named after the Super Constellation aircraft, it was the spot. A\u00a0beacon for trade shows, weary travelers and curiosity seekers, the\u00a0Constellation was a product of its time, a suggestion of a modernity\u00a0and sophistication that would always remain just out of grasp. As the\u00a060s and 70s faded away, the Constellation slowly started to stumble\u00a0through the ensuing decades, finally giving up the ghost in 2003 with\u00a0the SARS-aided collapse of the tourist industry. In 2004 the property was to be developed by American investors and\u00a0transformed into yet another, grander version of itself. But the\u00a0economy tanked, and when the investors found out all the buried costs\u00a0involved in removing the asbestos laced throughout the buildings, they\u00a0walked away leaving unpaid bills and a partially dismantled hotel. It\u00a0was then purchased by Toronto interests\u2014who will likely turn it into\u00a0a parking lot in anticipation of flipping it to another developer\u2014and Priestly Demolition was hired on to finish the job of cleaning the site and taking down the building so that all the concrete, safely\u00a0separated from contaminates, can be recycled. Curious to see what salvageable materials remained in the place I\u00a0imposed on some contacts to have a look at the site. Standing inside\u00a0the fenced off property amidst a half dozen clawed bulldozers and a\u00a0small fleet of red Priestly trucks working away in a riot of deconstruction, the nearby jets still cast off some of the glamour and\u00a0power of international travel that informed the hotel back in the day. There are heaps of twisted metal on the ground, all wound into crazy\u00a0organic shapes that wouldn’t look out of place in a museum. The site,\u00a0having become little more than a dumping ground for the unpaid\u00a0demolition company that preceded Priestly, is littered with industrial\u00a0bric-a-brac. The place smells of dirt, oil, hot metal and mould, and the sounds of heavy industry, usually distant, are immediate. Masked\u00a0workmen hose down the detritus in an attempt to keep dangerous\u00a0particulates from floating up into the atmosphere, giving it an eerie\u00a0and entirely ruined feeling. Instead of the cheerfully Arabian-inflected hotel it once was, it now\u00a0resembles a bombed-out husk. Through broken windows, tarps and scraps\u00a0of cloth flap in the wind and reinforcing construction bars protrude\u00a0from the rubble of broken concrete like bones. Shattered glass\u00a0crunches under foot and with no power the basement and ground level are dark and wet, the graffiti marked corridors now resembling the\u00a0architecture of a shooting game. Upstairs on the second floor sunlight falls through the broken windows\u00a0onto the salmon wallpaper that lines the hallways. The windows in each\u00a0room are distinctive and kind of trapezoidal, like replicated versions\u00a0of the Bat Signal fanning out across each floor. Back outside on the ground, a now pointless sign for a Taxi Stand sits\u00a0across from the still standing awning for Okinawa Sushi, a restaurant\u00a0that at one time must have felt so exotic and international, another\u00a0part of the seductive allure that emanated from the Constellation. And\u00a0on a nearby wall, as if a testimony to the fact that the sushi bar helped business men with libertine instincts set aflame by an\u00a0anonymous life in transit, a piece of graffiti\u00a0declares: John Coleman is good in bed. On the nearby exterior marble slabs are still attached to the\u00a0building. The letters that spelled out Regal Constellation have been\u00a0removed, leaving faded, ghostly traces of each letter. It’s a\u00a0melancholy sight, like seeing the name of an ancestor on a derelict tombstone. Like some sort of folk art castle rising from found objects, the\u00a0Constellation now feels like the product of an eccentric and singular\u00a0imagination. Even if in its final days it bears only a passing\u00a0resemblance to what it was once meant to be, some developer will see the potential that eludes others. And like all the businesspeople that\u00a0passed through the place and looked out from their rooms at all the\u00a0planes taking off and landing, they, too, will see the future and in it the\u00a0transport to the good life it so clearly promises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Murray SEPTEMBER 27TH, 2011 The Toronto Standard. Toronto’s iconic Regal Constellation Hotel now languishes in a state of modernist limbo, of suspended demolition. We poke around inside the guts of a Toronto that once was. Out by the airport,\u00a0the old Regal Constellation was the sort of hotel\u00a0from which a black sheep uncle might have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/593"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}