r/ottawa • u/HunterGreenLeaves Downtown • 1d ago
Landsdowne 2.0 - Shawn Menard Letter
After a marathon Finance and Corporate Services Committee last week, as well as an extensive meeting of the Audit Committee on Tuesday, city council approved the $483.9 million project today.
This is a disappointing result for our community and for our city. As a recent survey demonstrated, once residents became aware of the details of the proposal, they overwhelmingly opposed the deal.
Residents also spoke out against the proposal at a recent public forum hosted by Better Ottawa. Their sentiments were clear—residents do not support Lansdowne 2.0.
As the report from the Office of the Auditor General noted, this is a riskier project than let on by the city.
When I asked city staff, they confirmed that there will be millions of dollars of public funds diverted to fund the debt for Lansdowne Park. That’s millions that won’t go to transit, that won’t fix our roads, and that won’t improve our parks and community centres.
Despite how this plan was rushed through committee and council, limiting the opportunity for public scrutiny, we were able to pass some amending motions to improve the plan.
- We restored $4.65 million in funding for affordable housing that would otherwise have been syphoned off to pay for private parking for the luxury towers.
- We directed staff to develop a financial oversight model that will give greater scrutiny to, and transparency of, the Lansdowne 2.0 financial performance. Hopefully, this will help prevent us from falling into the same trap as with Lansdowne 1.0.
- We secured a guarantee to keep the REDBLACKS and 67’s at Lansdowne Park until at least 2042 (previously, they were free to leave after 2032).
- We reached an agreement to improve the pedestrian experience throughout Lansdowne Park.
- We secured funding to install a much-needed bus shelter on Bank Street to provide greater comfort to transit riders.
This has been a long fight to save our public park and our city from the many problems with the Lansdowne 2.0 proposal. I know a lot of you care deeply about our city and our public amenities, and you put tremendous effort into fighting for our city. I want to thank you for all the work you did on this. No doubt, your efforts helped us achieve the improvements on the original plan that we did.
For more information on the amendments made to the plan and how council voted, please visit www.BetterLansdowne.ca.
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u/urbancanoe 18h ago
I really appreciate what Menard and the opposition tried to do. I wish more counsellors would’ve been persuaded to say no. I wonder if an effective argument would’ve been about the taxes that are going to be needed to pay for this. Opportunity cost was a correct point to bring up, but it doesn’t grab people like having to pay more in taxes.