What to do about the National Capital Commission (NCC)?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Dado

The BC commission might be dissolved this year.

NB briefly had one, too.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Jamaican-Phoenix

This, in a nutshell.

The city itself (and often the feds) don't try and make Ottawa a world-class capital, and the NCC always likes to imagine things for a narrow and fantastical perspective. It's also unfortunate that the bulk of what the NCC tries to do is from a car-oriented perspective and anything involving trees and grass.

VIBRANT trees and VIBRANT grass.

[EdFromOttawa]

God I hated his answer about the Macdonald Parkway.

'Ottawa has a great transportation system already'?

Is this a joke? Has he been to literally any other mid-sized city on the face of the planet? Compared to 95% of other places, the pub. transit in Ottawa is absolutely horrible.

Hell Calgary and Edmonton are both smaller, and have had LRT for decades (in fact they're expanding).

[S-Man]

If you factor in the NCC's 100-year view (which Reevely implies is a guarantee for inaction), then the 1983 Transitway is almost brand new!

[teej1984]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

[B]Q&A with NCC chief executive Mark Kristmanson

Q: You were referred to as a technocrat in the press this week, which is hardly ever meant as a compliment. Hardly anyone outside the NCC knows who you are. What are your plans to reach out to the general public?

A: I said to the executive team this morning that we need to get out there. If we’re invited to go and speak, we need to accept. I’ve been reaching out systematically to all the elected officials, and I’ll keep doing that as they’re available. But I don’t want that just to be a first round of contact — we’ll keep going with a stronger government relations program. I also want to get out and meet some people in the communities. I want to meet the stakeholders in Gatineau Park. I think we can put a moratorium on taking down bird feeders, for example. The bird feeders can go back up next year, and we’ll look at that on a year-by-year basis.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/ot...431/story.html

We should invite him to the next SSP meet up!!

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by EdFromOttawa

'Ottawa has a great transportation system already'?

Is this a joke? Has he been to literally any other mid-sized city on the face of the planet? Compared to 95% of other places, the pub. transit in Ottawa is absolutely horrible.

Actually, if you've been to 95% of other mid-sized cities on the planet, you'd probably conclude that Ottawa does have pretty good public transit. The problem is that BRT in the core is no longer adequate for the city's level of ridership and has no room to accommodate future growth.

Mr Kristmanson does go on to say "The evolution of the transportation system will create hopefully densities that bring positive cultural changes to the core area. So the NCC has an interest in this beyond just that one stretch of parkway." If you read between the lines, it does reflect the NCC's preference that the LRT cut across Rochester Field and run along Richmond Road where it can create more opportunities for TOD and serve the residential community better instead of the relatively unpopulated riverfront (and thus putting future pressure on it). I think the sore point with them is the city's refusal to study it further, opting to advance only one concept to an EA, and dismissing everything else solely based on a pretty shoddy costing exercise, which in the long run could prove to be short-sighted (like BRT).

[Capital Shaun]

Concerning the WLRT alignment:

The NCC might have legitimate reasons for not wanting the LRT to cut near the Ottawa river but they've been terrible at expressing their rational. And access to the riverfront isn't a good rational considering the 4 lane quasi freeway that's already there.

The city at some point has to accept the possibility that the NCC simply won't let them use any part of their land near the Ottawa river and plan accordingly. Ideally the city could leverage this to get a few extra million out of the Feds to pay for the (we are told) more expensive alignment.

[Capital Shaun]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

Actually, if you've been to 95% of other mid-sized cities on the planet, you'd probably conclude that Ottawa does have pretty good public transit. The problem is that BRT in the core is no longer adequate for the city's level of ridership and has no room to accommodate future growth.

Especially when compared to many American cities that only have token transit service.

[1overcosc]

I'm liking the tone of that new NCC CEO. It's a lot different from what you usually hear from them, which is "We're the boss, do what we say, suck it up, shut up". It's actually acknowledging that there's other stakeholders the NCC has to consider.

