Lansdowne Park Redevelopment Phase 1 | Completed

[alecz_dad]

Gee, casting a virtual vote for "Worst," or "Least Bad," of the urban park designs hardly seems like much of an opportunity to influence the process. Besides, during the online "consultation" on the Lansdowne scheme, despite the fact that the vast majority of responses were critical, that input from the public apparently mattered not one whit in Council's decision.

Although OSMUG did concede some influence to the BIA over the retailer mix (although only after the BIA had threatened to go to the OMB, and then only in exchange for dropping its case) I seem to recall that of late they have been whingeing about the need to "adjust" the proportions they had previously agreed to.
And presumably once all the retailers at Lansdowne join the BIA, it will we taken over by them, and forever render it impotent in ever again contesting any of the actions of OSMUG and the Lansdowne retail cluster.

Originally Posted by JFFournier

Aside from the design competition for the entire front lawn (did you participate in that?) and working with the BIA to establish a breakdown of retailer types?

My point is that expecting the City to be held to its own operating rules, as far as competitive contracting, was naive. The only way to kill the Lansdowne scheme would have been to use as professional a PR strategy as OSMUG/City did, to present the critics' concerns about the proposed scheme as effectively as the deep-pocketed developers.

Originally Posted by JFFournier

Obviously, the message is not clear at all. A PR campaign wouldn't have made the FoL or John Martin's claims any more factually correct. But keep dwelling on it, maybe at some point it'll finally click.

[alecz_dad]

The problem is that rather than putting in place a process that would have made a serious effort at having the citizenry of Ottawa define what they wanted at Lansdowne, instead the former Mayor allowed his developer pals to bring in their unsolicited proposal by the back door.

Had there been a genuine visioning process (as was recently used by Halifax to design its new central library branch), and an open, competitive process to determine what would be the best use for Lansdowne, it would have been a much more legitimate outcome, less prone to strong, sustained opposition.

Melnyk's plan was useful to the City, in that it allowed it to say that it had a competitive process for Lansdowne. Whereas what the City really was doing was comparing apples and oranges over where a multi-use stadium should be, NOT what should be at Lansdowne. Those were two quite different things.

It's not clear to me that John Martin's plan -- although it began as simply a rhetorical response to the City's willingness to go ahead with the Lansdowne scheme with no real thought about what else could go there -- would not have been viable, had there been a competitive process over the best use for Lansdowne.

Had it been decided, by whatever mechanism, that the Conservancy proposal (or something like it) was the most desirable use for Lansdowne, the fact that he did not have billionaires behind him shouldn't have mattered. Presumably the City would have taken up the banner, and the billionaires would have had to demonstrate how much their desire to develop Lansdowne was about bringing back football (or about developing condos and a large retail cluster), by whether or not they took their ball and went home, if their plan wasn't selected.

Originally Posted by JFFournier

I would have been perfectly happy with another location if an actual plan had been proposed at one. The Conservancy was a farce, I hated Melnyk's plan, but if a legitimate, achievable plan had been suggested for Bayview or Carleton, I'd have been just fine with that.

Yes, Hurdman would have been a good idea. I wonder why it was never seriously considered. Oh yeah, because it wouldn't have meant that Minto could have made a bundle selling overpriced Glebe condos.

Originally Posted by JFFournier

Actually, prior to all of this, my personal favourite location would have been Hurdman. Near residential, retail, easy to get to by bus from the train station and airport, from downtown, it's close to a university, etc.

[kevinbottawa]

Are we still talking about this? Are we still having this two year old debate that was already appealed to death and settled by the courts? Good grief.

[alecz_dad]

Sorry if I'm boring you Kevin. But the simple fact that people still feel the need to refute my posts, tells me that there is still a need for discussion.

