Project profile: Enercare Centre

By Emma Peterson. 

This massive roof restoration is a model for efficiency, sustainability and operational continuity. 

Along the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto sits the award-winning Exhibition Place. This 192-acres site is Canada’s largest entertainment venue “hosting over 2,000 events and attracting over 5.5 million visitors a year.” For context, one such event  happening in this location is the FIFA World Cup 2026 in the summer of 2026. 

Having a schedule that busy and high profile led to some unique challenges when the site’s convention centers, the EnerCare Centre, needed a roof update. As Don Boyle, the CEO of Exhibition Place explained, “It's 13 acres of area, over 500,000 square feet. And with 2,000 events a year, we needed a roofing solution that was seamless and would not interrupt any of our clients.” 

To minimize disruption, the solution was to install a fluid-applied membrane over the existing roof substrate instead of conducting an entire roof replacement. Chris Van Dongen from Entuitive, the consultant on the project, shared a bit about the differences between these two methods, explaining, “A conventional roofing project would often mean full tear off of the existing product right down to the structural deck. A restoration project on the other hand tries to utilize what's in place already and then install a new fully waterproof seamless coating over the top of it.”  

Specifically, Tremco Roofing’s AlphaGuard™ FC LO (Fast Cure-Low Odor) system was used. By installing this system, the team was able to speed up the turnaround time of the roof restoration. AlphaGuard FC LO is known for its rapid cure time. In as little as 30 minutes of application, you can have a complete and seamless roof membrane in place.  

It also has the benefit of wet-on-wet application! This is the ability to lay down the base layer and the top layer at the same time, making the installation of the membrane effectively a one-pass job. Not only did this help the team in the field move more efficiently across such a large roof area, it also helped them avoid disrupting the internal operations of the convention center.  

At the end of the day, by choosing Tremco’s fluid-applied system, the project team diverted 470 tons of material from the landfill, eliminated the need for 30-40 flatbed trucks of replacement materials, secured a 30-year warranty and avoided disrupting the daily operations of the EnerCare Centre. As Chris put it, “The Enercare Center in Toronto is a prime case study and example of what can be done with roofing restoration. Too often projects like this would use roofing replacement as the only options, but we believe this can showcase the ability and the benefits of providing roofing restoration over a project of this type.” 

See the project yourself in this video from Tremco!