Not so simple...

At various times, certain City Councillors, and some other supporters of the deal between the City of Ottawa and Ottawa Sports & Entertainment Group, have suggested that the legal action taken by the Friends of Lansdowne is without merit and will be easily dismissed by the Courts. Although the Superior Court ruling was pretty quick, this is not proving to be the case for the appeal.
The appeal was heard by the Ontario Court of Appeal on November 28, 2011. Today, March 6 means we are in the fifteenth week of deliberation by the three judges who heard the appeal. Of course the Courts are busy and there may be any number of reasons that a decision has not yet been rendered.
But I think it is safe to say that, every day that goes by, the Friends become more optimistic (and maybe, just maybe, the City and OSEG become slightly more anxious).

A really great landlord

I have already noted that the City of Ottawa is a wonderful landlord in its arrangement with OSEG. No rent is expected from the tenant until all of the tenant's other obligations have been addressed -- that is the nature of the City's "deemed equity" in the Lansdowne Partnership Plan: wait and get nothing until your partner is taken care of.
But it gets even better! City Council has just agreed to give the Ottawa 67's hockey club a cool $500 thousand per year for two years in which the 67's are to play at Scotiabank Place rather than at Lansdowne. The hockey team is being asked to move out so that the construction work at Lansdowne (including the long overdue repair of the leaking roof over the arena) can go ahead.
Nowhere in the staff report presented to Council is it suggested that the City is obliged to make any payment to the 67's. There is no mention of a lease that is being broken. Apparently the practice is simply that the City grants half a million dollars whenever it feels like it.
But the staff report is quite enlightening in what it does say about the relationship with its hockey team tenant. Because the 67's will be elsewhere, the City will not be receiving $150,000 in rent per year from the 67's organization. This is the first time I have seen a figure quoted; I have often wondered why Councillors have not asked how much the 67's are paying to use the Civic Centre.
The $150,000 figure is interesting because when the 67's are to return to Lansdowne, their annual rent will drop to $100,000 per year. (Want to check these figures? For the 150k, look in the staff report dated Feb. 8, 2012 called LPP implementation status update. For the 100k, go back to the Price Waterhouse "Business Plan for Transformation" dated Sept. 1, 2009.)
So when the City of Ottawa is your landlord, after spending millions fixing up the arena, the tenant is given a 33% discount on the rent. Isn't that wonderful?
And it gets even better. Where does the rent go? Here it is very difficult to know since so many details are hidden away, but in all likelihood the rent goes into the infamous waterfall -- an arrangement under which nothing trickles back to the City until all the financial dreams of OSEG are fulfilled. In other words, until the City starts getting any money, the rent from the hockey club is going to OSEG, which owns the hockey club.
Do I know that the rent goes into the waterfall? No, this is a guess. But the guess is probably right because of the way the rest of the deal is structured. The Feb. 8 staff report makes it clear that all the revenue from the naming rights for the stadium and arena is to go into the waterfall.  This is unusual. Normally the naming rights money would go to the owner of the building -- not in this case. Thanks to the clever negotiating skills of the City, the owner of the building who pays 100% of the renovation costs, the revenue from the naming rights will go to OSEG for years and years before a penny comes to the City.
Yes, if you're the right tenant, the City of Ottawa is truly a splendid landlord.

Lansdowne Park - monument to neglect

On Friday night, hockey had to be cancelled - the roof was leaking. The 67's had to wait until Saturday afternoon because water was dripping into the Civic Centre - not just into the seats, this time the water was leaking onto the ice surface.
But water infiltration was nothing new, the City of Ottawa has known for years about the problem. Why has nothing been done?
For some reason, there are people running the show at City Hall who think that you have to build a supermarket before you can fix up City assets at Lansdowne Park.
Some of those people claim that the legal case brought by the Friends of Lansdowne has delayed needed maintenance at Lansdowne. This is nonsense. The City is at perfect liberty to go ahead and fix up the roof of the arena.
No, it is the obsession that we must first build a subsidized shopping centre, that has led the City to continue its neglect of its assets at Lansdowne Park.