There are still matters to be resolved:
* what governance structure will be employed over Lansdowne? apparently a municipal services corporation is out, so will the de facto privatization of Lansdowne continue apace, as OSMUG is given unfettered rights to control everything on the site to its interests and not the public good?;
* what will happen when, inevitably, it becomes apparent that there is not enough parking onsite to accommodate all the things shoehorned into the site, and that despite the City's wishful thinking, people from across the City do not hop on their bikes in droves, and instead the surrounding residential streets become permanent overflow parking lots?;
* what City services will we be asked to give up, or to pay more for, when the debt burden the City has taken on for the benefit of OSMUG's private enterprises, starts to bite into the City's budget, as the promised gushing financial waterfall turns out to be a mere spilling stream?

Originally Posted by kevinbottawa

Are we still talking about this? Are we still having this two year old debate that was already appealed to death and settled by the courts? Good grief.

[alecz_dad]

By the reverse, I would say that simply because something has been somewhere for a long time doesn't mean it is still the right place for it to be.

But we don't know, because there was never any serious effort to figure out whether Lansdowne was the right place for a stadium, or for a dense new retail cluster.

Originally Posted by S-Man

I see. Something having been in a location for over a century is actually cold, hard proof that it should really be somewhere else.

[JFFournier]

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

Gee, casting a virtual vote for "Worst," or "Least Bad," of the urban park designs hardly seems like much of an opportunity to influence the process.

This is why you struggle to get people to see your point of view.

You began by saying that you wanted to "have a say". You've gradually escalated that to "influencing the process". That's a rather large gap in decision-making power.

You had plenty of opportunity to state your opinion (have a say). But under no circumstance were you going to dictate terms to the degree that you wanted. You're not entitled to that sort of power, for a project intended for the entire city, by mere virtue of living nearby. Get over yourself and bring a few neighbours with you.

And in any event, when the city did make an attempt to extend an olive branch, they got critisized on regardless (much like you do here). Nothing was ever good enough. So if they stopped even trying now, blame yourself and those same neighbours.

[JFFournier]

Originally Posted by kevinbottawa

Are we still talking about this? Are we still having this two year old debate that was already appealed to death and settled by the courts? Good grief.

Some of us are. If you don't want to participate, don't.

[JFFournier]

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

The problem is that rather than putting in place a process that would have made a serious effort at having the citizenry of Ottawa define what they wanted at Lansdowne, instead the former Mayor allowed his developer pals to bring in their unsolicited proposal by the back door.

a) You critisize that very type of process in your previous post in regards to the urban park. You ended up being asked to pick 5th worst, remember?

b) No way anyone would build stadium without wanting to benefit from retail and/or residential. You'd get a similar plan, without actual tenants for a stadium. Unless the stadium is removed from the equation, which just creates a whole new sets of problems, costs, etc. Some think the provincial or federal governments may have gotten involved, but there's no evidence to support this.

c) If you think Glebe residents would not have found a cause to fight the results if the outcome wasn't to their liking, regardless of process, you haven't been living there long enough.

Just come clean. It has nothing to do with process, etc. The process, cost, etc, would have been perfectly acceptable if it was a plan that you liked.

[JFFournier]

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

Yes, Hurdman would have been a good idea. I wonder why it was never seriously considered. Oh yeah, because it wouldn't have meant that Minto could have made a bundle selling overpriced Glebe condos.

Hurdman wasn't even on the list of potential stadium locations when they did the study a few years ago. I suspect there's a far more substantial reason why it was not under consideration, but don't let that interfere with your paranoia and baseless conspiracy theories.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

Sorry if I'm boring you Kevin. But the simple fact that people still feel the need to refute my posts, tells me that there is still a need for discussion.

There are still matters to be resolved:
* what governance structure will be employed over Lansdowne? apparently a municipal services corporation is out, so will the de facto privatization of Lansdowne continue apace, as OSMUG is given unfettered rights to control everything on the site to its interests and not the public good?;
* what will happen when, inevitably, it becomes apparent that there is not enough parking onsite to accommodate all the things shoehorned into the site, and that despite the City's wishful thinking, people from across the City do not hop on their bikes in droves, and instead the surrounding residential streets become permanent overflow parking lots?;
* what City services will we be asked to give up, or to pay more for, when the debt burden the City has taken on for the benefit of OSMUG's private enterprises, starts to bite into the City's budget, as the promised gushing financial waterfall turns out to be a mere spilling stream?

