The balcony of Room 1900 of the new Hyatt Regency hotel (that would be the old Holiday Inn) on Toronto’s King Street West provides a striking view of the Bell Lightbox. The new headquarters of the Toronto International Film Festival Group was the scene of a ‘topping off’ ceremony on Friday afternoon. An ironworkers’ tradition in construction, the final beam is decorated with flags and an evergreen tree to mark an accident-free construction site before being hoisted into place.

On the warmest day of the year (thus far), a large crowd of invited guests and curious onlookers gathered to sign said beam with black markers.

‘It’s a take — print it!!,’ wrote TIFFG director and CEO Piers Handling when his turn came. One photographer — one hopes an amateur — captured the moment and asked him if he was a filmmaker or a producer. ‘I’m Piers,’ he said. ‘This is my building.’

Don McKellar was also there along with Bruce Kuwabara, the lead architect of the building, and festival cofounder Bill Marshall and Joan Cohl, the widow of festival cofounder Dusty Cohl. Other TIFFG brass included managing director Michèle Maheux and Bell Lightbox artistic director Noah Cowan.

Up in Room 1900, Handling told Playback Daily that he will be taking a ‘leadership position on Lightbox’s $196-million fundraising campaign, with a focus on raising the remaining $31 million of the capital portion. That leaves $18 million to raise for the endowment.

To that end, TIFFG has commissioned a new economic impact study as a carrot-and-stick effort to convince donors in both the public and private sectors that what’s good for TIFF is good for Toronto.

‘We have a powerful economic impact argument,’ said Handling. ‘We are a key part of the business of the city.’ He said the last TIFF economic impact study delivered a figure just shy of $70 million. ‘If that number has increased [in the new impact study], this building will bring even more.’

Handling suggested that, in this time of economic uncertainty, the world is looking for success stories. ‘We’re positioning ourselves that way.’

And if the money doesn’t come through?

‘The building is completely financed,’ said Handling, ‘We’ll just go deeper into debt, and we’d have to finance that debt.’

In that regard, he is in good company. Perhaps TIFFG could grab some of the promised economic stimulus from the $34-billion deficit the Harper government is anticipating.