A Tale of two cities and two parks 

San Diego’s Balboa Park horticulture building in the evening light – an example of what Lansdowne could have been, had it not been turned into a mall and condos. 

A Tale of two cities and two parks 

By Clive Doucet 

In this time of backyard wars and gunboat diplomacy as Donald Trump tries to make his country great again, it is difficult to think about anything else. One of the many ways he is compromising all our lives is by making it impossible to focus on anything but dealing with his latest crazy behavior, but we need to focus on other problems because they won’t go away. One of Ottawa’s ongoing problems is Lansdowne Park. 

I have discovered that the land for San Diego’s famous Balboa Park was designated in 1868, the same year three farmers gave some of their land to the City of Ottawa to create Ottawa’s first Exhibition Park, named after Lord Lansdowne, a British governor general. Balboa is much bigger than Lansdowne at over 1,000 acres, most of it remaining protected as wild land. The heart of the park is about 40 acres, about the same size as Lansdowne. In that 40 acres, San Diego has created and is still improving an arts district with museums, art galleries, theatres, a pedestrian promenade, cafés. It is here the city’s youngsters can join a youth orchestra, learn about theatre and visual art. Oldsters can play chess and throw horseshoes. It is a park for everyone. Balboa Park has become a wonderful green force for the entire city. 

The horticulture building at Balboa looks magnificent primarily because of the setting, the reflecting pool and trees. The building itself is actually much less impressive than the Cattle Castle – Aberdeen Pavilion – at Lansdowne. You might remember that Lester Johnson, the architect who worked for those who opposed the privatization of Lansdowne, proposed a much grander reflecting pool, running from Bank Street to the front doors of Aberdeen Pavilion with a turning basin open to the canal on the other side, so the building would have been framed by water on both sides. 

As I walked around the heart of Balboa Park, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of sadness for what has happened to Lansdowne. It has become a monument to the spinelessness of three different mayors and many city councils. There’s a part of me which will always regret that instead of running for mayor to oppose the evil forces which turned Lansdowne from a public asset into a public debt that I had stayed on City Council as the councillor for Capital Ward and begun each speech with “where is the revenue neutrality?”  

For those who don’t remember, when the developers came after Lansdowne, they promised a no-cost, “revenue-neutral” redevelopment instead of the costly open public-design competition process that I proposed for the redevelopment. This was approved by Council until the developers came up with their “revenue neutral” idea. Revenue neutrality was a very successful public relations strategy because it was the only reason that could have justified giving the park away for a CFL team, even though the CFL team didn’t even require a stadium at Lansdowne. It could have been anywhere, but the developers required it to be at Lansdowne because they needed the profit they hoped to generate from a commercial redevelopment of the park’s 40 acres.  

Today, their “revenue neutral” proposal is distinguished by costing more money every time the developers approach City Hall. No one knows the full cost because the price goes up with each deal, and there have been many little “adjustments” along the way. City auditors now say at least a half a billion. I suspect it’s much closer to a billion for nothing much at all. The arena will be even smaller than the present one. The mall is a failure, and excepting the Aberdeen Pavilion, there are very few public spaces. Most of it has been condo-ed.  

As I walked around Balboa Park with thousands of other happy Saturday afternoon visitors, I found its art galleries, museums and public spaces to be wonderful, but they were also this unhappy reminder that my hometown had a wonderful, historic legacy in Lansdowne Park, the equal of Balboa’s centre, but instead of investing in it and making it something that would embellish the city and generations would love, we threw it away – and paid millions for the discard. Where is the revenue neutrality? Why did we allow City Hall to run away with our park? 

Clive Doucet is a former Ottawa City Councillor for Capital Ward. He lives now in Cape Breton where he keeps bees and writes poetry.