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.

Battle of the press conferences

Today we have had the pleasure of two press conferences on the proposed Lansdowne partnership project.

In the morning, Prof. Ian Lee from Carleton's Sprott School of Business gave his interpretation of the documentation on the project. His reading of the financial structure of the project coincides closely with my own views expressed in earlier postings to this blog.

Media reports indicate that in the afternoon, Mayor O'Brien claimed that Prof. Lee's interpretation was all wrong. When pressed to cite an example of error, apparently the Mayor had no response for reporters.

I was surprised to learn that the Mayor complained that Prof. Lee has a Ph.D. in public policy. The Mayor complained that the criticism had not come from a person with "a more astute understanding of finance". Apparently no one bothered to inform Mr. O'Brien that Prof. Lee was formerly a banker who had Shenkman Corp. as a client.

It will be very interesting to hear some specific rebuttal from OSEG or City spokespersons who may have a "more astute understanding" than that demonstrated today by the Mayor.

Better than nothing is no recommendation

In discussing prospects for redevelopment of Lansdowne Park, I often hear the comment that we should go along with the Lansdowne Live proposal because the alternative is doing nothing.

I have stated many times that we should be looking at various ways to address the redevelopment of Lansdowne. If that examination shows that the Lansdowne Live proposal is the best alternative, we should select it and proceed.

But we have not considered alternatives. We haven't even considered the outline of what we want to do.

For example, we have not had a real debate about the City's need for an outdoor stadium. Some don't think we need one; others think that a stadium should be first on the list of things the City should work on.

Even Mayor O'Brien, who I think is a cheerleader for the Lansdowne Live proposed partnership, seems to think that other things such as flooding in Kanata, dumping sewage in the Ottawa River and public transit are more important issues than a stadium project.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say that an open-air stadium in Lansdowne Park is the city's number one priority. (I doubt that this is the case, but this is just to get you thinking.)

One possibility is that the City could offer to sell Frank Clair Stadium and the Civic Centre. If running such facilities is a paying proposition, maybe someone would be willing to purchase the lot. I believe that in Toronto the former SkyDome was sold to private interests (at a great loss) but presumably it is no longer a drain on the public purse.

But you say, no one in their right mind would buy the Stadium and Civic Centre with a hope of making money. Professional sports teams cannot pay rent at a level which would make ownership of the facilities profitable.

If it is true that a stadium and arena must be run at a loss, we need to consider whether taxpayers should subsidize professional sports and, if they should, at what level and how. Maybe the City could simply pay an annual subsidy to the new football team. This would be transparent and understandable. Revenue raised by the team plus the city subsidy might make it possible for the team to pay a rent which would make a stadium viable. The other possibility is that the city pay a subsidy to the stadium owners rather than to the team which is the principal tenant of the stadium.

Another possibility is that the city retain ownership of the stadium and civic centre but sell other parts of Lansdowne Park to raise money. The cash could be used to fix up the stadium and civic centre.

But if having an open-air stadium is such a big priority for the city, it appears that we have the resources to pay for it. The current partnership proposal calls for the City to ante up 129.3 million dollars at the outset. Either we have this money or we do not.

Of course there is also the possibility that an open-air stadium is not a priority for the city. We could use our 129.3 million dollars for some other purpose.