Also, the fact that he even mentioned urban design is a plus (although damn GREEN SPACE came first in that comment--seriously what is with the NCC's obsession with it? It's important but not the primary ingredient of a national capital).

I have an idea for NCC reform: Any additional cost to a municipal project created by an NCC demand must be paid for by the federal government. Watson would love that--he'd totally be cool with burying the entire WLRT as long as the city isn't footing the extra bill. It would also create a culture of financial accountability at the NCC--right now, because they don't pay for the cost of their demands, it allows them to make unrealistically expensive demands. Like a spoiled kid whose parents buy him everything he/she wants, the NCC doesn't respect the value of money.

[Dado]

If the NCC were actually serious about TOD and suchlike, it would be getting out front with a counterproposal to develop Rochester Field with a transit station (i.e. a relocated Dominion) at its centre.

Of course that would run into the same NIMBY brigade who are currently acting as sideline cheerleaders for the NCC against the City. It would also run into the City's own zoning designation for the land as open space, meaning the NCC would probably have to convince the City to back down on this all the while continuing to face the same NIMBY brigade, as well as the one dedicated to saving the former tramway corridor.


The thing that really pisses me off about the entire situation is that none of the parties involved are being serious. The local NIMBY brigade definitely isn't as it seems to regard a patch of landfill with an expressway on it as some kind of sacred territory. The City's insistence on grade-separation makes it really hard to integrate an LRT line running on the surface with pedestrian access across it (and it surrendered the argument further west anyway by agreeing to run the line under Richmond rather than beside it). And the NCC... if it actually cared about anything it says it does it would be trying to get rid of the buses ASAP as part of a plan to reduce the parkway to one lane per direction, whether by putting LRT along the CPR corridor or through a developed Rochester Field.

If I were the City, I'd go ahead and purchase Rochester Field as per the OMB order and then put an option on the table of expropriating all the properties immediately south of the former CPR corridor so as to secure a 12 m wide corridor for the line. Then we'd see how long the NIMBY brigade would resist using the CPR corridor, while the NCC would have to face an LRT line adjacent their land, presumably creating all the same issues they're supposedly concerned about, but not really being able to do anything about it. But the City has no intestinal fortitude, so of course it won't.

[gjhall]

It's awfully nice to read Kristmanson use this word:

sooner

[kevinbottawa]

This "capital urbanism lab" sounds like a good idea. I'm a bit more optimistic about the NCC.

Chianello: CEO Kristmanson giving NCC a new urban focus

By Joanne Chianello, OTTAWA CITIZEN April 23, 2014 7:07 PM

OTTAWA — The fifth floor of the National Capital Commission’s offices on Elgin Street — space that was previously occupied by the folks who organized Winterlude and Canada Day events — is now completely empty, except for a 3-D model of the capital region. It dates back to the days when Jacques Greber was running things, although it’s been updated over the years, adding such landmarks as the Canadian Museum of History and the World Exchange Plaza.

Until a few weeks ago, however, the model had been in storage. Now, still a little dusty, it’s the single item of interest among the unoccupied desks and limp electrical wires.

The symbolism is almost too obvious: The NCC is reinventing its public image from the quasi-government entity that brought you festivals to a centre for visionary urban planning and forward-thinking handling of heritage properties.

The man at the front of this rebranding is Mark Kristmanson, who’s been the CEO for all of 10 weeks. He’s already started to put his stamp on the organization, from holding breakfast meetings with the (furious) public over the demolition of the heritage-designated stone building at 7 Clarence St. in the ByWard Market to inaugurating something he’s temporarily referring to as a “capital urbanism lab.”

“With the departure of the animation and promotion mandate, it’s a real opportunity to cast the light back on some key competencies that we have here. I’m talking about the architects, the landscape architects, the planners, the industrial designers,” said Kristmanson. “The NCC has a whole set of capacities in these areas that I think the public are not so aware of anymore. They were aware that we did Winterlude, but not that we had this.”

