Lansdowne Live open to changes, but they'll have to be negotiated, team says
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By Patrick Dare, The Ottawa CitizenOctober 5, 2009 7:21 PM
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OTTAWA — The business partnership behind the Lansdowne Live project is open to changing its plan but they would have to come through negotiations with the city, not ill-informed criticisms, says the businessman leading the project.
Roger Greenberg, spokesman for Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, said Monday that he has sensed in recent days some softening of support from city council for the proposed redevelopment of Lansdowne Park.
“There are about 12 councillors who are sitting on the fence,” said Greenberg, chief executive of The Minto Group and one of four businessmen who put together the proposal.
Greenberg said it’s possible for the business partnership to reduce space for the retail component of the development but the city would have to accept that less revenue would come from the site.
Greenberg said he is taken aback by the misinformation that’s being circulated about the proposed development and he assembled four business community supporters to express their support Monday. He has also got the permission of city manager Kent Kirkpatrick to show up at city public meetings on the project to answer questions.
The city is considering entering a partnership with a group of four Ottawa businessmen who comprise the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group; Greenberg, John Ruddy, William Shenkman and Jeff Hunt. The $250-million project would see the deteriorating football stadium and Civic Centre arena refurbished, stores, a theatre complex and offices built, restaurants added to the Aberdeen Pavilion and a section of the property near the Rideau Canal turned into greenspace. The city would put up roughly half of the capital for the project while the business group would manage the site.
A Canadian Football League franchise, the Ottawa 67’s hockey team and a pro soccer team would be part of the partnership. In the second phase of the project, residential buildings and a hotel would be constructed along Bank Street and Holmwood Avenue.
Ottawa businessman Peter Cleveland, a top executive at Ernst & Young before founding his own consulting firm, said that the proposed business deal is good because: all of the 37 acres of Lansdowne Park would remain in public ownership; the private partnership would bear the risk for construction and operating losses; and the city would still get property taxes on the new retail space regardless of how successful the buildings are.
Cleveland said the fears of Bank Street bankruptcies are wrong because the project would increase pedestrian traffic in the area. He said just as Westboro saw boosted property values and business sales in the area when large new businesses arrived, so too would the Lansdowne project give the Glebe business area a boost.
Cleveland said critics are making a lot out of the profit the business partnership would make from the project but he said they could never raise capital for the project if they couldn’t make money.
Businessman Jim Wright said the four business people in the partnership have their reputations at stake and aren’t about to do a development that would tarnish those reputations. He also said that allowing Lansdowne Park to decay would be the wrong thing to do.
“We need an outdoor stadium. We’re the capital of Canada,” said Wright.
Erin Kelly, executive director of the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce, said people need to think of what happens if council doesn’t approve the business partnership and Lansdowne continues its downward slide.
Greenberg said critics have thrown out incorrect information, such as the Glebe Business Improvement Area’s description of the retail space as the size of a big regional mall of 600,000 square feet, when the actual new store space would be closer to 200,000 square feet. Greenberg said that while some have told Glebe residents that the area would be flooded with people and cars, most of the event days at Lansdowne would have modest crowds averaging 7,500.
“Change is paralysing,” said Greenberg. “There’s been a lot of fear that’s
been put into people.”
On Monday the Ottawa Farmers’ Market came out against the Lansdowne Live proposal as it stands, saying it would hurt the viability of the market, which operates at Lansdowne Park on Thursdays and Sundays from May to October.
The farmers’ market opposes any change that would see a new non-city group being its landlord. The farmers’ market also opposes the proposed moving of the Horticulture Building, due to its heritage status. As well, the farmers’ market says it would like to be housed in the Aberdeen Pavilion, rather than see restaurants there.
One of the criticisms of the Lansdowne Live deal is that it’s a sole-source procurement, with the city negotiating exclusively with Greenberg's group.
If the City of Ottawa wants to go ahead with a sole-source deal, it’s free to do so. But the city cannot count on the provincial government for any financial contribution to the project, says Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson.
A letter from Watson to Capital Councillor Clive Doucet says that the provincial government would require that any joint project involving the provincial government would have to include a competitive process. And the province made that clear to the city’s officials at the August meeting of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario convention in Ottawa.
Watson was writing Doucet on behalf of the provincial government. Doucet, who is leading the battle against Lansdowne Live, had inquired whether the provincial government could intervene in the project.
Watson, the MPP for Ottawa West-Nepean, responded by saying municipal governments are responsible governments with the powers to run their own business.
The city has obtained a legal opinion that it can contract with the business group without a competitive process because the group brings a unique opportunity due to the sports franchises under its control.
All construction using public money, however — the stadium, the Civic Centre and the parking garage — would be put to competitive tender.
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