How did we get here?

I speculate that in the negotiations city staff had an unclear mandate but they were being pressed by their political superiors to reach a quick and favourable result. On the other side I believe OSEG put forward their initial hard line positions and were amazed to see them adopted. Rather than negotiations, I think the time was spent finding ways to make a bad deal look better than it is. This could be an example in which the expression "putting lipstick on a pig" can be applied without it being offensive to anyone.

Some people who have been following my reasoning have asked what has led us to this stage. They agree that the Lansdowne partnership proposal does not appear to be favourable to the interests of City taxpayers and they wonder why the process has led to such a poor result.

First, I reject all the conspiracy theories which have been bandied about. No, I don’t think the city staff are on the developers’ payroll. No, I don’t think Councillors’ votes are up for sale.

Let’s consider the position of the principals in OSEG. I take at face value the declaration by the four gentlemen that they do want to see professional football return to Ottawa. I also believe that none of them consider that a football team be viably operated on a stand-alone basis. Some sort of subsidy is required.

Then look at the business background of the four partners. One is a successful promoter of sports; his role in the enterprise is to make the team function well as a business, to build a solid fan base and to make the kind of community connections which support a team.

The other three gentlemen are in land development. I believe all three have done well in that business. Thus if they are to consider working on a plan to cover probable losses in the pro football undertaking, they unlikely to first propose raising turnips as a money-maker. They brought their sets of skills to the problem of getting football back in Ottawa and this naturally led in the direction of a land development project.

On the City side there was a keen memory of the sad history of Lansdowne Park. Several grandiose plans for redevelopment had been floated in the past and yet nothing had been achieved. While the old City, the Region, and then the new City realized they held the park as an asset, a budget for proper maintenance, let alone revitalization, of the park was never forthcoming. The NHL team moved out of the civic centre, the prime tenant for the stadium vanished and the Ex had financial woes requiring City support. Lansdowne Park became one of those nagging issues no one wanted address – a "hot potato". To make matters look even worse, Lansdowne was set up as a profit-centre in the City’s accounting system. (Few other aspects of City activity are expected to show a profit.)

With the election of 2006 and the rapid cancellation of the light rail project, the new City administration had established a solid record for not doing things. It needed to demonstrate its ability to deal with festering problems and get on with the business of the City. A megaproject was needed.

So I would suggest we had City politicians eager to move ahead and cautious City staff who remembered only too well the frustrations of the past.

Against this background we had the announcement of the design-to-develop competition, the conditional CFL franchise, the refusal of the football consortium to compete, and the suspension of the competition. Statements were made that quick action was needed before the CFL franchise disappeared. This call for speed was surprisingly followed by a prolonged period in which the proposed arrangement was hammered out. In the meantime another group proposed a soccer stadium and suggested that senior levels of government would invest in soccer.

In March and April the two stadium proposals were considered. This was not really a competition and it had not been determined whether the City was to have a stadium at all. Then Council decided that the Lansdowne proposal was the City’s priority stadium project – not that any stadium was a priority, but if there were several stadium issues around that the Lansdowne one should be considered first.

So against that background negotiations began from April 22 for 60 days and then extended to September 2.

The City negotiating team had no indication that an open air stadium is a priority for the City. Nevertheless, it seemed that they could not return to Council with a recommendation that the project be abandoned. After all, there was no standard by which they could reach such a conclusion; no budget envelope had been established for the negotiating team and all they had to work from was a hodgepodge of motions – no housing, no subsidy to sports etc.

I suppose this left the City team unsure of what they could expect from the negotiations. Council was divided with some Councillors apparently opposed to any sort of negotiation whatever, while others seemed to be willing to agree to anything to get football back in town and the Lansdowne problem out of the way.

So what did the City negotiating team do? It looks as though they muddled on, ignoring completely some aspects of the Council instructions, fudging other parts and showing limited interest in the financial aspect of the project.

Certain Councillors had particular concerns they wanted to see in the negotiated outcome. For example the experience of the last great attempt to redevelop Lansdowne led to the instruction that no housing be built on the site. This was in the final motion adopted on April 22 but had not been the subject of meaningful debate. For better or worse, this restriction was ignored. Does it matter much if housing (as opposed to a movie theatre or supermarket or hotel) is built on the site? Some would say they are all the same.

Similarly there was a clause in the motion authorizing negotiations which called for no subsidy to professional sports as a result of the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park. Surely this was seen as totally unrealistic by both sides of the negotiation. It is the fundamental nature of the project. The only possible outcome of the negotiations was to develop a complex system by which this essential element is hidden. Concealing reality is surely the objective of the Municipal Services Corporation, the "closed system", the waterfall, and ridiculous understating of the city resources dedicated to the project.

So what has produced such a bad deal? City staff had already been told by Council to go ahead and speedily produce an arrangement. In the absence of better negotiating instructions, they did exactly as they perceived they were to do.

City staff had no instructions to play hardball. They could not say that any specific aspect of the OSEG position was a deal-breaker. After all, it appeared that some members of Council were willing to take any arrangement, no matter how bad it was for the City.

I expect the OSEG negotiating team could not believe the responses they received at the negotiating table. Without any instruction to resist, the City could yield on anything and everything. As long as it could be presented well to the public, there was no reason to deny an OSEG demand.

If this speculation describes the negotiations, the outcome is no surprise.