This morning, Mayor Sutcliffe held a press conference to outline the modified Lansdowne 2.0 project recommendations in advance of city councillors or the general public having access to those documents. I am writing this afternoon to express my profound disappointment at the way in which this process has unfolded and the disrespect with which Mayor Sutcliffe has chosen to treat his colleagues on City Council by revealing a major portion of staff’s recommendations in advance of that information being public.
I am also disappointed that the Mayor has chosen in his public comments today, both at the press conference and in a simultaneously launched social media video, to treat aggressively efforts made by opponents to the proposal to provide a different perspective on the Lansdowne 2.0 project. Calling their work “false information” diminishes the significant efforts community volunteers have put into their analysis of this project’s financial implications. There are legitimate reasons to disagree on those, and those volunteers’ work deserves more respect.
While elements of the proposal remain unchanged from when Council last saw those, there are nonetheless important changes that require greater scrutiny. Among these, part of the financial package now includes $65 million in revenue from the sale of air rights to build residential and hotel uses above the proposed new retail podium, up from an estimated $39 million. It is challenging to accept that the air rights for a 800-unit residential development would support such a steep price tag.
Eight days is wholly inadequate time for councillors and the general public to prepare to engage meaningfully with the material, and I call on Mayor Sutcliffe to defer consideration of this matter until at least the third week of November to give everyone time to review the reports.
More broadly speaking, Lansdowne 2.0 should give residents pause and consider whether proceeding with it will result in getting less for more. Ticket prices will be higher, the arena will get smaller, and the City’s debt will grow. Assumptions about how much that new debt will be covered through anything but our taxes are unproven, and similar assumptions in Lansdowne 1.0 proved fanciful.
I’ll have more to say in the coming days. But this current round of Lansdowne 2.0 discussion is off to a bad start.