Let's build new Civic Centre somewhere else

George Bruce Levine suggests Hurdman Park as venue site.

The Civic Centre at Lansdowne Park is Ottawa's principal sports and entertainment venue, but it is showing its age. On June 3, 2019, the city published a TD Place Functional Obsolescence Report, which outlines technical problems and operational deficiencies, and questions the building's long-term usefulness.

Another massive renovation of this 56-yearold facility would oblige all Civic Centre functions to move off site while refurbishment is undertaken. This would be costly and disruptive.

Perhaps the time has come to put the Civic Centre on life support for the last time while a new facility for sports and entertainment is developed elsewhere. This process should recognize that professional spectator sports and amateur participatory sports are quite different activities. Professionally staged events always have a predetermined starting time and a predictable finishing time; spectators arrive and depart en masse, which places a heavy burden on site access. Amateur activities usually involve a continuous coming and going of participants, which makes public access much easier.

Worth considering for a new Civic Centre is a large parcel of undeveloped land known as Riverside Park, a.k.a. Hurdman Park. The only significant building on this site is the new Hurdman LRT Station on OC Transpo's Confederation Line, which can provide convenient and inexpensive access to spectators from across Ottawa, with 600 passenger trains arriving from east and west every three to five minutes. This station also serves as the northern terminus of the Transitway, which would allow event buses direct access to the site without experiencing or causing traffic congestion.

Riverside Drive parallels the Rideau River to the south, while to the north it joins the Vanier Parkway leading to the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge. This superb transportation infrastructure already exists, so it would add nothing to the cost of building a new sports and entertainment complex.

The forested zone along the east and south banks of the Rideau River is a much appreciated natural area, well used by pedestrians and cyclists, while the zone along Riverside Drive is a bald mound, a disused municipal landfill site. This undeveloped and unnatural area is considered to be contaminated, but data available to the public is scarce. However, we know that old city dumps are a major source of methane gas, a major contributor to greenhouse gases and global warming. Cities around the world have sealed old dumps and installed pipes to collect the methane gas for use in heating or electricity generation.

This solution might seem inappropriate for residential development, but much less so for an events complex. A 1986 study also identified contamination from a former coal gas plant near the Lees LRT station; however, this area is off-site, and it seems that the coal tar is adequately contained.

The vacant land at Riverside Park is large enough to accommodate a stadium and an indoor arena without encroaching on the woodlands. When Ottawa's professional spectator sports have moved to new facilities on this site, the tired old Civic Centre can be demolished to make room for a variety of healthy amateur sports and leisure activities at Lansdowne Park.

There are two prerequisites for this to happen. First, we must take mass transit seriously as a means of getting to and from professional sports and entertainment; leave the cars at home. Secondly, we must take action to mitigate the pollution from Ottawa's old municipal dump. The sale of methane gas from this site can subsidize the development and operation of the new sports and entertainment facilities.

Leaving the site vacant and pretending it is a park is not a solution. The time has come for concrete action. Let's get a move on.