So the newly minted CEO thought a good way of taking full advantage of the NCC’s talents was to establish an urbanism centre on that recently vacated fifth floor. It will be a place for “public discussions, design charettes, master classes — some will be public, some will be for staff development; we’ll do some webcasts,” said Kristmanson, who says that staff is stoked about not just the “urbanism lab” but the entire refocusing of the NCC’s role.

And why wouldn’t they be? When that high-profile party-planning role was summarily transferred to Canadian Heritage in last year’s federal budget, it must have surely had a demoralizing effect on NCC employees, especially as rumours persisted that the move was only the beginning of the end for the agency. Yet those close to Foreign Minister John Baird — the ranking local Tory MP who’s effectively in charge of the NCC — and Kristmanson himself say the NCC isn’t going anywhere. The leaner operation does, however, need to refocus on the hundreds of properties it holds across the capital region.

Kristmanson appears to be throwing himself into the role wholeheartedly. At his first board meeting as CEO, he proposed a plan to improve the landscape on either side of Booth Street in the LeBreton Flats area. He wants to make it as accessible and attractive as possible, but also to “start to define the urban design guidelines” that will determine the second phase of the LeBreton development. Entrenching some permanently defined setbacks on either side of Booth Street should create a striking new capital-city vista with the War Museum and the planned Holocaust memorial as its focal points.

Kristmanson also has immediate plans for handling heritage buildings, which includes “better understanding 20th century built heritage,” hiring a new heritage manager, and “bringing back” some disused NCC buildings in the LeBreton Flats and Ottawa River islands.

“What I’ve been reminding people here is that in the ’60s and ’70s, the NCC was a leader in heritage management, heritage policy and adaptive reuse of heritage structures,” said Kristmanson. “I’d like to reactivate that tradition, which I don’t think is gone but I think the idea of being a leader in this area, of restoring that in our ongoing philosophy, is very important.”

That sort of workable strategy — redeploying existing resources to make immediate strides while laying the groundwork for a more ambitious vision — likely helped Kristmanson cinch the top job at the NCC. It’s early days yet, but with his apparent keenness for public discussions and his grounded ideas for improving the capital quickly, Kristmanson looks like he has a decent shot at rebranding the NCC as an organization that doesn’t just think deep thoughts but actually enhances the built spaces we use — and in our lifetimes.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/ot...386/story.html

[J.OT13]

“What I’ve been reminding people here is that in the ’60s and ’70s, the NCC was a leader in heritage management, heritage policy and adaptive reuse of heritage structures,”

Like the time when they demolished a shit load of heritage buildings only to rebuild rough replicas (Sussex), bland office towers (Sparks) and parking lots (Sparks)? Or how those were the years they stopped maintaining heritage buildings which lead to the eventual demolition of landmarks (such as the Daly Building in the 90s after years of neglect)?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by kevinbottawa

This "capital urbanism lab" sounds like a good idea. I'm a bit more optimistic about the NCC.

Soon to launch such studies as "Planting for Vibrancy: Trends in the turf in the 21st century", "Shrubs for All Canadians", and "Nationally Significant Parkway Medians of the National Capital Region".

[Capital Shaun]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Soon to launch such studies as "Planting for Vibrancy: Trends in the turf in the 21st century", "Shrubs for All Canadians", and "Nationally Significant Parkway Medians of the National Capital Region".

[Urbanarchit]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

“What I’ve been reminding people here is that in the ’60s and ’70s, the NCC was a leader in heritage management, heritage policy and adaptive reuse of heritage structures,”

Like the time when they demolished a shit load of heritage buildings only to rebuild rough replicas (Sussex), bland office towers (Sparks) and parking lots (Sparks)? Or how those were the years they stopped maintaining heritage buildings which lead to the eventual demolition of landmarks (such as the Daly Building in the 90s after years of neglect)?

What "adaptive reuse" is he talking about? The Chambers Building is the only one coming to mind. But especially considering what the NCC was trying to do with Sussex recently, I fail to think he's aware of what the NCC actually tends to do and that they're only going to fail (don't forget he even suggested that perhaps the Parkways should be designated heritage structures).

