METRO TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE

INTERIOR IMPROVEMENTS – ESCALATOR RECONFIGURATION S 2009 – 2011

The Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC) 4-level north buildng was built in 1984. The 3-level south building and Skybridge connection over the railway tracks dividing the two buildings was added in 1997. The doubling of capacity increased the movement of people between floors and buildings.

The goal has been to open up the blockages presented by paired sets of escalators and to streamline the pedestrian route in the north building onto the Skybridge.

The east end stacked escalators, requiring one to circle back to find the next set of escalators, have been re-aligned in a linear sequence, putting pedestrians directly onto the bridge to the south building.

The precise placement of the escalators into tight fitting spaces required laser measuring and computer modeling. The contractor has done an excellent job of slinging the new escalators quickly and into tight spaces. The computer models of each escalator area were eventually joined in one large computer model of the entire north building.

A walk-through video was created to assist in demonstrating the proposed changes to the convention centre. All modeling and fly-through video have been created in-house using Archicad on Mac computers.

The project has involved the doubling in the number of escalators in the high traffic areas in both the north & south buildings, as well as the addition of one escalator from two to three for areas of medium traffic or where structure would not permit more.