But aside from the activities that continue in the Park, the buildings and especially Frank Clair Stadium are crumbling to rubble. It is costing the city over $3 million per year to maintain the rate of crumble. Along comes a group of developers and sports people who offer, unsolicited, to revitalize the whole park and bring the CFL back to Ottawa, if the city will repair the stadium.
The deal is good for the taxpayers and the city. So should we be concerned? Yes we should!
Council, in agreeing to negotiate with the Lansdowne Live folks have put so many caveats on the deal that there are hundreds of way that this council, and history has proved this, can overturn its own decision.
Members of Council - you have started down the right path. Don't blow it now!
5 comments:
Yeah. Lets pump $100 million we don't have into a stadium which will still not be serviced by major transit, will lack parking, and be surrounded by a noise-adverse residential community -- all for the benefit of a private sporting enterprise (one which echos several past enterprises which have cratered repeatedly) that will use it all of seven or eight times a year.
What could possibly be a downside to that?
That said, I am opposed to soccer in Kanata for the same reason. $100 million we don't have is too much money for either boondoggle.
Do you say the same thing about the Concert Hall toward which the city has allocated millions of dollars? How about the Archives? How about the Library?
If you refuse Lansdowne Live what do you do with Lansdowne Park? Do you destroy the stadium (cost $15 million)? Do you develop it into a park even though there will still be no rapid transit? (cost ? millions)
Do you turn it into a cemetery to assuage the sensitive Glebe-ites?
Do you do nothing? (cost $3.2 million/year)
What do you do with the Ottawa 67s who have a long term lease on the site? Or are they a ragtag "private sporting enterprise"?
MysteryMan has some points. Do we judge all activities in the city on their cost to the taxpayers?
If so then transit does not make sense. Riders on the transit system pay only 50% of the operating cost of their ride. We, the taxpayers pay the rest. And that does not even take into account the billions that we will spend on the capital side. That is not economical for taxpayers so let's stop this boondoggle.
Taxpayers pump thousands of dollars into festivals which have no real ROI for taxpayers. Ditch them?
The Greek Festival on Prince of Wales makes more noise than the CCE ever did. Stop the festival?
The Italian Church on Fisher Avenue blocks of a major arterial for their fair? They don't even pay taxes let alone give back to the coffers of the city. Can them?
I could go on but I think that the point is made.
There are two sides to each equation. Lansdowne Live actually creates tax and other revenues for the city where a park would not.
The Concert Hall? Yes, I do. I don't see why we need something almost literally across the street from the NAC.
The Archives? The archives serve a useful public service -- storing information for the use by future generations. Landsdown Live only forwards the opportunity for debt into the future.
The Library? Libraries are distributed through the Ottawa area. Thus, they don't need to be on rapid transit or require copious parking. They also hold far fewer loud, neighbour-irritating events.
Regarding Landsdown: what to do? Why not bulldoze it and let it stand idle? It will only cost us five years of current "operating" costs ($15 million vs $3 million per year); and practically all of that $15 million would have to be spent anyways as part of the revitalization.
Letting it stand idle is a heck of a lot cheaper than paying the money we are currently paying to do nothing with it.
And yes, the 67s are a problem -- if they have a lease, then we need to make arrangements for them. I don't know what the answer to that is. But if we are going to rebuild the civic center, the 67's will need somewhere else to play during that process too, so objecting on those grounds is silly.
But until you can efficiently get a large quantity of people (let's pick a totally random number like "the number of people who want to attend a football game plus all the people needed to service such an event") into and out of the site, there is no point in putting attractions there. And until the private sporting enterprise can be self-financed without any public money being involved -- well I don't see why the city needs to be involved.
I'm all for Mr. Hunt wasting his money in pursuit of his own entertainment. It's when he proposes wasting mine that I start to object.
Anonymous: Regarding transit: as a non transit-using taxpayer, I gain through less congestion on the roads. The bus strike was a textbook example of this. Building infrastructure employs people, which is considered good in this day and age. There's the benefit of fewer tailpipes on the road from an environmental standpoint. Plus, if transit ever becomes a practical solution for me, I'll use it. So there are benefits beyond those to transit users.
Regarding the festivals -- if the neighbourhoods where the festivals are don't want them there or can't tollerate the noise, then I'll bet they will be gone. The Glebe has a storied history of objecting to events at Landsdown. I'll suspect that the hosts of Greek Festival like it.
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