I'm all for a discussion of outstanding matters, but that certainly hasn't been the focus of your posts on this topic.

Yes, a few people are still engaging you, but many more have indicated that they are tired of rehashing 5-year old arguments and have simply left the thread. The result of your persistence is that there is very little discussion of the progress of what is likely the most important current project in the City. No matter how noble you feel your cause, etiquette and common sense should apply.

Given that you claim that your intent is to deal with forward-looking matters, I'm happy to discuss those:

-If accountability is really your concern, you are barking up the wrong tree with your complaint about a municipal services corporation. An arm's length municipal services corporation would be less accountable to the public than would direct involvement by the City. The whole point of a municipal corporation is to limit political interference in its operations. The City has been intimately involved with every step of this process, and there is no reason to expect that is going to change. To date, I haven't heard any opponents of the project making a serious push on the governance issue. If you are really concerned about public accountability, maybe you should focus your efforts on that structure, which will ultimately be shaped by elected officials.

- I don't think that it is at all "inevitable" that there is not enough parking onsite for the intended uses. As noted several times, the availability of parking is the number one influencer of transportation choices. It is well past time that Ottawa tried a development that isn't so auto-dependent, and the results will be interesting. Hopefully this works as intended, the growing pains are addressed and it is the beginning of a trend in other development.

And for the record, despite your demonization of OSEG (and your schoolyard-clever variation on their name), I've been involved on the community side of the transportation planning, and I've seen no evidence of OSEG being anything but supportive of community proposals that have been brought forward. Your portrayal of an us versus them dynamic does not reflect reality. It's been more us versus us in my experience, because there is absolutely no consensus in the community as to what we want.

- With respect to the financials, you can't have it both ways. On one hand, you suggest that a flood of people and cars will descend on the site, overwhelming the neighbourhood, yet on the other, you claim that it will be a financial disappointment. It can't be both. My suspicision is that the truth will lie somewhere in the middle which would be a good, balanced result.

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

Gee, casting a virtual vote for "Worst," or "Least Bad," of the urban park designs hardly seems like much of an opportunity to influence the process.

And yet it does by virtue of enabling those who made the proposals to choose the one a plurality of the public prefers.

Besides, during the online "consultation" on the Lansdowne scheme, despite the fact that the vast majority of responses were critical, that input from the public apparently mattered not one whit in Council's decision.

I seem to recall many response being supportive. Well, those from people who weren't Glebites. All the Glebites ever did was bitch and moan about it being horrible, because apparently asphalt is so much nicer.

Although OSMUG did concede some influence to the BIA over the retailer mix (although only after the BIA had threatened to go to the OMB, and then only in exchange for dropping its case) I seem to recall that of late they have been whingeing about the need to "adjust" the proportions they had previously agreed to.

You DO realize that OSEG actually approached the Glebe BIA in the first place offering several establishments space at Lansdowne, but had to retract it later because of other Glebites (like you probably) delaying the process, right?

I realize this is a rhetorical question, since all evidence would point to the contrary about you having any clue what you're talking about. But damn it, I'm going to try to help you see both sides and get some sense.

And presumably once all the retailers at Lansdowne join the BIA, it will we taken over by them, and forever render it impotent in ever again contesting any of the actions of OSMUG and the Lansdowne retail cluster.

Yes, because as we all know, the Glebe BIA was taken over by Loblaws, LCBO, Shoppers Drugmart, and Starbucks once they got in on the action. The Glebe has never been the same since.

"Two LCBO's in the Glebe?!" Residents gasped. "The Horror," they whispered. "Might as well bulldoze the damn thing instead! The community is ruined!"

