Considering where we're at, who's going to respond to an RFP? It could very easily cost a group $20K to put something together and nobody is going to play along with that charade.

The damage is done. The only solution at this point is to make True North pay the total amount for the land and carve the development out of the SHED. If they want to develop their empire behind closed doors and under the radar using funding agreements nobody can access, then they can do it at their own risk with their own funding. That's the only thing that will level the playing field. And on top of that, you force the MLL to take up existing premises of which there are plenty that can made suitable at far less cost.

The way I see it, there really is no solution. No legitimate developer would take a run at the 22 Carlton site if there is an EOI knowing the shit storm around it and that TrueNorth has an in. If TrueNorth proceeds we will get the development, or some facsimile of it and people will assume TN got preferential treatment or TN could decide to take their ball and leave meaning 3 empty lots. The Mayor looks bay, TN looks bad, CV, looks bad and Winnipeg looks bad to the development community.

......................Simplicity beat me too it

Ugh. What a mess.

Between the Convention Centre board's screwups and Centreventure's meddling, the seeds were sown for a disaster. Where do you even begin to try and salvage this situation?

let true north finish its project

and clean up cv lets stop the politics

^ fire everyone!!!

The tax payer is really taking it on the chin here.

But still, I fail to see how Bowman looks that bad on this. The calls from the Chamber for him to apologize are hilarious.

If a development can't standup to a some amount of scrutiny, then f**k it, and move on.

Seriously, between Chipman's glasses off tough guy glossy video charade yesterday (that seemingly has people fooled), and now Kane's immature antics, I am a little fed up with all things True North. I need a breather.

Agreed 100%. Developers in this town have no problem getting goodies from the public purse, but they sure don't like answering straightforward questions about it. It's not like the questions being asked are unreasonable.

I hope Bowman responds to the asinine apology requests with a statement about how he will never apologize for putting the interests of Winnipeggers first. It's a pitch right over the plate, Bowman... knock it out of the park and show the city that you're not the Chamber's puppet.

Well said.

I look at both Chipman and Angus right now, who can't pretend to have completely ignored Bowman's campaign given they both endorsed him, and I can't even believe what I'm hearing.

Where was Dave Angus when GEM and Shindico were being pilloried by the media on a daily basis for the same things? Where was the 'bad for Winnipeg's business community' nonsense back then? The man campaigned on a promise to end this nonsense. Now you have two self-righteous parties outwardly admitting cleaning anything up was just a ploy.

Dave Angus is literally on record suggesting that if we start changing the clandestine way in which the city conducts business with developers it'll be to the detriment of Winnipeg. This would be unconscionable if he wasn't such an openly shameless sycophant.

I think Bowman gets the last laugh here. I don't think it's going to matter because nobody's ever gone broke underestimating the collective intelligence of the public, but this deal simply isn't clean and it's only a matter of time. Somebody's going to talk. The issue is going to be whether anybody is interested in covering it and the Free Press is so openly beholden they'd may as well be a subsidiary of True North at this point.

Frankly, another mega-project is the last thing our downtown needs. They never work and they won't start now.

Nobody said anything about not being able to talk about. But nobody should be paying any attention to it because it's just a ridiculous red herring. He showed a completely unrealistic development to a bunch of people who wouldn't know any better in an effort to discredit the person looking out for the public interest. It's designed solely as a bait and switch to change the complexion of the issue. All it is is further dishonesty and it should be called out as such.

Assuming True North built a hotel on the site of the old Carlton Inn would the tax revenues from this new hotel still be used to pay off the expansion to the Convention Centre?

Anyone?

Exactly! Cheers to you for that Esquire.

I think Bowman could have achieved the same goal without discrediting people in the process. He could have met with the board of cv and said: look you guys have been set up to operate a certain way, but I have decided to change direction on that. In addition, I want to hit the reset button on the Carlton site in keeping with the new direction that we are going to follow.Thank you for the work you have done on behalf of the community up to this point. Some people might not have liked it but they all would have had graceful exits.

These arms length agencies are a mixed blessing. They are designed to keep politicians out of development deals, but then they are criticized for a lack of transparency. I see Gerry brown in California discontinued public funding for 300 such agencies, arguing that the money will be better spent on education.

I'm not sure what kind of agreement RBCCC has with the City, but off hand I'm not sure why it couldn't be done... I mean, the hotel would be generating tax revenue just the same, and the City could still use that to offset the RBCCC subsidy. But what has Centreventure promised Longboat/True North? Did they tell them the hotel is going to be part of the SHED TIF zone? As far as I'm aware, no one outside of CV and Chipman's group knows the answer to this.

Thank you... you know we must be right when even we can agree on something ;)

Bowman has pretty good instincts as demostrated by his post-Maclean's article press conference. I think he'll respond intelligently.

You honestly start to wonder what the point of an agency like CV is in the first place. The City has so many tools in its toolbox to facilitate development like zoning, TIF, sale of surplus land, etc., why does it need to recreate a little wannabe Olympia & York to swing deals with someone else's money?