Kristmanson also has immediate plans for handling heritage buildings, which includes “better understanding 20th century built heritage,” hiring a new heritage manager, and “bringing back” some disused NCC buildings in the LeBreton Flats and Ottawa River islands.

What heritage buildings on those islands and LeBreton Flats is he talking about? Aren't those buildings owned by Domtar and going to be apart of a redevelopment independent from the NCC? And of the remaining buildings on LeBreton, other than the pumping station the other buildings are private residential, no?

[rocketphish]

Trudeau loosens the leash on the National Capital Commission

David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: November 5, 2015 | Last Updated: November 5, 2015 4:34 PM EST

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has handed control of the National Capital Commission to a minister from outside the national capital, which is the way things worked when the NCC ran amok.

Having the commission answer to an Ottawa-Gatineau minister was a Stephen Harper innovation. For the longest time, the NCC reported to the minister of Canadian Heritage, whoever that happened to be, and that’s the way it is again. Now it’s Mélanie Joly, the 36-year-old lawyer and communications executive just elected in Ahuntsic-Cartierville, a riding in north Montreal.

The new MP for Ottawa Centre, Catherine McKenna, was elected partly on promises to shove the commission further into the light. She pledged to push for the commission to consult the public more on major decisions, to open more board meetings, to formalize a relationship with the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau. Now before any of that happens, she’ll have to be a supplicant to a cabinet colleague — while McKenna is charged with helping save the planet as environment minister and Joly deals with, say, repairing the CBC.

To give you a sense how much this government cares about the NCC at the moment, McKenna didn’t know whether she’d be the commission’s minister until the night after the cabinet was sworn in. Thursday morning, the NCC itself hadn’t had official word of who the new boss is.

A hundred kilometres from the Peace Tower, nobody cares about the National Capital Commission. Unlike McKenna, Joly won’t have to hear about Sparks Street, the Greenbelt or Gatineau Park when she goes home to her constituency. Much of what the NCC does now involves small pieces of land Joly will never see, important to people she’ll never meet. And the fact the commission doesn’t organize festivals any more makes its connection to Canadian Heritage tenuous.

Of course there’s something to be said for a minister who’s free of local entanglements. There’s more to be said for having a minister who understands the capital as a living city and encounters its leaders outside occasional scheduled meetings. Many of the NCC’s problems have arisen from treating the capital as a place people visit, not a place where they live.

The ministers who Harper put in charge of the NCC, locals Lawrence Cannon and John Baird and Pierre Poilievre – whatever their flaws – understood the argument between the NCC and the city over light rail on the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway. They know the Ottawa Hospital and the cases for and against letting it rebuild the Civic on the Experimental Farm. They knew they’d be looking at the memorial to victims of communism for the rest of their lives.

Absentee ministers used to let the NCC get away with all sorts of guff. Fifteen years ago its concrete-fisted chairman Marcel Beaudry wanted to tear down half of Metcalfe Street to create a grand boulevard between Parliament and the Museum of Nature. Baird would have killed the idea with a snort. Sheila Copps, Jean Chrétien’s heritage minister from Hamilton, let it run. Knocking Beaudry off the idea took years. Even then, there was a while when the “compromise” was to raze a couple of blocks at the north end of Metcalfe because Parliament wanted a new garage.

In the lead-up to the 2004 election, the commission had gone so rogue that Ottawa Centre Liberal candidate Richard Mahoney found himself acting almost like an opposition politician, publicly campaigning against Beaudry and calling for fixes to an agency his own party had supposedly been overseeing for a decade. Beaudry invited Mahoney to get stuffed and won that battle when Mahoney lost his election.

Ultimately it was the Conservatives who (partially) opened the NCC’s board meetings to public view. They named Russell Mills, formerly the Citizen’s editor and publisher, to chair it. The ministers still ordered it to do things for personal and nasty political reasons, but on the whole they handled it much better than the Liberals ever did.

