Raise the Hammer

Professional sports franchises are not the only ones accused of swaying crowds with emotional pitches, fear mongering, poor research & analysis or even downright misinformation. When it come to matter of agendas, just like the old media, many in new-media also use similar tactics. However some in our city believe that their mere association with the new media in itself absolves them of any kind of human failings.

George, before I elaborate, some assumptions related to the West Harbour (Barton/Tiffany) area are:

1) In the three large land parcels bounded by Tiffany, Stuart, Queen and Barton (call it Sector-A) – approximately 40 percent of the lands are city owned/expropriated; and the balance continues to be privately owned.

2) The lands to the north/northwest of Stuart which is around three times the size of Sector-A, is owned by CN Rail and is in active used presently, which prevents access at grade to the waterfront.

3) The larger lot with a structure to the south of the Rheem lands, at Caroline, along with a small parking lot across, are City owned – including all homes that are presently boarded up in the vicinity.

4) The old salvage yard land parcel on the slope between Bay, and Tiffany towards Stuart is not factored into this assumption presently.

In the post PanAm stadium scenario – if the above Sector-A lands were ever to be developed for any new purposes by the city – (which is not the city’s primary business), and further expropriation of private lands here not being an ethical option, it would require either outright purchase of the remaining sixty percent of lands; or negotiating a very complex joint-development agreement in-between three or more independent owners in this sector.

If the CN lands are factored into this development, it gets more complex on account of the larger percentage of their land holding. Considering the prohibitive costs of acquiring such a large parcel in today’s economic conditions, this would possibly entail them becoming the lead partners in this venture – (developing properties is also what they do - and they also control the access at grade from Sector-A to the waterfront).

Some ideas being tossed around for Sector-A, in the post PanAm stage are:

A) An unified mega-development with a star architect.

B) A scaled down sports venue w/wo a velodrome.

C) Remedying the current city acquisitions and reselling at higher value to developer for some speculative use – mix-use/condos/liv-work.

D) Relocating the education board facility on current city acquisitions.

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A) One problem with a unified mega-development is that this may essentially remain an exercise in feel-good visioning. As the balance lands are yet to be acquired by the City or a private developer.

The problem with drawing up bold concepts and rushing to the community before land purchase is done (in a highly politicized development), is that it leads to inflated land values. Sellers of the properties on which this premature visioning is done – will react to the sensational nature of such proposals and use the last highest sale value in sector A – (possibly that of Rheem lands), as the basis of up-valuing their own property. If the City or a private developer now attempts to assemble lands for a mega-development, the asking price of such lands will spiral up fast, making any development cost-prohibitive.

B) The rational for slapping a stadium (full blown or the new scaled down version) on these lands was originally born from a knee-jerk development approach. It was only when the opportunity of provincial & local tax-payer funded Commonwealth games came up initially, followed by the Pan-Am games – that the temptation for a quick political fix to remedy the polluted lands surfaced – (Prior to that a more measured approach had already led to a community driven solution for this area).

This approach is in no way different than pro-sports organizations making use of tax-payers funds.

Some parcels of what were essentially private lands in Sector-A, suddenly became City or tax-payer owned, thru a highly questionable land-grab – supposedly done for a 'public good' at an absurdly inflated value. This practically destroyed the possibilities of ever maintaining rational market-driven land values in the surrounding areas yet to be developed, and consequently destroying the potential of a more organic market-driven recovery of the entire Sector A.

So what went wrong with the play on WH?

Some sincerely believe it was the Ti-cats who didn’t play ball. After all there was a near perfect fit with the much documented behavior of pro-sport teams. Who can challenge that?

Why did they walk away from WH, when all expenses were pretty much paid by the tax-payers? Did they want more? Or were they the first team in history to walk away from a free-meal – because they might have actually been serious about achieving financial sustainability?

I seriously doubt scalability or size resulting in extra costs was as critical an issue, as it is made out to be.

According to the chronology, it took them (Bob Young) --three long months-- to figure out that accessibility and visibility was a big issue with the WH location. They can surely be held guilty for not doing due diligence ahead of time – just as much as the highly compensated consultants and planners in our city can be held guilty for not figuring this simple fact out ahead of time --in more than three years-- when this location was being short-listed by them for sports use. Would not the projected users/tenants of the Commonwealth Games stadium back then, have also required visibility as a criteria for sustainable operations?