Transportation: lighter than air

Who can resist a smart remark when it comes to the Lansdowne project?
That was the approach that Mayor Watson took in suggesting that we should buy in to the project because the alternative was to leave the site as is forever. (Think of the anthropologists a millenium hence!)
I'm as guilty as anyone. At one point I commented to various people that the transportation plan has changed because none of the new drawings shows a dirigible (remember the beautiful picture of the sunset with the full stands and the lighter-than-air craft?). I said somthing along the lines of "Well I had assumed that the plan was to transport the thousands of fans to the games by lighter-than-air craft and I guess they have change their mind."
OK, I apologize. I was kidding.
I don't quite understand how everyone gets there, but we "make do".

So what's new?

On Tuesday February 7 (yesterday as I write this), a standing-room-only crowd assembled at Ottawa City Hall for a presentation on the Lansdowne redevelopment proposals as revised through deliberations with the Lansdowne Design Review Panel. Apparently some thought that plans for Lansdowne had made great strides through the revision process. The Citizen ran a headline in Wednesday's edition "Modernist vision unveiled for a renovated Lansdowne". [What was the previous design -- baroque?] Metro was less enthusiastic with coverage on page 3 under the lead "City raises curtain on new Lansdowne design plans".
But in reality there was little new in the material released. The location of the various buildings has not changed for over a year. The elimination of the taller buildings along Holmwood Ave. was the product of the negotiated settlement before the Ontario Municipal Board which was completed some 10 months earlier.
The only new development was the decision to slice a chunk off the Horticulture Building prior to moving it eastward to facilitate the digging for the underground parking.
No doubt the the Design Panel had lengthy discussions about design features and quite possibly they did an excellent job in getting improvements in details of the proposal. However it would have been interesting to inform the public as to what those improvements are.
At the briefing everyone congratulated everyone else on the work they had done. But it was not obvious what (apart from the changes for the Horticulture Building) was achieved.
Once again we had new "eye candy" -- pretty pictures presented for the public -- but we were given no idea of the nature of the refinements introduced through interaction with the review panel.
Plans for the park are as understood months ago. The only new detail, and this is a troubling one, is that the "art feature" to the west of the "great lawn" will consist of vertical beams with LED images. The troubing aspect is that such LED arrays can just as readily become advertising billboards as they can be abstract art.
Plans for the stadium seem to present no surprise. We have known about the wooden "veil" around the stadium for more than a year. The really outstanding aspect to me was that the presentation failed to mention the arena buried under the northside stands. Fixing up the arena, known to most people as the Civic Centre, once had some importance. Now it seems to have been forgotten. It is not clear how you will get into the arena in the new plan because shops will fill the north side of the buildiing and there is to be an office complex to the west.
When it comes to the "urban village", a quaint name for the shopping centre, nothing has changed. Yes it is intended to have shops, restaurants etc. on the second floor of the buildings. We have always known that is required because the plans call for vast amounts of retail space. If the second floors were not to be used, the footprint of the commercial buildings would have needed to be much greater.
In the commercial complex the one  design feature is that there would be increasing use of wood in the exterior of the buildings, the further those buildings are from Bank Street. Big deal!
So I can only call Tuesday's event a bust. We learned virtually nothing we did not know already.
And all the visual presentations coyly showed all the tower structures as transparent outlines. The justification for such an approach was that the detailed design for those buildings has yet to be determined. Conveniently it also removed from the presentation some of the more egregious aspects of the overall development plan. Out of sight is out of mind.
Tomorrow (Thursday Feb. 9) the second shoe drops. According to oral interventions by the City Manager, a staff report is to be released on the Lansdowne project for consideration at the meeting of Finance and Economic Development Committee (FEDCO) the following week.
Items to look for in the staff report include:
- update on the finances for the project
- report on the competition for air rights and for project construction
- what can go ahead regardless of legal proceedings underway
- what happens if the Court of Appeal fails to support the City.
As always the French-language press seems to be the only source for investigative journalism. Francois Pierre Dufault asks in today's (Wednesday's) Le Droit "The municipal adminstration seems not to be concerned about other approaches, stating even they have no plan B" (my personal translation).
As Maggie Muggins used to say "You never know what is going to happen tomorrow, do you Mr. McGarity."