My grandmother remembers when Glebites were fighting the Loblaws coming to their area because it would "kill" local business because it was a big scary store chain. Guess things don't really change in the Glebe.

My point is that expecting the City to be held to its own operating rules, as far as competitive contracting, was naive. The only way to kill the Lansdowne scheme would have been to use as professional a PR strategy as OSMUG/City did, to present the critics' concerns about the proposed scheme as effectively as the deep-pocketed developers.

I love your utter contempt for our laws, due process, and civic institutions; it reminds me of myself when I was 14, angry, confused, and hanging out with punks.

The city DID maintain its own operating rules. A design competition was announced, and NO ONE chomped at the bit. OSEG came along saying "well, we have something here, it benefits everyone involved (OSEG, City, citizens), but it would mean cancelling the competition since no one's going for it anyway." So Kent Kirkpatrick cancelled the damn thing since no one applied. Granted, it had only been a month or so, but that was the situation he was in.

Additionally, the courts ruled that no one did anything wrong, except for Mr. Martin.

Speaking of the devil, your posts remind me an awful lot of his...

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

The problem is that rather than putting in place a process that would have made a serious effort at having the citizenry of Ottawa define what they wanted at Lansdowne, instead the former Mayor allowed his developer pals to bring in their unsolicited proposal by the back door.

No one "allowed" anything. OSEG approached the city out of the blue essentially.

Had there been a genuine visioning process (as was recently used by Halifax to design its new central library branch), and an open, competitive process to determine what would be the best use for Lansdowne, it would have been a much more legitimate outcome, less prone to strong, sustained opposition.

Yeah, because three hippies and 40-100 pensioners at any given time is "strong opposition".

Council (you know, our municipal governing body that represents us and often listens to us) has voted on Lansdowne several times, and it's been either unanimous or 13-1 in favour of nearly every action taken with regards to Lansdowne.

You and your friends have lost. Accept it. The funny thing about law and democracy is that it doesn't always go your way, or the way you want it to. I may not like Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, but I accepted that they were the democratically-elected government.

Melnyk's plan was useful to the City, in that it allowed it to say that it had a competitive process for Lansdowne. Whereas what the City really was doing was comparing apples and oranges over where a multi-use stadium should be, NOT what should be at Lansdowne. Those were two quite different things.

Except many agree that it SHOULD be at Lansdowne since the infrastructure is there, the history is there, and it's a relatively central location.

It's not clear to me that John Martin's plan -- although it began as simply a rhetorical response to the City's willingness to go ahead with the Lansdowne scheme with no real thought about what else could go there -- would not have been viable, had there been a competitive process over the best use for Lansdowne.

Yeah, you weren't here for the part where I and several others utterly destroyed John Martin's argument about the plan being viable, and he would never answer simple questions, further exacerbating our skepticism.

Had it been decided, by whatever mechanism, that the Conservancy proposal (or something like it) was the most desirable use for Lansdowne, the fact that he did not have billionaires behind him shouldn't have mattered. Presumably the City would have taken up the banner, and the billionaires would have had to demonstrate how much their desire to develop Lansdowne was about bringing back football (or about developing condos and a large retail cluster), by whether or not they took their ball and went home, if their plan wasn't selected.

See, the problem is that the Lansdowne Conservancy would've been perfect for Glebites and no one else. It was essentially a scheme to get the Glebites a big park for only them to enjoy, but everyone else having to pay for it, while also trying to kill a return of football.

And actually, it DOES and SHOULD matter that Martin had serious financial backing behind his plan, otherwise that puts ALL OF US on the hook for financial development costs as well as maintenance costs, something we couldn't afford at the time, and can't even really afford now. The City listened to John, and realized he was delusional. They gave no additional consideration to a hastily assembled, poorly-thought out, non-funded, ever-changing, vague plan. That's something NO ONE should get involved in, let alone a city responsible for close to a million people.

Yes, Hurdman would have been a good idea. I wonder why it was never seriously considered. Oh yeah, because it wouldn't have meant that Minto could have made a bundle selling overpriced Glebe condos.

