Problem landlord

It is not unheard of for a mayor to take local landlords to task for failing to take proper care of their property or leaving prime real estate vacant in a way that negatively affects a city. It is somewhat unusual, though, when that landlord is the federal government.

Mayor Jim Watson’s recent complaint that the federal government is allowing Wellington Street across from Parliament Hill to turn into a “ghost town” is telling about the tensions that exist in a city with the federal government as a major landlord.

Comparing Wellington Street to a “ghost town” is a stretch — several buildings are undergoing renovations. But there is a puzzling lack of interest by the federal government in finding public uses for other locations along Wellington Street near Parliament Hill, especially with Canada’s 150th birthday coming in four years. The onetime U.S. embassy, in which the former Liberal government had planned to put a national portrait gallery, sits vacant, which is a loss. The federally owned Government Conference Centre is underutilized. And the National Capital Commission has closed a tourism booth along the strip.

But Wellington Street is not the only part of the city in which federally owned buildings are shuttered. There is Sparks Street, which is perennially underutilized. And there is Sussex Drive, where the location that used to be home to Nicholas Hoare Books remains empty, as the Citizen’s David Reevely reported, nine months after the popular shop closed and the owner complained that the National Capital Commission was raising rents out of reach.

The NCC says it is negotiating with interested parties to lease 419 Sussex Dr. According to a real estate listing, the price is $6,500 a month, just over what Hoare was paying when, he says, the NCC told him it was raising rent so that it would be up by 93 per cent after five years. It would have been paying more than $10,000 a month by now. Another frustration for the bookseller was the NCC’s refusal to sign a long-term lease.

The NCC, for its part, says it is looking for the market rate to lease the buildings. Which is a good thing if the NCC is going to be a landlord. But why should it be a landlord on Sussex Drive or Sparks Street at all? Is there significant benefit, financial or otherwise, being derived for either the City of Ottawa or the Capital of Canada? Or for the NCC?

Those are questions that are especially significant during times of government budget restraint.