The newest renderings of Lansdowne look ‘like the football stadiums in Texas where they play high-school football,’ says one Ottawa resident.
“I have seen the future, and it is adequate.”
That was the opinion of David Maclaren, an Ottawa resident who attended one of two recent city information sessions about the future of Lansdowne Park’s northside stands and new event centre. He left uninspired.
Maclaren was at an informal 90-minute drop-in on Jan. 15 at the TD Place Arena, where the public could wander from table to table to see architectural renderings and speak with city officials and others about the Lansdowne 2.0 project. The following evening, a two-hour Zoom presentation and Q & A was held. These were the first public forums since the city unveiled its updated renderings for Lansdowne in December.
Maclaren feels personally invested in the northside stands, having watched football games from that side of the field since he was a youngster. He was at the Rough Riders game in the 1970s when the “North Side sucks” chant was born, he says, a verbal slight hurled by southsiders after the northside fans were unable, or unwilling, to maintain the wave.
“I wear that proudly,” Maclaren says.
He didn’t specifically say that the new proposed northside stands suck, but he clearly wasn’t impressed. “There’s no imagination at all, other than they brought it up to modern standards as far as accessibility.
“Honest to God, it looks like the football stadiums in Texas where they play high-school football.”
Meanwhile, the lack of a roof over the proposed new northside stands, which Sean Moore, the city’s director of the Lansdowne Park redevelopment project, said would have added $15 million to $20 million to the cost, is a deal breaker for Maclaren.
“I’ve been sitting under that roof for 16 years,” he said. “But I won’t go.”
Public forums generally attract more critics than enthusiasts, but Maclaren wasn’t wrong: the new open-air northside stands don’t shout “Wow!” Functional? Sure. But uplifting? Hardly.
Evening Update
Further, the city’s sales pitch appeared fragile when it came to taking questions from the public. Responding to one about the absent roof, Moore stated that the overhang of the upper deck might provide a covering for five or six rows of seats — hardly an amelioration worth mentioning for all the good it would do.
Likewise, his explanation that the new northside design will allow fans to watch events from the indoor concourse in inclement weather, similar to the arrangement in the southside stands, didn’t seem all that well-supported by the architectural renderings. Yes, there is some space, but hardly enough to shelter the number of spectators who might want it.
PWHL attendance would be squeezed
The problem may lie with the renderings themselves. When one person asked why, in one drawing, the public space between JOEY Lansdowne and LOCAL Public Eatery restaurants appeared larger than it actually is, she was simply thanked for pointing out the error in the drawing. I noticed in one rendering, meanwhile, that the proposed 40-storey residential tower to be built immediately behind the northside stands apparently casts no shadow, while its somewhat shorter sister tower does. I’ll be right pissed if the large one gets built and does, in fact, have a shadow, like, you know, other buildings.
An exchange about the seating capacity of the event centre might also have left attendees scratching their heads. The proposed centre will seat 5,500 to 6,000 people. Yet, in its four home games this season at TD Place Arena, the Ottawa Charge of the PWHL have averaged more than 8,000 fans, once reaching just over 11,000. Not once has the team attracted fewer than 6,000.
Moore said that the city is “confident that that the facilities we’re bringing to them are state-of-the-art, and they want to stay at Lansdowne, and over time, the attendance will — it’s a new league — and the attendance will work itself out.”
He seems to be predicting that attendance at PWHL games will fall, or is it that attendance will “work itself out” because the arena will only hold so many people, so that’s how many will be able to go to games? Either way, it’s not a particularly ringing endorsement of the Charge. Perhaps Moore should also be given the task of estimating future OC Transpo ridership, given the way the city’s earlier and rosy predictions have “worked themselves out.”
But here’s some good news: The sledding hill will return! The bad news? It will be a lot smaller. The spin? “It is very much comparable to other sledding hills that we have in city park facilities.”
During the Zoom meeting, Coun. Shawn Menard, a vocal opponent of the development and in whose Capital ward Lansdowne sits, voiced his concern that 58,000 sq.ft. of green space will be lost, due largely to the event centre being built immediately east of the football/soccer field. In their presentation on the project’s landscaping, spokespersons for CSW landscape architectural firm didn’t specifically address that detail, instead noting that the Great Lawn will only be reduced in size by about 10 per cent. Both statements may be true, but it’s like comparing green apples to green grapes. (Additionally, the renderings show the event centre’s roof painted green — so if you’re in a plane passing overhead, it’s all good.)
There’s also the not-so-minor detail of the $419.1-million price tag. According to Justin Kurosky, the city’s design and construction manager for the project, maintaining the current functionally obsolete buildings at Lansdowne — the northside stands and TD Place Arena — will cost the city $12.5 million annually over the next 40 years, whereas the city’s net investment in the redevelopment will be about $5 million annually, after taking into account expected revenues generated by the site.
Menard, who got in the Zoom evening’s final comment, disagreed. The $12.5 million annual costs, he said, were derived using pandemic-level attendance at Lansdowne, with no sports teams and few events, while the $5 million cited by Kurosky doesn’t include the cost of the extra underground parking the city will pay for for the two residential towers, both to build and then lease to the developer at a substantial loss to the city; nor the property tax uplift, by which property taxes paid by tower residents are specifically directed to Lansdowne’s development costs, instead of to other city expenses.
CitySCAPES director and former G20 infrastructure chief economist Neil Saravanamuttoo also disagrees with the city’s numbers. He believes the cost will exceed $500 million, and that for the first couple of decades, beginning in 2030, the annual cost to taxpayers will be close to $20 million, the equivalent, he says, of a one per cent tax hike. He’s calling on the city to hold a referendum on Lansdowne 2.0.
I’m not generally a fan of referenda; after all, we elect councillors and a mayor to speak on our behalf and make these difficult decisions. But given that efforts to address transit and housing — Ottawa’s most significant crises these days — are perpetually hamstrung by the city’s empty coffers, a closer examination of Lansdowne 2.0’s plans and costs, and an re-evaluation the project’s place on the list of city priorities, would prove useful.
Because in the end, this spin can leave you spinning, and all, in the words of Maclaren, for a future that’s simply adequate. As things stand, and as they appear to be heading, the northside sucks.
