The field at TD Place in Ottawa, home of the Ottawa Redblacks in 2022.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
It’s tempting to joke that the city councillors in Ottawa pushing another stadium redevelopment plan are channeling Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright who wrote “Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” What’s less funny is that there’s no reason to believe this latest try will prove to be any better.
In fact, it could turn out a lot worse. With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, the city has approved a plan based on rosy assumptions and a 50-year horizon.
The core of the scheme called Lansdowne 2.0 is to rebuild part of the stands at a city-owned stadium used by the local CFL Redblacks team. The plan would also replace an arena used by the local PWHL team, the Charge, though team officials have warned that the shrunken-down replacement venue has too few seats to keep the team financially viable. There would also be new parking facilities, two residential towers and new retail space.
The plan has a price tag of $483-million, though the city argues the net cost will be much lower, allowing Ottawa to build the facilities for “essentially thirty cents on a city dollar.” But – and this is a big but – that is based on a number of hopeful projections. Residents of Ottawa, don’t hold your breath, and hold on to your wallets.
There’s a lot to unpack in the idea and a bit of a history lesson is first needed. The plan is called 2.0 because there already was a local plan for the area. The first Lansdowne plan was signed in 2012 by Ottawa and the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OESG), which owns the Redblacks.
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That version was supposed to last 40 years and was meant to be profitable. That didn’t happen. By 2020 it was clear that Lansdowne 1.0 was not a success. OSEG costs had totalled $160-million, instead of the $60-million projected in 2012. The company said the model was unsustainable.
At the same time, the city-owned stadium was aging and not performing as well as newer facilities. The Lansdowne 2.0 plan was designed to address that. It was approved by council last month, but it’s hard to see how it will age any better than the first version.
The auditor laid out some of the problems in a report shortly before the council vote. She noted the city’s claim that this new partnership deal would make money, adding dryly: “which, to date, has not occurred.”
Among the concerns she raised, the deal assumed construction costs would be at the lower end of the plausible range, meaning that the price could easily escalate, and has not priced in the possible impacts of U.S. tariffs on materials. Any cost overruns fall to the city to cover.
The deal also uses projections for Redblacks revenue growth that are higher than the team managed in recent years and projections for operating cost increases that are lower than recent history. And it assumes that fully 87 per cent of proceeds over the life of the partnership will come from new retail space. Is it smart to put your chips on the enduring appeal of bricks-and-mortar retail over the coming decades? Ottawa is about to find out.
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This is not the only very long-term bet being made here.
Will the CFL even exist decades from now? The number of Canadians who follow the league continues to decline and it recently tweaked its rules in a bid to revitalize excitement. Whether that will reverse the slide remains to be seen.
The deal also assumes $65-million will be paid to the city for air rights needed to build two residential towers. But the condo market is shaky and the company has actually committed only $1-million to buy an option for these rights.
The city report on Lansdowne 2.0 talks up the importance of the site to Ottawa’s economy and civic life, and how Lansdowne 1.0 helped turn a sports venue surrounded by parking lots into a destination. That’s a good city-building outcome. However, the fact remains that Lansdowne 1.0 did not make enough money to cover its capital and financing costs.
That should have been a major red flag. But instead of treating the follow-up plan with much greater skepticism, councillors committed the city to a very long-range deal built on a foundation of hope, rather than evidence.
It would be churlish to wish Ottawa anything but success in its latest Lansdowne plan. If construction problems arise or revenue projections don’t come true, though, city residents will be on the hook. Will council be back in a decade with Lansdowne 3.0, promising that, even if their plans keep failing, this time they will fail better?
Editor’s note: The previous photo accompanying this article depicted an area outside of Lansdowne Park. The photo has been updated.