Lansdowne 2.0 (Northside Stands/Arena Redevelopment) | Proposed

[rocketphish]

Lansdowne 2.0 development faces key finance and corporate services committee vote Tuesday
The decision is about the form of the design and construction contract for Lansdowne 2.0.

Blair Crawford, Ottawa Citizen
Published Apr 02, 2024 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 3 minute read

Councillors on the city’s powerful finance and corporate services committee must make a key decision Tuesday that will influence the future of the $419-million Lansdowne 2.0 development.

The decision is about the form of the design and construction contract for Lansdowne 2.0, which includes building a new 5,500-seat events centre and north-side grandstand for the football stadium, new underground parking and two residential towers of 40 and 25 storeys atop a “retail podium.” Even if all goes according to plan, it will be a decade or more before all the work is complete on the public-private partnership between the city and Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.

It’s a complicated matter — the “executive summary” alone of the staff report to the committee runs 18 pages. City staff are recommending the committee approve what’s known as a “design bid build” model, which is one of eight types of delivery models reviewed and assessed by KPMG, the city’s independent consultant.

The DBB model is a traditional method of issuing contracts, as described by KPMG “in which the owner awards two distinct and sequential contracts for the design and construction works. The design is reviewed and approved by the owner. Once the design is complete, the owner procures the construction works based on that design.” Both contracts are fixed price.

But the DBB model was not the method KPMG rated as the best choice for Lansdowne 2.0. That was something known as “progressive design build” (PDB) described by KPMG as “an approach to contracting that provides the owner with a contractor-designer early in the Project’s development phase. The owner and PDB Contractor then develop the project using a collaborative approach. Once completed the collaborative project development phase ends with the signature of a fixed price DB contract.”

Inside baseball? Yes. But KPMG rated PDB highest because of its reduced risk, its flexibility to modify the design and because it would be likely to attract the most interest from bidders.

The DBB model ranked fourth in the assessment, seven points behind, although KPMG conceded there was little difference between the top four contenders. The KPMG report said DBB scored well for “market interest, project implementation capacity and collaboration with stakeholders,” particularly if OSEG stuck with its current architect, Brisbin Brook Beynon.

The city has its own reasons for favouring the DBB model. In a report to the committee, city staff said the DBB model is the one the city has had the most experience with and was also the delivery model recommended for future infrastructure project by the provincial inquiry into the LRT construction. It also gives the best chance of having the project go through under the existing Ontario Building Code. The province is planning a massive update to the code, which could throw another hurdle into the project timeline.

The DBB also gives councillors a second chance at a “go/no go” decision before the final contract is awarded, likely in late 2025, staff said.

Also included in Tuesday’s recommendations to the committee is a request for $4 million to prepare tender-ready designs for the event centre and the north-side stands. It also calls for a $20-million line of credit to be extended to the partnership “in order to fund cashflow requirements through to the end of the Lansdowne 2.0 construction period.”

The zoning bylaw amendments and the changes to the city’s official plan required for Lansdowne 2.0 are being appealed by the Glebe Community Association. Those appeals have yet to be heard by the Ontario Land Tribunal.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...committee-vote

[c_speed3108]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

You'd think they'd give a grace period for the new Building Code, something along the lines of "any major project (price tag here) where the design phase has already started is exempt up to 5 years after the code has been implemented".

I am sort of the other mindset on this. Given the length of time these facilities typically last combined with the fact that it isn't yet designed, I would want it as up to date on code (and anything else) as possible. I am sure the new code is generally known by this point - why not just design for it.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by c_speed3108

I am sort of the other mindset on this. Given the length of time these facilities typically last combined with the fact that it isn't yet designed, I would want it as up to date on code (and anything else) as possible. I am sure the new code is generally known by this point - why not just design for it.

If they know what's coming, then yes, they should absolutely implement the changes in the design now.

[rocketphish]

Committee approves procurement model for Lansdowne 2.0
The recommendation was accepted by the committee in a 10-2 vote, with councillors Rawlson King an Shawn Menard opposed.

Blair Crawford, Ottawa Citizen
Published Apr 02, 2024 • Last updated 56 minutes ago • 4 minute read

Lansdowne 2.0 took a significant step forward Tuesday when the city’s powerful finance and corporate services committee approved the format of the contract to design and build a new event centre and north-side stands at Lansdowne Park.

