I Will Debate Lansdowne: SARAVANAMUTOO

When I publish analyses about Lansdowne, residents often forward those to their councillors. Some of those councillors write back, and residents ask for my take on the responses.

If you write to your councillor or the Mayor Mark Sutcliffe about Lansdowne, and if they reply, here is my pre-emptive response on some of the points you will hear.

Lansdowne is equivalent to a one-per-cent tax increase

Alta Vista Councillor Marty Carr: “No, this is not true. Lansdowne is not being funded from a tax increase. The funding strategy approved by Council assumes $16.7M debt servicing coming from the existing tax target, not from a 1% tax increase.

The City of Ottawa is taking on Lansdowne debt for both the sports stadium and for new parking. While the city says this is $16.7 million per year, the numbers provided by the auditor general, along with the amount for parking, would bring this figure to $22 million a year. And that is assuming neither construction costs nor interest rates rise.

Against that $22 million, the city can count on $1.6 million a year in reliable revenues. There are other revenues that will eventually come on stream, but unless Lansdowne 2.0 comes up with more than triple the profits promised to the city in Lansdowne 1.0 — and none of those promised profits have ever materialized — then taxpayers are going to be left holding the bag.

$20 million a year is equivalent to a 1% property tax increase. For the first decade and likely longer, taxpayers will be picking up the overwhelming majority of the $22 million in debt costs.

Instead of spending $500 million on Lansdowne, we could spend $20 million in each ward

Carr: “No. Lansdowne will be paid through debt servicing. There are therefore no funds available to be reallocated elsewhere.”

Actually, that’s not correct. $51 million is coming from money that is already sitting in the fiscal framework that could be spent on other purposes.

The rest of the money comes from borrowing. Carr is saying we’ve set up a debt authority to only borrow for Lansdowne. Sure, but there is nothing stopping us from cancelling that Lansdowne debt-authority and creating a new Whatever debt-authority. Instead of borrowing for Lansdowne, we could borrow $20 million to redo the half-century old Mooney’s Bay pavilion that River ward residents have been requesting. Or we could borrow $20 million to rebuild community arenas that have truly reached end-of-life, like the Belltown Arena in Bay ward. Or we could do projects all across the city that local communities actually want.

The cost of doing nothing is about $1 million a year

Orleans West-Innes Councillor Laura Dudas: “The cost of doing nothing is not nothing. In fact, it’s very expensive. … The mayor was quite public this past year, when he had staff crunch the numbers, and found that the preliminary costs on just focusing on the maintenance and eventual demolition of the facility, it would be north of $400 million.”

This is simply not true. “Current estimates from Morrison Hershfield based on a 40-year capital repair and replacement plan for the facility and to keep the old building operational and demolish it at the end, would require an investment in the order of $40 million.” Lansdowne 2.0 staff report, October 2023, page 79.

Lansdowne is not state-of-the art, but it is sufficient for what it has to do

Dudas: “the north-side seating area, the arena underneath, as well as the supporting infrastructure, is well over 50 years old, and as many are aware from the public engineering reports, has been declared functionally obsolete. With parts crumbling due to age and water damage, making it increasingly unusable.”

The north stands are used about a dozen times a year. The Redblacks need both north and south stands, but most teams playing on the Lansdowne field only use the south stands. The arena and north stands do have accessibility issues, but these concerns could be addressed independently at a much lower cost than tearing down the entire structure.

The north stands are not used for Atlético Ottawa matches

The Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group started using the term “functionally obsolete”, when they realized that their previous characterization of calling it “end of life” was factually incorrect. These facilities pose no danger to users, as insinuated in the councillor’s remarks above.

If the sport teams want better facilities, they should pay for the upgrades

Mayor Mark 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.”

Lansdowne is not the same as community centres or local arenas. The public gets to use those facilities. Lansdowne is used by for-profit sports teams to run commercial events. If for-profit organizations want to upgrade the facilities to boost their revenue potential, they should pay for it themselves.

To reiterate, Lansdowne has another 40 years of life in it. We do not need to be demolishing a building that we renovated less than a decade ago. If the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group want to do this for commercial reasons, they should pay for it themselves.

Expect the Professional Women’s Hockey League to relocate to a future downtown Senators arena

Dudas: “The PWHL was quite candid with Councillors during meetings that if the arena is left as is, they would be the first to leave Ottawa. Beyond that, any plans to try to simply move the arena to a different location, would carry similar expenses, including the purchase of any lands on which to build; all with no or limited projected revenues tied to the site.”

The current TD Arena at Lansdowne has 9,800 seats. The proposed Event Centre in Lansdowne 2.0 has 5,500 seats.

The Ottawa Charge regularly sell out or come close to selling out their games.

Are we supposed to believe that the Ottawa Charge are insisting on giving up 4,000 tickets a game at, say, an average price of $50 a ticket?

Once a new downtown Senators arena is established, I would expect the PWHL team to relocate there if Lansdowne 2.0 goes ahead, rather than losing ticket revenues when their fan base is larger than what could be accommodated.

I challenge councillors to a public debate

It is a sad state that most councillors neither understand what is being proposed at Lansdowne, nor are they prepared to look critically at the superficial analysis put in front of them.

Councillors are taking OSEG’s financial projections at face value, even though past performance should be highly indicative of future results. Councillors have a responsibility to act in the best financial interests of residents, but most are failing to honour that responsibility.

So I’d like to put out an invitation.

Councillors, if you’re so confident that Lansdowne is a worthwhile investment, let’s debate it in public. No hiding behind sham public engagement events. Out in the open, for all to see. Bring the city treasurer along if you want someone to mediate and rule on any matters of fact.

I doubt any of the Councillors will have the courage to debate me. But I hope one of these champions for Lansdowne will prove me wrong.

Neil Saravanamuttoo is a former G20 infrastructure chief economist, director of CitySHAPES and the author of The 613 on Substack.

This article is re-published by permission.

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