You're so cute when you're biased beyond any acceptable degree.

Firstly, the costs of cleaning up the Hurdman site would've been astronomical. There's a reason no one's been willing to touch that Brownfields. Hell, Bayview is not as bad as Hurdman but progress on that one is making tortoises look like cheetahs.

Secondly, there's no local road infrastructure. While the Transitway is there and would handle a good number, there would still be plenty from the suburbs who would want to drive. Roads could be expanded and created, but that's even more money on top of cleaning up the site, which as I previously mentioned, would be astronomical.

It would be nice to see Hurdman tackled, and hopefully in time for it to be the home of a new arena for the Senators.

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

Sorry if I'm boring you Kevin. But the simple fact that people still feel the need to refute my posts, tells me that there is still a need for discussion.

That's such a John Martin thing to say.

There are still matters to be resolved:
* what governance structure will be employed over Lansdowne? apparently a municipal services corporation is out, so will the de facto privatization of Lansdowne continue apace, as OSMUG is given unfettered rights to control everything on the site to its interests and not the public good?;
* what will happen when, inevitably, it becomes apparent that there is not enough parking onsite to accommodate all the things shoehorned into the site, and that despite the City's wishful thinking, people from across the City do not hop on their bikes in droves, and instead the surrounding residential streets become permanent overflow parking lots?;
* what City services will we be asked to give up, or to pay more for, when the debt burden the City has taken on for the benefit of OSMUG's private enterprises, starts to bite into the City's budget, as the promised gushing financial waterfall turns out to be a mere spilling stream?

Phil235 has destroyed this section, so I'll just redirect you to him:

Originally Posted by phil235

I'm all for a discussion of outstanding matters, but that certainly hasn't been the focus of your posts on this topic.

Yes, a few people are still engaging you, but many more have indicated that they are tired of rehashing 5-year old arguments and have simply left the thread. The result of your persistence is that there is very little discussion of the progress of what is likely the most important current project in the City. No matter how noble you feel your cause, etiquette and common sense should apply.

Given that you claim that your intent is to deal with forward-looking matters, I'm happy to discuss those:

-If accountability is really your concern, you are barking up the wrong tree with your complaint about a municipal services corporation. An arm's length municipal services corporation would be less accountable to the public than would direct involvement by the City. The whole point of a municipal corporation is to limit political interference in its operations. The City has been intimately involved with every step of this process, and there is no reason to expect that is going to change. To date, I haven't heard any opponents of the project making a serious push on the governance issue. If you are really concerned about public accountability, maybe you should focus your efforts on that structure, which will ultimately be shaped by elected officials.

- I don't think that it is at all "inevitable" that there is not enough parking onsite for the intended uses. As noted several times, the availability of parking is the number one influencer of transportation choices. It is well past time that Ottawa tried a development that isn't so auto-dependent, and the results will be interesting. Hopefully this works as intended, the growing pains are addressed and it is the beginning of a trend in other development.

And for the record, despite your demonization of OSEG (and your schoolyard-clever variation on their name), I've been involved on the community side of the transportation planning, and I've seen no evidence of OSEG being anything but supportive of community proposals that have been brought forward. Your portrayal of an us versus them dynamic does not reflect reality. It's been more us versus us in my experience, because there is absolutely no consensus in the community as to what we want.

- With respect to the financials, you can't have it both ways. On one hand, you suggest that a flood of people and cars will descend on the site, overwhelming the neighbourhood, yet on the other, you claim that it will be a financial disappointment. It can't be both. My suspicision is that the truth will lie somewhere in the middle which would be a good, balanced result.

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

By the reverse, I would say that simply because something has been somewhere for a long time doesn't mean it is still the right place for it to be.

I agree. let's move your house to the country.

Let's also move Parliament to the suburbs, and maybe send the CN Tower to Calgary.

But we don't know, because there was never any serious effort to figure out whether Lansdowne was the right place for a stadium, or for a dense new retail cluster.