The 5,500-seat event centre and the 11,200-seat grandstand are the first stages in the overall $419-million project that will eventually include two residential towers of 40 and 25 storeys atop a retail podium, and new underground parking. Committee members voted to proceed with a “design bid build” (DBB) model with its partner Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group and OSEG’s architect, Brisbin Brook Beynon.

DBB was one of eight procurement models considered for the project and the city hired independent consultant KPMG to study and rank them. DBB is described by KPMG as a model “in which the owner awards two distinct and sequential contracts for the design and construction works. The design is reviewed and approved by the owner. Once the design is complete, the owner procures the construction works based on that design.”

KPMG ranked three other procurement models higher than DBB, but the committee accepted staff recommendations to go with the tried-and-true DBB model, which Ottawa has used for other major projects like the Adisoke public library and $232-million combined sewage storage tunnel. While some of the other more innovative procurement models carried less risk and opened the Lansdowne 2.0 project to bids from other builders, the city says DBB would be the fastest way to proceed and is the one the city has the most experience using.

One thing the city wants to avoid is running afoul of the new Ontario Building Code, a massive reworking of the code that is expected to be introduced this year. The city would have until early 2025 to submit its design or risk needing to make time-consuming and potentially costly changes to meet the new code.

While Tuesday’s meeting was to make a decision about a specific and highly technical aspect of the project, at times it seemed more of a referendum on the merits of Lansdowne 2.0 itself. There were a dozen public delegations, some urging councillors to hit the brakes while others wanted the pedal to the metal.

Marnie Peters of the advocacy group Accessibility Simplified said the current TD Place arena is a nightmare for those with physical challenges and desperately needs to be replaced.

Darrel Cox, executive director of the Glebe BIA, said Ottawa is losing business because of the obsolete and crumbling facilities at Lansdowne.

“If the current facilities are not updated or enhanced and designed to meet accessibility standards, Ottawa will lose customers, events and visitors to competitors and forego the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in local economic impact,” Cox said. “Our reputation as a major event-hosting destination will be eroded.”

On the other side, June Creelman of the Glebe Community Association urged caution, pointing the city’s hard lessons from the LRT.

“The LRT inquiry concluded that it was political time pressure that drove many of the decisions around the LRT,” Creelman said. “But with Lansdowne these are false time pressures. Sure, you have voted to go ahead with this project, but there is no emergency.

“Racing to avoid complying with the new building code is unwise. Would you buy a new computer if it had an operating system that’s about to expire?” she asked.

The Glebe Community Association has appealed the project rezoning application to the Ontario Land Tribunal. That appeal has yet to be heard.

Ultimately, the recommendation was accepted by the committee in a 10-2 vote, with councillors Rawlson King an Shawn Menard opposed. The committee’s decision must still be approved by city council as a whole.

“It’s what I expected, but it’s still disappointing to me that we’re resigned to moving forward with this project,” Menard said after the meeting.

“They say the best way to go forward is with competition, and if they (OSEG) are truly the best designer and giving us the best value, there’s no reason they shouldn’t win that competition. Or we get other ideas with other bidders that provide a better result. Sole sourcing is never a good idea,” Menard said.

One advantage of the DBB model is it gives city council a second chance for a go/no go decision on Lansdowne 2.0.

“Under the recommended option, it would go to market, we’d solicit bids from the construction industry and then return to council to approve that final price,” said Will McDonald, the city’s chief procurement officer.

“That will all happen before any construction activity takes place,” he said. “It truly is a go/no go decision.”

That final decision is expected in the third quarter of 2025, McDonald said.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...committee-vote

[Harley613]

Darrel Cox, executive director of the Glebe BIA, said Ottawa is losing business because of the obsolete and crumbling facilities at Lansdowne.

“If the current facilities are not updated or enhanced and designed to meet accessibility standards, Ottawa will lose customers, events and visitors to competitors and forego the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in local economic impact,” Cox said. “Our reputation as a major event-hosting destination will be eroded.”

Ok, but shouldn't we consider replacing the North Side stands and the Arena with accessible facilities with similar capacities instead of dramatically shrinking them, in that case?

[RoseCityFreePress]

Originally Posted by Harley613

Darrel Cox, executive director of the Glebe BIA, said Ottawa is losing business because of the obsolete and crumbling facilities at Lansdowne.

“If the current facilities are not updated or enhanced and designed to meet accessibility standards, Ottawa will lose customers, events and visitors to competitors and forego the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in local economic impact,” Cox said. “Our reputation as a major event-hosting destination will be eroded.”