One of the problems with politicians getting into development deals was they they were out of their element and would get their lunches eaten by people who do it for a living... trouble is, it doesn't look like Centreventure is doing all that much better.

Stumble and Fall: In my opinion the new mayor stumbled out of the gate and in a short period of time did his best to offend the Richardsons, Chipmans, Arni Thorsteinson, David Thomson and a host of others.

True North only entered the picture after SO "Could Not find a Hotelier" to partner with; which is not surprising. The thing that apparently needs to be pointed out to the protesters of this deal is the reality about Winnipeg development. Lakeview has an empty lot adjacent to the WCC that they have tried to develop for over ten years; and can't make the numbers work. Portage and Main has had a gravel parking lot for 30 years with no end in sight. Winnipeg Square 40 years later still isn't finished. Ask Brent Bellamy to remind everyone about the number of undeveloped surface parking lots that litter the downtown. This is not New York; this is not Toronto or Calgary; it's Winnipeg. We need developers and a CV to make things work collaboratively. If you are presented with a $400,000,000 development backed by David Thomson, the Chipmans and Artis that adds significant value to our struggling city and wipes away a COW aka WCC screw up then you say thank you and move onto some other surface lots; there's lots to go around.

The issue with this statement is that we know absolutely no details around this project. How much public subsidy is needed, is there a hotelier involved, how much is TN paying for the property (if anything at all) etc. I too am dazzled by the fancy video and would love if it came to fruition but, all we know is there is 3 buildings planned, a hotel, office space, retail space and living space. Other than that there are no details at all.

Based on the information trickling out publicly it is hard to say the Stuart Olson did not try to renegotiate the deal to the hotel only to be turned down.

Based on the public side of this story it seems Stuart Olson engaged Colliers to take the position of Matthews Southwest. Then CentreVenture stepped forward and issued a cease and desist letter to Colliers. It wasn't that Stuart Olson gave up as much as CV told them to stop.

Agreed, Bowman was trying to carry out due diligence on behalf of all Winnipeg tax payers, as they should expect from their mayor. I am still wondering what was the Chamber thinking when they decided to walk into the middle of someone else's gunfight. The first apology that should be coming is from them for getting involved in this discussion.

I forgot about that highly relevant point. It does seem as though CV was trying to commandeer the situation. I suppose they will tell us that it's because there was no signed agreement between the Convention Centre and Stuart Olson so they were trying to salvage the situation? Thing is, there might even be some truth to that... if I'm CV and I can't believe my ears when I find out that Stuart Olson can renege on its obligation because there is no actual contract and I'm staring at a six million dollar hole in the ground, I guess I might start to panic too.

So much fail all around.

I fully agree. In the past when these type of disputes occurred the parties would all be called into a private meeting and the same discussions had. In this case they could have agreed privately that to maintain Bowman's promise of transparency they would proceed with the public EOI on 220 Carlton. True North would submit a version of their current plan and would then be viewed as the best proposal preserving the option they signed with CV. At the same time CV and True North could have been read the riot act privately that going forward this is not how things will be done. Everyone then heads out after the agreement is in place for beers and an "all smiles" photo op while they are secretly tossing each other's track suits into the showers behind the scenes.

I lol'ed at the end, but Bowman is moving away from these kinds of backroom private deals and it's hard to fault him for that. Sometimes doing it right is more important than making sure you get a glossy smiley photo of everyone shaking hands in the papers.

The new Sheriff in town needs to hang the outlaw in the public square to let everybody know that things are going to be done differently. Not one of these people deserves a graceful exit. That's the punishment for being a poor steward of the public; you leave in a shameful way. Ross McGowan already got to leave with a fawning farewell in the paper and a nice publicly funded party. Was Barry Thorgrimson supposed to given a beautiful sendoff in addition to his pension after spending the last ten years screwing the city by all means necessary? This is nonsense.

Everybody needs to get past this sentiment that all major development is good because it's not. The Chipmans/Thomsons/Artis - whoever - are not a charity. They aren't. Not a single one of them could care less about the city's bottom line. They are interested in this strictly for their own purposes on their terms. If they're going to build something, it's going to be profitable. If It's not, it's going to be made so at the expense of the city. And if it turns out that the project doesn't generate enough property tax (because everybody's being overly liberal with the estimates), then the taxpayer eats it. You know what never happens? The taxpayer never shares in the upside.

The Chipman family is so altruistically involved in the city and its development that after receiving funding from all three levels of government to build their moneymaker, they successfully lobbied to have the property categorized as recreational cutting their property tax by 80% and costing the city hundreds of thousands in annual business taxes.

The Chipman family thinks we're so stupid they claim the MTS Centre is not a business; it's a hockey rink like the one at your local community centre that sells a few chocolate bars at the canteen.

CentreVenture has been staffed by mostly incompetence for the better part of its 15 years. But it didn't need to have its lunch eaten because its only mandate was to give it away. There's nothing this quasi-NGO was doing that a moslty inept public service wasn't already doing or couldn't have easily done. It just got to hide behind a veil of secrecy while doing it.