Sunday, July 3, 2011

A great landlord

Sitting in Court for seven days provides an opportunity to learn much. One thing I learned is that the City of Ottawa is a very generous landlord.
The Friends of Lansdowne (FoL) are challenging the City's arrangement with Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) known as the Lansdowne Partnership plan. FoL indicates that the City is providing an illegal "bonus" to OSEG by providing the land for the development of the shopping complex at a mere one dollar per year for a term of thirty years. According to the explanation given to the Court by the City's lawyer, the City is not conferring a "bonus" in its $1 leasing arrangement because there is provision for a payment to the City.
It is in examining that payment that we learn how generous and understanding a landlord the City is.
According to the argument presented to the Court, a calculation of the value of the land was undertaken by the City and the market rent was ascertained. It was then discovered that if the City were granted "deemed equity", and a return to the City on that "deemed equity" were established, a revenue stream equivalent to rent could be projected by using the financial model created under the Lansdowne Partnership plan. No doubt the City's lawyer would say that it is a mere matter of semantics whether such return in considered "rent" or "return on deemed equity".
But there is a bit of a problem with the City's argument. The return on "deemed equity" is only payable at the fifth level of the "waterfall" -- the series of prioritized payouts from the "net cash flow" of the entire Lansdowne Partnership. What this means is that every other financial obligation is to be satisfied prior to the City of Ottawa receiving any return whatever on its "deemed equity".
Payments are made to OSEG not only to provide a return on its investment but also to repay what OSEG has invested (including any payments for cost over-runs on the stadium) before any money is available for the City as a return on its "deemed equity".
So all of this makes the City of Ottawa a remarkable landlord.
Normal landlords don't care about your other financial obligations. If you don't pay your rent in full and on time, you are out on the street. A normal landlord would not allow you to defer rent payment to allow you to pay your bar bills or keep up your car payments.
By contrast, the City of Ottawa is an ideal landlord. The City is happy to permit its tenant to give priority to every other imaginable demand before expecting that any payment equivalent to rent be effected.
May we all be so lucky as to have as splendid a landlord as the City of Ottawa!

No comments:

Post a Comment