Ok, but shouldn't we consider replacing the North Side stands and the Arena with accessible facilities with similar capacities instead of dramatically shrinking them, in that case?

I imagine the capacity comes more from a budget and "how much land can we realistically use" constraint then a real want lower the capacity

[phil235]

There has been a trend towards lower capacities for quite some time now. You are going to see the same thing with the new Sens arena - expect it to come in around 17,000, which is a couple of thousand seats lower than the CTC. The focus will be on premium seats, gathering areas and technological upgrades. The thing keeping Lansdowne from hosting more concerts and big events is not capacity. It's the lack of technical capacity that a new arena will have.

The 5500 seat capacity is perfect for the OHL, and it fits the longer term projections for the PWHL. It's also more than enough for basketball. That's 95% of arena dates. That is what you build for. You don't build to have your arena half empty most of the time.

If Ottawa rebuilt at 9-10,000 seats, it would be a big outlier in Canada. Only Vancouver has an NHL arena plus another 10,000+ seat arena, and that is its old NHL arena, not a new build. Laval does have a newish 10,000 seat arena for the AHL, but it is a separate city of half a million people in a metro of 4.5 million. It's hard to see Ottawa needing the same thing.

[OTownandDown]

Just curious and hopefully someone knows the answer:

Seeing the renderings in the Capital Ward Bulletin from our esteemed councilor, I can't help but wonder at the extreme proximity of the arena to the end zone of the football field.

From 1000ft up, it looks even closer than the Subaru Fan Deck at the west end zone.

If someone kicks a bigass field goal, does the ball end up on the roof like when we're playing soccer in elementary school?

If we are lucky enough to ever host the grey cup again, or the Rolling Stones walking dead tour, or the NHL not-quite-winter chilled outdoor rink Classic™ can 10,000 people sit in temporary scaffold bleachers on top of the arena roof? If we deleted the green roof, have we deleted an extra-reinforced structure pre-engineered for scaffolding installation? Will the PVC membrane be punctured 1,000 times by the installers and require replacement after each such event?

I guess, what I'm saying is, it's sad that the Federal Government's new construction for Parliament includes extremely high-end finishes, and civically we can't even handle an accessible green roof for a generational stadium, at 0.004% the cost of Centre Block.

[harls]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

If someone kicks a bigass field goal, does the ball end up on the roof like when we're playing soccer in elementary school?

Imagine the jackpot one will find. Like when Bart Simpson found crap on his roof.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

If someone kicks a bigass field goal, does the ball end up on the roof like when we're playing soccer in elementary school?

If we are lucky enough to ever host the grey cup again, or the Rolling Stones walking dead tour, or the NHL not-quite-winter chilled outdoor rink Classic™ can 10,000 people sit in temporary scaffold bleachers on top of the arena roof? If we deleted the green roof, have we deleted an extra-reinforced structure pre-engineered for scaffolding installation? Will the PVC membrane be punctured 1,000 times by the installers and require replacement after each such event?

I have never seen anything about how it would be expanded for big events, but I'm pretty sure that it's the elementary school roof thing for field goals. Even with the original green roof proposal, it wasn't going to have the structural capacity to be open to the public, let alone hold a stand for 10,000 people, so I think the balls stay up there.

There was something written about the fact that suites in the arena would look out onto the field as well, but not sure if that will be part of the final design. If it is, unlikely they would want to block the view of the suites with temporary bleachers. I think that if they were to use temporary bleachers, it would be on the west side, where there is clearly room to put them over the Log Cabin and over the walkway where you enter the stadium. You might have room for some smaller bleachers on the hill at the east end, but nothing as big as for the Grey Cup.

That said, the Grey Cup is the only time that I can recall them ever expanding the capacity of the stadium with bleachers, so it's really a once in a decade event. Hamilton just hosted the Grey Cup in a 24,000 seat stadium without any significant expansion, so even that might not be necessary. For the Stone's walking dead tour, I think they'll be good with the stands and the field.

[J.OT13]

There is some room to expand behind the new North Side stands, but I doubt the capacity would go up much more than the current stands.

Couple images of the NHL Winter Classic in 2017. Most new seating was along the East end zone. Don't know the reason why they went with that over the West end zone, but I hope it wasn't due to some limitations.

This is another reason why 2.0 is a miss for me. They didn't fully consider the implications of not just the permeant capacity downgrade, but of the temporary seating potential downgrade.


https://obj.ca/melnyk-muses-about-re...end-in-ottawa/

NHL 100 Classic at Lansdowne Park by beyondhue, on Flickr


https://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/sens-g...lipId%3D104059

[OTownandDown]

In the time I've lived in Ottawa, the Rolling Stones and AC/DC have also required temporary stands at Lansdowne.

