Mayor Sutcliffe misleads on Lansdowne 2.0 

LANSDOWNE OP ED 

The $500 million Lansdowne 2.0 proposal requires the removal of much of the berm and some of the great lawn of Lansdowne Park to make way for a new entertainment centre and residential towers. 

Photo: John Dance 

Mayor Sutcliffe misleads on Lansdowne 2.0 

By John Dance 

In a recent interview with The Mainstreeter, the community newspaper of Old Ottawa East (“Sharing lunch with … Ottawa’s Mayor Mark Sutcliffe”), Mayor Mark Sutcliffe answered questions about Lansdowne 2.0. His answers were, to put it politely, misleading. Specifically: 

Sutcliffe: The challenge that people have to remember is that Lansdowne is a publicly owned facility, just like the Nepean Sportsplex, just like every community centre or library in the city, just like all the rinks and sports infrastructure.  

Partially True: Yes, these facilities are publicly owned BUT the Lansdowne stadium and arena are fundamentally different from community centres, rinks and sports infrastructure. Community facilities provide residents with publicly accessible services and amenities at no cost/low-cost user fees, while the Lansdowne arena and stadium are primarily for ticket-only professional sports and entertainment events which – rather than taxpayers – should be fully paying the cost of construction and maintenance of the facilities.  

Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) has paid a dollar a year for its use of the arena and stadium over the last decade and will not be contributing a dime to the construction of Lansdowne 2.0 

Sutcliffe: There is not a single scenario that doesn’t cost us money going forward, and the cost of doing nothing is enormous. 

False: The $500 million cost of the mayor’s Lansdowne 2.0 plan is “enormous,” in contrast to spending about $40 million over 40 years to implement a professionally developed capital repair and replacement plan to maintain the integrated stands and arena in a safe and operating condition, as noted in a staff report to City Council. 

 Sutcliffe: I think it’s clear that the first improvements to Lansdowne have been successful. A lot more people are using the site. There’s a lot more activity. I was at the Christmas market recently. It’s beautiful. So, there’s a lot going on at Lansdowne, and that’s very positive.  

Partially True but Mostly False: Yes, there has been a lot more activity, particularly with the city-operated “urban park” portion of the site. That is positive. But let’s not pretend that the business model proposed and executed by OSEG has been anything but an utter failure, resulting in average losses of about $11 million per year since the initial renovations were completed in 2014.  

The Lansdowne 2.0 plan would result in 40 per cent fewer seats in the arena, 20 per cent fewer seats in the north stands, and about 2 per cent more retail/commercial space so it’s pretty hard to believe that Lansdowne 2.0 would result in improved financial performance despite a $500 million expenditure. 

 Sutcliffe: There are those people perhaps thinking there’s an option here to just pause everything, and that that will cost nothing to the city, but that’s incorrect – it’s going to cost us a lot of money if we do nothing. 

False: It is simply false for the mayor to state that “those people” are proposing to “do nothing” with Lansdowne. “Do nothing” is also clearly not the only option. What is true is that the mayor has dismissed the idea of considering any other options that could “fix” Lansdowne, at less cost, and less debt for taxpayers.  

The City has failed in providing thorough analysis of why the initial investment was a failure. And it has not considered other options for improved professional sports and entertainment facilities in the city. The mayor and city staff argue that the current arrangement whereby OSEG covers maintenance costs for the arena and stadium saves taxpayers $3.8 million a year but this argument is ludicrous.  

OSEG should be paying for the cost of maintenance because they are the ones who use the arena and stadium. There is no reason why taxpayers should be paying maintenance costs for private corporations. We don’t pay the maintenance costs for the Senators’ facilities so we sure shouldn’t be subsidizing OSEG’s Redblacks and 67s.  

Sutcliffe: I’ve had multiple conversations with organizations that have brought major events to our city in the past that are never coming back to Lansdowne or to Ottawa in the future unless we have more modern facilities. So, the economic cost to the city of not hosting the World Curling championships, the figure skating events that we’ve hosted in the past, and events like that, is significant.  

False: There are likely to be “more modern facilities,” when the Sens get their new home. PWHL Charge fans don’t want a new Lansdowne arena that would have 40 per cent less seating than the existing Lansdowne facility that is regularly filled.  

Similarly, why would organizers of events like the World Curling Championship want to have their events in a much smaller facility, one that has no rapid transit and clogged, narrow roadways?  

If the mayor wants to make an economic argument to support spending $500M on brand new facilities, he can’t ignore that it’s simply too difficult for many people to get there unless you are a local resident. Let the mayor explain why building new facilities at a location served by the LRT doesn’t make more sense. Let him explain why it doesn’t make more sense to locate any new facilities so that they drive desperately needed ridership for the LRT. 

Sutcliffe: There’s no inexpensive solution to Lansdowne.  

False: There are solutions that are much less costly than the $500 million proposal that Sutcliffe is promoting. Accessibility within the existing north stands and arena should be improved but we should keep solid facilities that have substantial capacity.  

To suggest that the facilities at Lansdowne must be replaced now because they do not meet accessibility standards is to pretend that community arenas and cultural facilities across the city, and the residents who use them, don’t also suffer from the same deficiencies. Where is the outcry and support for replacing these aging community facilities? Why take on so much debt to address these problems just at Lansdowne?  

Also, the Lansdowne 2.0 “solution” not only would cost a huge amount but would see the demolition of facilities that were built or renovated at taxpayer expense a decade ago and would diminish the successful urban park, particularly the berm and great lawn. 

In 2012, pre-mayor Mark Sutcliffe wrote an op-ed piece for the Ottawa Citizen in which he criticized the Friends of Lansdowne, a group that opposed the initial Lansdowne project, calling them “no friends of the community.” In retrospect, it’s the Friends of Lansdowne who were right about the poorly conceived project. Thirteen years later, Sutcliffe, now mayor, is pushing a second Lansdowne project to supposedly improve upon the failures of the first one by spending three times as much as the initial project. Mayor Sutcliffe is a friend of the owners of OSEG, not of taxpayers and communities.  

It’s time to kill Lansdowne 2.0 before it becomes an enormous white elephant.  

John Dance is a member of the Old Ottawa East Community Association’s Lansdowne Committee, and a frequent contributor to The Mainstreeter and the Glebe Report. 

Published with the permission of The Mainstreeter.