Lansdowne Took Meanest Approval Route

By Clive Doucet

I watched with surprise recently former journalists Joanne Chianello and John Willing on Rogers Television having a beer and chatting at Lansdowne.

They were discussing Lansdowne 2.0 which they both assumed would pass at council despite the fact it is an even worse deal for the city than Lansdowne 1.0 was.

What surprised me was not their arguments against the developers final proposals for transitioning the park into a commercial space. These arguments haven’t changed since the fight over Lansdowne 1.0 unfolded in 2010. The principal difference is the subsidy has ballooned and the public gets even less. Lansdowne 2.0 will have a half-billion dollars of city financing for the developers’ new plans but it will buy even less than what Lansdowne 1.0 offered: a half- size rink, roofless north stands, half of the green space and more condos.

The same arguments were also made about vehicle and pedestrian access to Lansdowne in 2010 – 15 years ago.

Lansdowne is basically a peninsula jammed between Bank St. on one side and the canal on the other two. Nor is there any rapid transit access. What surprised me was not Chianello and Willing’s arguments but the fragility of memory.

Chianello referred to only a few outliers voting against Lansdowne 1.0. I was one of those outliers along with more than one-third of council who voted against Lansdowne 1.0 including suburban councillors such as the late Diane Deans. The opposition at the community level was even more ferocious. Friends of Lansdowne were so incensed by the city abandoning the competitive process for determining the park’s future,  they raised money and took the city to court. The Lansdowne 1.0 resistance was never about a few outliers.

The abandoning of the competitive process for the redevelopment of the city’s oldest and most historic park without any public-participation whatsoever. It was nothing but a hand-delivered letter from the city’s general manger to councillors laconically reporting the competitive process was being abandoned. That was flying in the face of a council decision.  No one has the authority to unilaterally dismiss a council motion … not the mayor, not a group of councillors and not the city manager. This became national news. It astonished us all. It was as if council didn’t exist.

This was just the start one incredible moment after another. Council was told the Canadian Football League required the city to rebuild at Lansdowne. This also turned out to be untrue but by the time the facts were revealed, the decision to build at Lansdowne was already made.

The resistance to building a mall and condos at Lansdowne wasn’t just about a few outliers. It was a determined, passionate issue for the old city, communities and their local politicians and so it should have been. It was legacy land given to the city by three farmers in 1868 for a park and city activities, not for commercial interests and private profit.  Those of us resisting the transfer to the private sector regarded it as a betrayal of that legacy trust.

The 2010 Lansdowne 1.0 council debates were also about local democracy. The Ontario Planning Act requires those people and communities most affected by a city action to be given “heavier weight” than those at distance. What happened during the Lansdowne 1.0 debates was councillors beyond the greenbelt would ask members of the public presenting at council what their postal code was?  That way they could dismiss their appeals to retain the park if their postal code was within the old city. Such was their determination to bend to the wishes of the developers that they acted in the opposite direction what the planning act required.

The faces of the mayors have changed over the years since I have left city politics but the determination to make developers richer at the expense of the public has never wavered. Lansdowne 2.0  like Lansdowne 1.0 is a charity for the rich. It is another reverse Robin Hood motion of council to assure a small group of very rich men are bailed out of an investment plan that didn’t work out.

For Lansdowne 2.0 property taxes at Lansdowne won’t be funneled to developers through back-loaded, hard-to-understand waterfall funding system, but directly. The city will take property taxes raised  at Lansdowne and use these taxes to pay the Lansdowne debt. This has never been done before. Property taxes always go to the city’s general revenue fund, not to special interests.

The legal and political consequences of this are especially damaging. If you can siphon-off property taxes at Lansdowne for Lansdowne, why can’t you do this for other city projects and services. If this happens, suddenly, the city won’t have a consolidated revenue fund but a series of discrete tax funds.

In 2010, the city had the chance to redevelop Lansdowne into a central city park which would have resonated as the Rideau Canal does today for the nation as well as for the embellishment of the city.

Instead council chose the meanest way forward possible. That meanness not only persists with Lansdowne 2.0, it has hardened.

Clive Doucet is the former councillor for Capital ward.

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