Lansdowne 2.0 Approved

Lansdowne 2.0 approved

Flawed process with little public input

By June Creelman

It’s an understatement to say that the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity for Lansdowne 2.0. As the clock ticked down to a final decision, a series of revelations kept everyone guessing right up until November 7, when City Council voted 15 to 10 to go ahead with Lansdowne 2.0.

The biggest late surprise was the Professional Women’s Hockey League’s announcement that it did not support Lansdowne 2.0 due to the reduced seating capacity of the new arena. PWHL executives declared that the future of the Ottawa Charge is at risk if the project goes ahead in its current form. Why such a last-minute statement when the arena capacity has long been known? It turns out that City officials and OSEG had led the PWHL to believe that their seating needs would be addressed. It was only when the final report came out that the PWHL learned they had been misled. City councillors appeared gobsmacked by the women’s hockey protest, but they voted to proceed with the smaller arena anyway.

News that women’s hockey might leave Lansdowne (and Ottawa) was followed by an announcement from City Folk that it too may be forced out due to the decreased size of the Great Lawn and natural amphitheatre.

These issues – smaller arena and loss of green space – were two of the top reasons that Ottawa residents gave for opposing Lansdowne 2.0 in a city-wide survey conducted by Nanos Research. The polling results, made public on October 31, showed that 60 per cent of respondents are opposed or somewhat opposed to Lansdowne 2.0 and the more they knew about it, the less they liked it. Unsurprisingly, residents were concerned about the city taking on more debt and did not believe the project would be completed on time or on budget.

Risks related to cost overruns and tight construction deadlines were also the focus of the City’s Auditor General’s report in early November. She warned Council about the significant potential for cost overruns and observed that the 10-per-cent contingency might be insufficient. She also pointed out that the projected revenue streams were optimistic and not guaranteed. A key point in her report was the opportunity cost of spending on Lansdowne instead of other city projects and services. But the Auditor General’s report came just a few days before the Council vote, and there was little indication that any changes would be made to the project scope or budget.

What was in the hundreds of pages of the final Lansdowne report released on October 20 that triggered all this activity?

The broad strokes of the Lansdowne 2.0 plan remain the same: demolish the existing TD Place and attached retail stores and replace them with a smaller arena, build new northside stands with fewer seats and no roof, and construct a new retail block topped by two high-rise (40-storey) residential towers. The current green space at Lansdowne is to be significantly reduced since the arena will be built there.

But the report also contained a few surprises – an above-ground parking garage will be built on site, and there might be a hotel in the residential towers. We also discovered that the signature digital art sculpture “Moving Surfaces” would be “decommissioned.”

Public statements about Lansdowne 2.0 financials were contradictory. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe announced that the construction cost for the stadium/arena came in at $418 million while others observed that when the costs for parking and the retail podium are included, the total taxpayer bill would be about $485 million.

The report did make clear that Ottawa taxpayers would entirely fund Lansdowne 2.0. The project budget showed an upfront public expenditure of about $50 million from City reserves followed by payments of $17.4 million a year for the next 40 years. To be fair, the project report identified potential revenue streams that might offset these public expenditures, including the sale of air rights, retail profits, a portion of the hotel tax and property taxes. But none of these are guaranteed and even in the best-case scenario, there would be no significant revenues for 25 years.

In my view, one of the most troubling aspects of the last few weeks has been the City’s rush to decision-making without meaningful public input. The mayor held a press conference releasing his views and selected details about the finances before the reports were made available to the media or the public. An extremely compressed schedule limited the time to review over 350 pages of dense documentation before public delegations. It is a credit to the citizens of Ottawa that more than 85 people (both critics and boosters) did their homework and chose to appear before the City’s Finance and Corporate Affairs Committee. As well, some 500 people took part in Better Ottawa’s November 3 public forum.

Also troubling is the breakdown of respectful civic discourse. The mayor publicly accused project critics of running a misinformation campaign, though he failed to cite a single example of false or misleading information. A few councillors made personal attacks on people making public delegations, and others were downright rude to PWHL executives. Some exchanges were cringeworthy.

No matter where you stand on Lansdowne 2.0, this is no way to make important decisions that shape the future of our city.

June Creelman is chair of the Glebe Community Association’s Lansdowne committee. She has followed the Lansdowne story for many years.