So since 2005 it's been Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Winter Classic, and Grey Cup. A bit more than once a decade. And so we'll just.. not do these events from now on?

[phil235]

Forgot about the Winter Classic. I could be mistaken, but I think those were the same stands as the Grey Cup. Grey Cup we can clearly still get.

Don't recall concerts needing them, but I may be confusing AC/DC with Guns N Roses, that definitely didn't have them. For those sorts of things, you could probably put the stands right in the end zone, if you don't mind blocking the arena suites.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by phil235

Forgot about the Winter Classic. I could be mistaken, but I think those were the same stands as the Grey Cup. Grey Cup we can clearly still get.

Don't recall concerts needing them, but I may be confusing AC/DC with Guns N Roses, that definitely didn't have them. For those sorts of things, you could probably put the stands right in the end zone, if you don't mind blocking the arena suites.

Both the Grey Cup and Winter Classic were in 2017. It was a strategic decision to build the temp stands once and use them for both evens. I think we also fit a concert in there as well, but I can't be sure.

[Djeffery]

When they do concerts there, where do they put the stage? Just looking at the place, my eye puts the stage at the end where the arena is going. If so, that large grandstand wouldn't be there anyway. I'm pretty sure Hamilton did add those large end zone grandstands for their most recent Grey Cup.

I personally still think that's a dumb idea for where to put the new arena and that it's too small. But not my city, so my opinion means squat lol.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

When they do concerts there, where do they put the stage? Just looking at the place, my eye puts the stage at the end where the arena is going. If so, that large grandstand wouldn't be there anyway. I'm pretty sure Hamilton did add those large end zone grandstands for their most recent Grey Cup.

For any concert I've seen, the stage has been opposite the arena at the west end zone.

If you meant to say that Hamilton didn't add large end zone grandstands, you are correct. They did not.

[FrostyMug]

Just bulldoze the entire thing and move the stadium to Lebreton along with the hockey rink. If Detroit can have the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA all within walking distance of each other (and it's amazing) then why can't we have our major sports all together as well and located along rapid transit as opposed to out in the relative boonies of the Glebe with limited accessibility.

[AuxTown]

Originally Posted by FrostyMug

Just bulldoze the entire thing and move the stadium to Lebreton along with the hockey rink. If Detroit can have the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA all within walking distance of each other (and it's amazing) then why can't we have our major sports all together as well and located along rapid transit as opposed to out in the relative boonies of the Glebe with limited accessibility.

I'm not a big fan of this plan for Ottawa, but it is cool to visit cities that have this. I went to basketball and hockey games in Philly with some buddies a few years ago and the Sports District is quite amazing. They had much more land to play with than Lebreton and it was in a much less desirable location so it made sense for them, though. The subway ends at the complex and tons of people took transit to the games. It's how I imagine/dream Sens games and concerts would be like at Lebreton.

[OTownandDown]

I remember standing alongside the canal, at the bank street bridge, for Rolling Stones. People in canoes, on the bike path, on the bridge, all watching the large screens visible at the west-end stage setup. Almost no weed being smoked

This would have been pre-condo, when all you had at the west end was an ugly parking lot, and some entrance gates with the berlin wall blocking you from entering. Some sort of low-slung buildings there?

Interestingly enough, there were stands in the end-zones from the 1965-1976 geo-ottawa aerial views.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

I'm not a big fan of this plan for Ottawa, but it is cool to visit cities that have this. I went to basketball and hockey games in Philly with some buddies a few years ago and the Sports District is quite amazing. They had much more land to play with than Lebreton and it was in a much less desirable location so it made sense for them, though. The subway ends at the complex and tons of people took transit to the games. It's how I imagine/dream Sens games and concerts would be like at Lebreton.

As you point out, Philly's sports district isn't downtown, so it's a bit of a different beast. Detroit is a bit of a special case due to the sheer amount of vacant land downtown. Not too many cities can do that.

I'm really not sure of the advantages of having everything together in one spot, other than being able to share parking. There would never be a time when all of the facilities are busy at the same time, as the infrastructure can't support it. I'm definitely in favour of getting facilities in central locations, but it's hard to see how the benefits of putting them together would warrant tearing down a stadium we put $100 million+ into less than 10 years ago.