ByWard Plan Fails Before It Starts: GRAY

 

 

The City of Ottawa will spend $200 million on a ByWard Market project that will undoubtedly fail.

It makes your skin crawl.

First $6.4 billion on a light rail project that doesn’t work and won’t work until a permanent solution is applied in two or three years. Then a half-billion dollars at the unsuccessful Lansdowne 1.0 project that’s just practising more failure. Then $300 million on an unneeded bricks-and-mortar central library in the age of the internet.

Now $200 million on a revamped ByWard Market. It sends shivers up your spine. Have we not spent enough? The roads are crumbling, traffic is a nightmare, the night mayor is a nightmare, the bus system is botched and infrastructure and maintenance can’t be kept up.

And this plan costs $200 million. Sure. On-time and on-budget.

The city has struck out consistently on projects from the last decade but let’s send it back to the plate again. You know, even a blind squirrel finds a couple of acorns now and then.

What could go wrong? Everything given the city’s horrible record on major projects. But Mayor Mark Sutcliffe needs to appear that he is doing something about the woeful market because he wants to be re-elected. Will his $200-million campaign pledge work? Please … of course not. Bricks and mortar don’t fix social problems.

And isn’t it interesting that Sutcliffe gets religion on the market a few months prior to the municipal election. Funny how that works. Politics. Four years in office was not enough time to clean up the market? How time flies when you’re having a mediocre term.

The sorry condition of the market is hurting Sutcliffe’s re-election badly. About $200 million worth of badly. Smacks a bit of desperation. But a promise is a promise. It won’t work but it might get the mayor re-elected. Big plan. No doubt lousy follow-through like LRT, Lansdowne 1.0, roads, infrastructure, a new library … we could go on.

Deal With The Real Ottawa: BENN

The plan promises a renovation of the ByWard Market Building which doesn’t need it, and from the artist rendering, appears to displace a number of working businesses in the structure itself. You want people in the market but take away the businesses that have people working at them? The market building will also sport a new grand staircase which will no doubt have visitors flocking in from Orleans, Barrhaven and Kanata to an area where it’s like pulling molars trying to find a parking spot.

So the city might “re-purpose” a parking garage to make parking more difficult, create a pedestrian square and maybe an arts building (here come those suburbanites again). The pedestrian square will no doubt be a great location for homeless people to sleep. So too, a re-imagined parking lot as a parking lot.

The police could do what ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani did in 1990s Manhattan and ticket or arrest every petty criminal or homeless person until those unwanted people moved to the outer boroughs. The initiative didn’t solve anything except move the problem.

Sutcliffe could do the same in the market. Push the problems to another neighbourhood such as Vanier (the generational repose of the unwanted), Centretown, deeper into Sandy Hill, the Golden Triangle or, perish the thought, the Glebe (isn’t that where Lansdowne is?).

And pouring more concrete to displace the homeless people just displaces the homeless people, In the 1990s, the tall foreheads in Winnipeg wanted to rid the north side of failing Portage Avenue of problems so they built a shopping mall over a number of blocks to take out the tattoo parlours, the addicted, the homeless, the criminals and an especially popular numbers racket.

So up went the northside shopping mall which promptly absorbed a number of successful businesses from the southside of Portage and moved all the social problems and dumpy businesses to that same southside. Tens of millions of dollars to transfer the problem across the street. Topnotch urban planning.

So build more stuff in the market and see what happens. The problems they be a ramblin’.

Back To The Office For Councillors: PATTON

The after-thought of the Mark Sutcliffe Market Re-election Project is the social problem. It’s not cured by bricks and mortar. It is addressed by finding homes for the homeless, workers to fight addictions and police to battle the criminals. The progress is painfully slow, case-by-case, and has as many failures as successes.

That’s the cure for the market but it could take years, maybe decades. And in the end, you can’t cut a ribbon to win a few votes. Real improvement of the market is hard work, not quick fixes and unfulfilled election promises.

The market is a people problem, not something that can be fixed by a grand stairwell in the market building. It takes money, time, diligence and painful patience.

There are no quick fixes for the market. No easy answers. And don’t believe Sutcliffe has one. He doesn’t.

Oh he will waste $200 million on failure but who cares. It’s not his money. It’s yours.

However, the $200 million solves one problem … for Sutcliffe at least. It helps him get re-elected.

Politics, not practicality.

Ken Gray is the editor of The Bulldog.

 

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