Open Competition

Apparently City Council is to be provided with details concerning the bidding process for residential and office development at Lansdowne Park. We have already been told that Minto was selected for the residential projects but that no acceptable bid was received for the office building proposed for Bank Street. A Fairness Commissioner was appointed to oversee the competition.
All this is fine... so far.
But what will be interesting to learn is the number of bids received for the residential part of the competition. If there were many bidders, that is a good sign. If there were few, we should be concerned.
I fear that there is a sense in the community -- whether right or wrong -- that the fix is in. If that is what developers think, they would not bother bidding.
If there were few bidders we should not blame Minto, the fault lies entirely with the City. Just think back to the City's actions in earlier stages of the Lansdowne redevelopment project.
Because of the redevelopment of Lansdowne, it was determined that trade fair facilities would need to be built elsewhere. The City staff proposed to simply offer City funds to Shenkman Corp. to erect such a facility. Some Councillors thought that was a bit much -- maybe someone else could submit a competitive proposal. So the City ran a competition and Shenkman was the only bidder. This was not surprising -- City staff had already announced that they wanted to give the project to Shenkman. Now it is quite possible that Shenkman was by far the most competent firm to erect and run the trade fair facility. It has now opened on time under the name CE Centre, apparently with good success.
But the original idea of simply granting the job to Shenkman without competition compromised badly the subsequent competition. The fault is not with Shenkman, nor Council (for once); the blame is entirely with City staff.
So now we wait to learn about the competition for the residential buildings. I hope that the tainted competition for the exhibition facility did not negatively affect the competition for the residential development.

A question of process

While we await the decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal regarding the case brought by the Friends of Lansdowne, it is interesting to consider similar issues which do not involve redevelopment of Lansdowne Park.
In the Globe and Mail of Friday December 30, there was an interesting article entitled "Does it matter if our laws are passed illegally?" by Peter H Russell, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto. Professor Russell deals with the fact that Royal Assent was given on Dec. 15 to Bill C-18, the "Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act. This is the legislation which ends the Wheat Board's monopoly for sales of wheat and barley from Western Canada.
Professor Russell notes that on Dec. 7 the Federal Court had ruled that the way Bill C-18 was introduced into Parliament violated the Canadian Wheat Board Act. My understanding is that the Wheat Board Act calls for a referendum among grain producers prior to a change in the monopoly provisions.
This seems to be very similar to situation which applied to City procurement procedures in the case of Lansdowne. The Friends of Lansdowne argued before Ontario Superior Court that the City had violated its own procurement regulations in the way it proceeded with the Lansdowne redevelopment scheme. The Court seemed to take the position that because City Council has the authority to amend its procurement procedures, it has full authority to do whatever it wants. The contrary view, held by the Friends of Lansdowne, was that Council should amend its regulations if it wishes to engage in an as-yet-disallowed procurement action.
So there is a similarity to the Wheat Board matter. The federal government could have first amended the Wheat Board Act to remove the requirement for a referendum, and then eliminated the monopoly feature in the Act. Similarly the City of Ottawa could have modified its procurement procedures, either its procurement by-law or its Ottawa Option procedure for unsolicited proposals, to provide a legitimate basis for its actions in striking its deal with OSEG.
Both the City of Ottawa and, I expect, the Government of Canada, will be needlessly spending resources defending their mistaken ways of operating. It's great news for members of the bar, but not so great for taxpayers.