Actually, there was but don't let facts get in your way. Ignorance is bliss, right?

[kevinbottawa]

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

Sorry if I'm boring you Kevin. But the simple fact that people still feel the need to refute my posts, tells me that there is still a need for discussion.

There are still matters to be resolved:
* what governance structure will be employed over Lansdowne? apparently a municipal services corporation is out, so will the de facto privatization of Lansdowne continue apace, as OSMUG is given unfettered rights to control everything on the site to its interests and not the public good?;
* what will happen when, inevitably, it becomes apparent that there is not enough parking onsite to accommodate all the things shoehorned into the site, and that despite the City's wishful thinking, people from across the City do not hop on their bikes in droves, and instead the surrounding residential streets become permanent overflow parking lots?;
* what City services will we be asked to give up, or to pay more for, when the debt burden the City has taken on for the benefit of OSMUG's private enterprises, starts to bite into the City's budget, as the promised gushing financial waterfall turns out to be a mere spilling stream?

I'm not really bored as much as I am annoyed. There is still a lot that needs to be discussed including the things you've listed above; that would make for a worthwhile discussion but that's not what's being discussed. We're rehashing two year old arguments. Seems more like venting than a constructive discussion.

[JFFournier]

Originally Posted by Jamaican-Phoenix

The city DID maintain its own operating rules. A design competition was announced, and NO ONE chomped at the bit. OSEG came along saying "well, we have something here, it benefits everyone involved (OSEG, City, citizens), but it would mean cancelling the competition since no one's going for it anyway." So Kent Kirkpatrick cancelled the damn thing since no one applied. Granted, it had only been a month or so, but that was the situation he was in.

The Glebonoids are just pissed that the competition, created for no other reason but to interfere with the plan they knew the group to be known as OSEG would submit, failed in that mission. They knew full well that OSEG was going to submit; that diagram you posted yesterday of the early version of the plan is from about two months prior to Clive Doucet's motion for the competition.

They bitched about the cancellation of the competition, saying that council should have voted on it, conveniently ignoring that council voted against lifting its suspension, amounting to the same result.

[JFFournier]

Another update today.

http://ottawa.ca/en/city-hall/planning-and-development/transforming-ottawa/stadium

[JFFournier]

Update as of today.

http://ottawa.ca/en/city-hall/planning-and-development/transforming-ottawa/stadium

[JFFournier]

Sorry, double post. Computer's acting up.

[J.OT13]

Thanks JFFournier for an actual update.

The FIFA people came by to visit the site yesterday and are pleased with the progress. Too bad we lost the 2014 U20 woman's cup because I'm thinking this might be done on time (for the U20 is we still had it).

[JackBauer24]

We actually do know the answer to that question - thanks to the CorelBank Tire Centre, or whatever it's now called. That really didn't work out as well as we had hoped, the consensus is that a downtown location would have been a much better spot.

Originally Posted by alecz_dad

By the reverse, I would say that simply because something has been somewhere for a long time doesn't mean it is still the right place for it to be.

But we don't know, because there was never any serious effort to figure out whether Lansdowne was the right place for a stadium, or for a dense new retail cluster.

[JFFournier]

Originally Posted by JackBauer24

We actually do know the answer to that question - thanks to the CorelBank Tire Centre, or whatever it's now called. That really didn't work out as well as we had hoped, the consensus is that a downtown location would have been a much better spot.

Not that it would matter anyway. If Lansdowne had been named the top location, the people responsible for the study would be accused of incompetence and/or corruption. You know, like those who did the traffic study, retail study, etc.

There's a significant difference between what opponents say they want and what they actually want.

[JFFournier]

I don't know if this is news. The Trinity site lists tenants that I only knew as rumoured but not confirmed.

TENANTS
Ground Level
Sporting Life
LCBO
Joey
Il Fornello
Local

Second Level
Sporting Life
Whole Foods
Empire Theatres (10 screens)