--Visibility-- drives revenues, which puts such precarious financial ventures like this on a track to being financially sustainable. It adds an extra layer of financial security in what is a high risk proposition for tax-payers.

On-line ads gives on-line property owners high visibility which drives traffic, which in turn drives online presence, and hopefully drives online revenues. Does one begrudge the on-line property owners for seeking on-line visibility?

--Accessibility-- to this location can only be truly experienced when one visits this location often.

During the games at IWS, it takes over an hour and a half of bumper-to-bumper cars crawling at 30kms/hr – spewing gas in urban neighbourhoods, just to pass thru International Village alone in order to get to the 403 exist. A similar impact on the WH is for anyone to imagine - and which is why the much more resourceful Aberdeen area residents quickly closed ranks, when the stadium visited their neighbourhood briefly on its journey thru our city!

Even after factoring the 'up-in-the-air billion+ dollars' LRT in place for the stadium on WH, and a new GO transit stop at James – what were the realistic assumptions made for the WH location, especially for those visitors who happen to not live within easy reach of these transit line? For good reasons, we will not factor in here, all the soccer moms attempting to use this facility, making frequent trips with their kids, gear and all, from public transit-challenged neighbourhoods to the WH.

The WH location was not Bob Young’s invention. As per the chronology, it was first short-listed by the professional consultants/planners who could have know better – and politicians who should have known better than to directly dive into a volatile site-selection process, and instead held the well-paid professionals feet-to-fire for not thinking thru the various scenarios and options they came up with for consideration.

In my opinion what happened was Young went along, until the alarm bells of financial sustainability started clanging in his mind. Then all hell broke loose.

According to the chronology itself – the “driveway to driveway” experience was something that the highly celebrated consultant came up with as a compromise – much later in the game, when Bob Young was pushed against a wall in what amounted to essentially a public lynching.

That the new media was used here to achieve this is a reflection of the immaturity of the new media in our city – and not a community engagement exercise, nor a badge of honour that its proponents can wear with any dignity.

Everyone involved in what followed rightfully should bear the responsibility for this sorry segment of the episode. If any premature lessons are to be learned here, it is that new media has yet to come of age in our city.

C) Remedying the current city acquisitions and reselling at higher value to a developer – to enable market forces to deal with the remaining private lands here – is possibly the only graceful way out of this mega-development fantasy. A course that could save tax-payers more anguish. It would cost some more in the short-term, but these costs could be recouped.

The question here is: will the market be able to absorb such cleaned up lands quickly enough? This will depend on how creatively these lands are packaged and marketed – to attract the right kind of outcomes the community desires on these lands – which will in turn depend on whether that same caliber of consultants which generated this mess, are deployed yet again to now find solutions.

D) Relocating the education board facility on current city acquisitions on the WH lands, will only result in what is now considered to be highly innovative in our city – It is the “Grand reshuffle”, a kind of cannibalism which prompts some to move organizations and institutions around the city in magnanimous board-game gestures, to give tax-payers the appearance of growth.

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Finally, if Setting-Sails is the document that one wants to consider returning to, in order to regain that warm fuzzy feeling of stability and incremental growth in our city – it is still doable, but first, we all need to eat our equal share of the humble-pie in order to start over once again; we need to leave our egos and vanity aside for a change, and begin listening to the voices of the neighbourhoods into which we arrogantly choose to slams our collective dreams of becoming a great city.

Solutions that arise from such an approach are the only solutions that will give any credence to our claims of being a sustainable community.

If this tattered WH document is to be once again used as a framework to rebuild upon – a more progressive and cosmopolitan approach needs to be taken to generate design and financing ideas.

The organizing of a city driven 'international open design-build competition' for the WH lands is a distinct possibility which may be the only way left for us to leave a legacy worth leaving – on the last symbolic piece of buildable land at the head-of-the-lake.

Our city's deeply embedded parochialism is the only thing standing in our way.

The mavericks among us however will continue to dilute innovative development ideas that could easily put our city on the international economic map – by instead grabbing clichés and in-bred ideas to lead our community into the next decade.

Mahesh P. Butani

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PS: I would like to clarify that this is just another viewpoint - and it would be a great shame if this is read as a personal attack on Ryan or anyone else here who has a opposing viewpoint.

Comment edited by Mahesh_P_Butani on 2011-03-27 18:32:08