Diligence overdue

In the hearing before Ontario Superior Court which terminated last week, the lawyer for the Friends of Lansdowne maintained that the only independent review of the financial arrangements supporting the Lansdowne Partnership plan, was the study in 2008 by Deloitte. That study was never released to the public, nor was its existence made known to members of City Council.
The lawyer for the City denied that claim and said there were other studies conducted. It is difficult to take that counter claim seriously.
It was said that the financial arrangements were studied by Graham Bird Associates(GBA) and by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC). But Graham Bird Associates was retained to carry the process through the administrative and legal hoops, not to analyse the deal. Although I believe the contract between the City and GBA is not public, it is difficult to imagine that the firm did not have a strong financial incentive to move the project forward. It is unlikely that GBA would minimize their revenue by placing obstacles in the quick execution of the LPP.
As for PWC, they were retained by GBA, not to analyse the financials of the deal but rather to create a business model based on assumptions provided by the City and their "partner" Ottawa Sports & Entertainment Group.
In arguing the City's case, their lawyer also claimed that the two reports issued by the City Auditor General constitute an independent analysis of the LPP financials. While the Auditor General is independent, his range of examination was tightly controlled. Moreover, the report which the Auditor General received from an independent US consultant on the LPP is not available.
So the bland assurance in staff reports that due diligence has been conducted with respect to the financial arrangements behind the LPP seem to be pure and simple puffery.

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!

Foolishness versus illegality

In the seven days in which Ontario Superior Court has heard the case of Friends of Lansdowne versus the City of Ottawa, the complex Lansdowne Partnership Plan has been discussed in great detail. As I have listened to the lawyers present their clients' positions, is has been clear that there is much to criticize.
But for the Court, no matter how unwise or even foolish the arrangement may be, the issue is: do the City's actions constitute a violation of law?
The question of legality goes beyond what is sensible. There is no law against making a bad decision, or, put more bluntly -- stupidity can be perfectly legal.
The argument from the Friends of Lansdowne centres on three issues:
- Can the City of Ottawa ignore its own procurement policies without violating the requirement in the Municipal Act that it establish and maintain such policies;
- Has the financial arrrangment struck with Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group provided a benefit to a private party which is contrary to the Municipal Act; and
- Has the action of the City in withholding information or in presenting misleading information to the public and to elected officials constituted bad faith.
If the Court finds that any one of the allegations by the Friends of Lansdowne is valid, there may be a basis on which the the actions of the City may be nullified.
But in looking forward to the prospect that the Court might indeed quash the City's arrangment with OSEG, what exactly would that mean in practical terms?
While such a decision by the Court would certainly be a major story in the media and could be a political bombshell, it need not set back the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park in a major way. If the City really wants to rebuild the stadium and fix up the arena, it can go ahead and do so. After all, the City is putting up all the money for the redevelopment. If the City would like to have another organization take on the management of the facilities or to take responsibility for maintenance, it can readily run a competition to select firms to supply such services. If the City wants to sell or lease some of the property to generate revenue, it can do so.
In the hearing last week, the Lansdowne Partnership Plan was likened to a marriage. These days there are all sorts of ways in which relationships develop which are not marriages. And many of us would advise our adult children that rushing into marriage can be unwise.
If the Court decides that the LPP marriage should be annulled, that might be the best outcome for both parties.

Rube Goldberg remembered

Back in the thirties and forties, there was a noted cartoonist, Rube Goldberg (and a similar British humourist, Heath Robinson) who drew pictures of very complex arrangements of mechanisms to accomplish mundane tasks. Bubbling tea kettles and bouncing balls combined with other devices to turn pages in newspapers or stir soup pots.
After sitting in court for seven days listening to the description of the Lansdowne Partnership Plan, I could not help thinking of those cartoons from the past. The lawyers from both sides described an extraordinarily complex business arrangement. But try as I might, I could not see the need for such complexity.
Much of the humour in the old cartoons comes from imagining the foolishness which would prompt anyone to assemble such ludicrous arrangements. I would have enjoyed the humour in the complexity of the Lansdowne setup, but I kept remembering that somehow I was paying for it all.
In fact, the more the complex arrangement was explained to the judge, the less funny it seemed. The complexity looked as if it were designed to conceal the reality of the arrangement rather than actually contributing to a positive outcome.