Some of the Conservatives’ reforms will last. The NCC board isn’t going back to closed meetings and probably won’t dream again about demolishing half of downtown Ottawa. It used to have to support its festivals by making money off the land it controls, which isn’t the case any longer.

So some of its pathologies have been cured. Supervision from a minister whose voters care about what the commission does would have been the best way to start treating the rest.

[email protected]
twitter.com/davidreevely

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...tal-commission

[acottawa]

I think there is a cumulative effect here. No NCR Minister overseeing things, only one NCR MP in the cabinet (and one with fairly recent ties to the NCR), no opposition MPs from the NCR to keep an eye on things.

I hope we're not back into "Demolish Metcalfe" territory.

[MaxHeadroom]

Poor Jim Watson. I can't imagine he's any happier now that his L buddies are in charge of the country.

[rocketphish]

Lengthy in-camera agenda belies minister's wish for more open NCC

Don Butler, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: November 17, 2015 | Last Updated: November 17, 2015 6:31 PM EST

Last week, Mélanie Joly, the new minister of Canadian Heritage, revealed that she has asked the National Capital Commission to prepare recommendations to increase its openness and transparency.

What to make, then, of the agenda for Thursday’s in-camera meeting of the NCC’s board of directors? It’s scheduled to run for seven hours and make decisions or hear presentations on a dozen separate items.

By comparison, the NCC has allotted just two-and-a-half hours for Wednesday’s public meeting of the board, during which it will be asked to make decisions on four items.

That’s actually par for the course for the NCC board. In 2014, it met in camera 11 times for nearly 40 hours. In the same year, it held four public meetings totalling barely over nine hours.

Before this week, it had spent nearly 20 hours discussing NCC business in secret at six meetings in 2015, compared to about 11 hours at three public meetings.

This Thursday’s in-camera agenda includes an update on NCC initiatives and funding requirements for the 2017 celebrations in Ottawa; decisions on the Mackenzie Avenue redevelopment, tenant relocation as part of the Sussex Courtyard project, and O’Brien House, a property at Meech Lake that the NCC has been trying to lease; and information about the NCC’s “integrated communications plan and government relations plan.”

The in-camera agenda also included a briefing by staff from the Office of the Auditor General on what the NCC should expect from next year’s scheduled special examination of its efficiency and effectiveness — something all Crown Corporations must submit to every 10 years. But that has been postponed at the request of Auditor General officials.

Asked for the rationale for dealing with such items in secret, NCC spokesman Jean Wolff said the commission “endeavours to make as many of our submissions public as possible.”

However, he added, “to ensure fair and competitive procurement processes and cost-effective delivery of our projects, items with commercial or financial considerations are discussed in camera. Also items involving third party proprietary interests or privacy concerns are also dealt with in camera.”

At the City of Ottawa, which must deal with similar concerns, relatively little council business is conducted behind closed doors. “We don’t go in camera very often at all,” said Rick O’Connor, the city solicitor and clerk. “We try to minimize those situations.”

Unlike the NCC, where public meetings are a policy choice, city council’s deliberations are governed by the Municipal Act, whose default position is that all meetings should be open to the public with certain specified exceptions.

Those exceptions — which are mostly discretionary, not mandatory — include personnel matters about an identifiable individual, labour or employee relations, litigation, advice subject to solicitor-client privilege, the acquisition or disposition of land, and matters involving the security of city property.

Unlike the NCC, city councillors must approve a motion to go behind closed doors. They don’t always choose to do so, said O’Connor, most famously in 2009, when council settled litigation over its cancellation of the first light rail transit plan.

“I remember to this day, it was Coun. (Peter) Hume who said, ‘Why? If we’re going to spend millions of dollars settling litigation, we think the public should be in the room and the cameras should be rolling,'” O’Connor recalled. “They debated for 45 minutes, and at the end they voted against going into closed session. It was a great moment.”

Nothing like that has ever happened at the NCC board, which met entirely in secret until 2001, when, under public pressure, it finally opened some of its meetings to the public.

[email protected]
twitter.com/ButlerDon

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...penness-at-ncc