Myths about the process

Today I had the pleasure of appearing on CFRA as one of the candidates running in the upcoming municipal election and I was asked about the Lansdowne Partnership plan. When I said that I considered Council's decision to proceed was unwise, I was asked to elaborate.
I commented that there are two essential steps in considering a public/private partnership.
The first is to calculate what the project would cost if done as a purely public undertaking. The second step is to solicit bids for alternative approaches from private sector partners. I said that neither of these steps had been accomplished in Ottawa's involvement in Lansdowne.
I was challenged with an assertion that a costing for a public undertaking had been prepared. My retort was that I did not consider that anything approaching a satisfactory examination of the cost of a public project had been done. I continue to believe that is the case and would invite anyone out in the blogosphere who believes this basic first step was done to correct me.

A very proper Auditor General

Much of the press coverage about the Auditor General's report on the Lansdowne redevelopment scheme has been highly misleading.

In his report delivered June 17, the City Auditor General was very clear that he had a tightly defined mandate. Put simply, he took the figures provided by the proponents of the project, he accepted their hypotheses about flows of funds, and verified that the numbers could produce the results the proponents claimed. Stated more bluntly, he checked the arithmetic and but was not allowed to question whether the calculations made any sense.

Quoting directly from the AG's report -- "The audit scope was limited to an assessment of the financial information contained in the LPP proposal. The audit did not include generating independent figures, nor was it intended to provide an opinion on the development itself. As such, it does not represent an evaluation of the merits of the underlying concepts for re-development of the Lansdowne Park site as presented in the LPP proposal (e.g., a private-sector partnership, revenue neutrality, the use of property taxes, the optimal site for a stadium, etc.)."

By contrast, we have seen all sorts of press statements such as 24hours which ran the headline "makes sense" with the sub-head "City's AG gives thumbs up to Lansdowne partnership".

The reality of what our cautious City Auditor General said is quite different from the unrestrained boosterism of the local media.

Defiance of Council by City Manager

Who is running things at City Hall?

I have just begun to read the report of the Auditor General which was delivered at a Council meeting on June 17. Right at the front of the report the AG notes that Council had approved a motion (77/11) on November 9, 2009 in which the City Manager was instructed to "commission an independent study to evaluate the various consequences of dedicating property taxes to a single expenditure in the City's budget and the Auditor General verify the methodology".

The Auditor General notes that "Management did not complete the independent study referred to in Motion 77/11. As such, the Auditor General could not verify the methodology."

So Council directs the City Manager to deliver a study, but nothing is done. In spite of the fact that this is one of the studies that Council directed to be delivered in conjunction with its consideration of the so-called Lansdowne Partnership plan, it seems that Council is about to proceed to consider the plan regardless.

This is the same City Manager that cancelled a design competition for Lansdowne Park even though it had been approved by Council. The City Manager failed to come back to Council to seek its approval for the cancellation -- apparently he just went ahead and did it on his own. Later he did indicate, without remorse, that this may have been an error. Such reversal of a Council decision is something that Council itself cannot do easily, but it appears that the City Manager can do as he wishes.

Now we have the second time the City Manager has defied Council and refused to carry out its instructions.

It is time for a motion of censure to be brought before Council. In addition, any further discussion of the infamous Lansdowne Partnership plan should be deferred until the report called for in motion 77/11 is delivered and considered by Council.

Puzzled by Roger and friends

It is becoming complex maintaining two blogs simultaneously. The other blog is for the election (I am a candidate for Councillor for Ward 17) while this blog is all-Lansdowne all the time. At any rate, the Lansdowne issue is the big issue in Capital Ward at least until June 28, so much of my work on the election side overlaps with my Lansdowne interest.
With that explanation, here is a message I posted on my election blog (http://brocklebank.blogspot.com/)---

I would recommend reading the article in the Ottawa Citizen of today (Sunday May 30) entitled "The Lansdowne Four".
The prime spokesman for the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, Roger Greenberg, is quoted as saying "What I'm not used to is people taking facts and deliberately changing them to suit their purposes. I've never seen that before. But I guess that's part of the game. I'm just not used to playing that game." I think Mr. Greenberg would do everyone a big favour by going further and listing the specific facts and how he considers that those facts have been distorted.
Another point that Mr. Greenberg could usefully elaborate is the fine distinction he is making in his statement "This is clearly not a sole-source contract. This was an unsolicited proposal."
First, I'm not sure that I understand the difference. Maybe Mr. Greenberg has a valid point; I just don't understand what that point is.
Second, I find the idea that it is an unsolicited proposal is hard to square with a passage earlier in the same article, a passage worth quoting:
The way Greenberg tells it, OSEG learned that its modest plan to lease Frank Clair Stadium from the city was a non-starter after meeting with Mayor Larry O'Brien and city manager Kent Kirkpatrick in the fall of 2007.
"Their comeback to us was, 'Guys, listen. We're not going to spend upwards of $100 million in taxpayers' money to fix up the stadium so you can play 10 games of football a year'" Greenberg recounts.
If the businessmen wanted to propose something more comprehensive, O'Brien and Kirkpatrick told them, the city would listen.
This raises two questions --
(a) Does the discussion with the Mayor and the City Manager constitute solicitation of an offer? If it does, I guess the "unsolicited proposal" description does not apply.
(b) Is the timing (autumn of 2007) correct? It is worth remembering that Council's approval of a design-to-build competition for Lansdowne was in late November of 2007. The announcement of the CFL conditional franchise was in March 2008. The suspension of the design-to-build competition was May/June 2008. The Lansdowne Live proposal indicating OSEG was moving beyond a simple stadium rental was revealed on October 17. 2008. If the timing in the Citizen article is correct, the most senior elected official of the city plus the most senior member of city staff had been in discussions with OSEG for a year prior to the public statement of the intention by OSEG to submit an "unsolicited proposal".
I share with Mr. Greenberg the desire to have the facts stated clearly. Those facts can be interpreted differently, but we continue to need facts.

Descent into cynicism

I have always been a conspiracy denier. I've never thought there were spooks or reds under every bed.
But as a regular reader of the Ottawa Citizen, I am wondering about journalistic integrity at our leading, maybe-again-solvent, newspaper. I wonder if the news and editorial comment would be a bit different if I took out full-page ads every weekend to sell real estate.
I note that the blog by Maria Cook, the one and only Citizen blog that ever gives any credence to critics of the Lansdowne Live boondoggle, seems frozen in time. Strangely enough, when you take a peek, there is nothing more recent than May 4. Some say there was other material which has mysteriously disappeared.
This is not the first time that the Citizen has engaged in self-censorship. I seem to recall that there was a critical comment by the distinguished architect who designed the UofO SITE building. I'm told that his comments were not glowing praise for the Lansdowne Live proposal. It strangely disappeared, never to be seen again.
Not only is dissent being suppressed, the propaganda machine at the Citizen is in full flow, churning out praise for the latest revelations about the Lansdowne operation. As prime example, I would cite the column in today's Citizen by Ken Gray. He trots out the tired canard that the only alternative to the Lansdowne Live scheme is to do nothing and allow mould to cover the park. He claims that the tide is turning and that those who have dared to question the scheme are now coming around to buy in to the Lansdowne Live proposal.
Well, I guess I missed my chance. The Citizen and other Canwest papers were up for sale. It seems they were well and truly purchased.

Read your own paper!

Life is complex and it is difficult to keep up. However this is no excuse for the apparent muddled thinking of the Ottawa Citizen editorial board. Apparently the people who write the editorials do not read the news stories carried in their own paper.

On Wednesday April 21, the newspaper carried an editorial with the title "Rush to judgement". The position taken in the editorial was that the Glebe Business Improvement Area was too hasty in criticizing plans for the commercial development at Lansdowne Park which had come to their attention.

But the editorial contained two "howlers" that call into question the capability of the authors to make any statement about the Lansdowne project.

First the editorial said "Planner George Dark and his colleagues’ proposal for Lansdowne Park isn’t expected to be unveiled until May 10". In fact it is not George Dark and his team, but rather the five design teams working on the Lansdowne Park "front lawn" -- really the backyard -- whose designs are to be received and released to the public.

It is not clear that the "master plan" which is to bring together the various separate designs, and which is Dark’s mandate, will ever be made public. As far as anyone knows, Dark’s comments on the "unique" retail experience proposed for Lansdowne are not for public consumption. Maybe George Dark and his two colleagues will whisper a few remarks in the ear of the Mayor, or may slip some information to Roger Greenberg, but there is no stated intention of telling the public what those three highly-qualified team members think.

Later in the editorial appears the comment that "It’s too bad the city didn’t conduct a study of the business effects of the new Lansdowne on Bank Street...". My understanding is that, as a participant in the Lansdowne "partnership", the city funded a study that conveniently concluded that plunking a major shopping centre in Lansdowne was just fine and would have no negative consequences for existing businesses. In addition, the city provided support for the study undertaken for the Glebe BIA which concluded that the capacity of the Glebe and Ottawa South to absorb new retailing was much more modest than that proposed by the promoters of Lansdowne Live. So to try to reconcile the irreconcilable, the city is now paying for a report which would try to bring these two studies to a common conclusion. In addition, your taxes are also supporting a further study to attempt to specify the unique nature of the shopping proposed at Lansdowne.

All these studies have been reported in the pages of the Ottawa Citizen. What is really too bad is that the Citizen editorial board has not learned of their existence.

Readers might wonder why it is necessary to define the unique nature of shopping at Lansdowne. After all, many of the shops at St. Laurent are the same as those at Bayshore and this does not seem to bother anyone. This drive to make Lansdowne unique is to justify the extraordinary financial arrangements proposed in an attempt to justify the Lansdowne Live boondoggle.

It has been suggested (sometimes with a straight face) that the property taxes on the retail component at Lansdowne will pay for the debt incurred for the stadium/arena renovation and for other city costs associated with the proposed project. This dubious idea is founded on the assumption that the retail operation at Lansdowne, built on city land offered rent-free, would never have been contemplated elsewhere in Ottawa. Moreover the retail at Lansdowne is assumed to make so few demands on city services that 75% of the taxes paid is not needed to fund services and can be diverted to the stadium/arena redevelopment.

This idea that the retail at Lansdowne is special is one of the most curious parts of the whole confidence game now underway. It is exactly the suspicion that Lansdowne will be just another mall or "power-centre" that has likely stimulated the Glebe BIA to make its concerns known. Apparently the plans indicate that the promoters of Lansdowne Live believe that a grocery store facing on Bank Street would be something new and exciting for Ottawa. Please excuse my yawn.

While I nap, perhaps the members of the Citizen editorial board would like to read some back issues of their own paper.

Transportation study - haste makes waste

To the astonishment of folk close to the Lansdowne project, the terms of reference for the transportation study are to come before the joint Transportation and Transit Committee on Monday Feb. 8. Until a couple of days ago, the plan had been to have the standing committee look at the terms of reference on Feb. 17.
Obviously someone is in a big hurry.
Another indication of the perceived need for speed is the proposal that the contract for the study be let without competition. Who cares about value for money when you're in a rush?
It is said that the company that did the initial transportation study for OSEG has been preparing the terms of reference for the next study and it is the firm who will (without competition) be awarded the next study. We should learn if this is the new modus operandi around City Hall.
And without getting into a lot of the detail about the next study, I think it is being misconstrued in the media. In today's (Feb. 4) Citizen the study is described as determining "how the Lansdowne Live project will affect traffic". That is not what the Council resolution back in November demanded. The motion asked the study to ascertain "...whether or not impacts on traffic circulation and on-street parking resulting from the implementation of the LPP can be reasonably accommodated...".
The clear implication is that if the transportation issues cannot "be reasonably accommodated", the plan cannot proceed.
I believe it is important that the transportation study be required to explicitly demonstrate that the transportation issues can be addressed. Failing such a demonstration, the project should be halted.

Why now?

Councillor Clive Doucet has been outspoken in his criticism of the Lansdowne Live proposal for redevelopment of Lansdowne Park. His concerns about process have seemed reasonable enough. He has shown less interest in the financial side of this give-away proposal than I would have expected, but he has been consistent in questioning the wisdom of the so-called partnership arrangement.
Now suddenly he has written to the National Capital Commission asking that the NCC buy Lansdowne Park from the City. It is not clear to me why Mr. Doucet thinks selling the park to the NCC is a good idea nor is it obvious why this idea has been sprung on the NCC at this moment.
Whether we like it or not, the City has managed to get the NCC to become a partner (maybe a reluctant partner, but a partner all the same) in the Lansdowne Live implementation exercise. The NCC was represented on the stage when the design panel led by George Dark was introduced in mid-January. The NCC is to be involved in the design competition for the "front lawn".
I consider the Lansdowne Live approach to be wrong-headed. I hope that the NCC will come to the same conclusion as it is more deeply exposed to the arrangement.
But I do not think that the NCC is going to change course instantly. A large organization does not turn on a dime.
Rather than coming out now with the idea of the NCC taking over the Park (an idea I don't particularly support), it would be much better to give the NCC ample time to become disillusioned with the process.
Possibly Councillor Doucet does not really want to have the NCC take over Lansdowne; maybe his letter is just an expression of his frustration with the process up to now. But I think it would have been better to allow public opinion to drive a wedge between the NCC and the promoters of Lansdowne Live at City Hall, and then suggest an NCC takeover.

Role of the design panel

The appointment of the design panel (George Dark, Rick Haldenby and Marianne McKenna) is a positive step.
At the press briefing, the point was made that the panel would provide guidance for the design of the entire Lansdowne site. This was described as encompassing three parcels of land -- the stadium/arena, the commercial development, and the "front lawn". The "front lawn" seems to include the Aberdeen Pavilion, the Horticulture Building and all the empty land (now acres of asphalt) stretching eastward to the canal.
But we do not seem to know all the details. It would be interesting to know if there were terms of reference established for the design panel. If so, is there any reason that document has not been made public?
I would be particularly interested in knowing how the panel is to provide guidance for the stadium/arena and commercial elements. In an interview with Ken Gray of the Ottawa Citizen, Councillor Chiarelli describes the panel as "adjudicating" the design of the stadium and shopping complex. It would be interesting to learn if the panel's views are to be issued in public or if they are simply to be whispered in Roger Greenberg's ear. I hope the former.
There is also a bit of confusion about the design panel on the one hand and the competition for design of the "front lawn" on the other. I would imagine that the design panel would provide advice in writing the documentation for the competition. Perhaps they would enunciate how the "front lawn" is to relate to the canal or how the heritage of the site is to be respected.
But the design panel is not the jury for the selection of the chosen design for the "front lawn". Indeed the press release is confusing on this point. According to the press release, the City plus the NCC and Parks Canada will chose three to five design teams which will be funded to come up with their ideas. There is no indication that the design panel will be involved in that selection.
Then there will be a design workshop in March at which the three to five teams will present their ideas to a select audience. The City, with NCC and Parks Canada, will select people to be invited to the workshop. If any of the design teams wishes to have any other consultation with members of the public, that is up to them.
In May the three to five design proposals will be released to the public. The press release says this is to "foster further public comment". I find that statement peculiar because the only public comment sought to that date is the result of the public consultations held in January and February of 2008 (to which the the three to five design teams will be granted access). It is worth noting that the two public consultations held in 2008 did not result in any formal report being issued because the design consultation was shut down. In the absence of such a report, we can only speculate about what material will be provided to the design teams.
After the designs are revealed in May public reaction is to be "collected and reviewed" by the Dark design panel, by City Council, the NCC and Parks Canada. What happens to that analysis of public comment is unclear because it may have nothing to do with the outcome of the competition.
A jury is established by the City, Parks Canada and the NCC to select a winning proposal from among the three to five submitted. Having chosen one submission (with or without regard for the analysis of public comment), the recommended design is then considered by the Rideau Canal Superintendent, by a design advisory committee of the NCC, the board of NCC and Ottawa City Council. Presumably each of these four bodies of deliberation is to approve or disapprove the selected design. Whether each has an equal voice is not clear. Nor is it evident how a decision will be reached if the Canal Superintendent and the NCC Board like it, while the NCC advisory committee and City Council dislike it.
And to add to the complexity, the design panel of Dark, Haldenby and McKenna have apparently no say whatever in the selection of the winning design. Their role seems to be limited to the collection and review of comment centred on the May public disclosure of the three to five designs.