Here’s why we should just sell LeBreton Flats

There is probably a worse way to develop the last significant piece of open land downtown. It’s just difficult to imagine what it might be.

After a long and secretive process, two development consortia have come forward with plans for LeBreton Flats. The only big public element in either proposal is a hockey rink. We have witnessed a couple of weeks of enthusiastic touting of the plans by their proponents.

Now, the future of LeBreton is back in the hands of National Capital Commission staff and proponents have been banned from speaking to the public. Ultimately, one of the two relatively similar proposals is likely to be approved by an unelected NCC board and rubber-stamped by an uninterested federal cabinet.

The public is perfectly free to express opinions about the two plans, and about 8,000 people have given their views to the NCC. Of course, we don’t know anything about the numbers that underlie the two proposals, so it’s kind of difficult to have an informed view. Financial details will remain secret at least until a deal is nailed down, and might not come out even then.

The evaluation team faces a daunting task. NCC bureaucrats and two outside experts will pick a preferred option by using a template that provides up to 140 points and judges many aspects of the plan. Proponents can even gain five points for a well-written executive summary. There are no points assigned for a colourful title page.

The challenge, in part, is how to assess the value of things such as a car museum, a beer museum, an aquarium and even some kind of communications centre that will house the last remaining journalists and allow scientists to study them.

What’s the value of a hockey rink? It is certainly a revenue booster to the person who owns it and a boon to people who drive from Orléans to Kanata now, but what’s the point score, and do you give more points to the guy who has a team?

Rather than spend time trying to find some rational way to assign points to the vastly complex proposals in front of them, the NCC should consider a far simpler approach.

The question that is being ignored is this: Is there anything about either of these plans that is capital building or in the national interest? If the answer is no, and I think it is, there is no reason for the NCC to decide who gets to develop the Flats. Instead, it should simply sell the property to whichever bidder offers the higher price.

Let’s face facts. Government isn’t going to do anything with the site and the only things the private sector will do, naturally, are those that make money. Principally, that means housing and office buildings, and possibly a hockey rink.

That’s not to say that the two proposals don’t have merit. Just about anything one would put on the Flats would be an improvement over the empty stretch of contaminated land that’s there now. Considered simply as development proposals and not cure-alls for the capital, both the competing plans have strengths.

If you are a fan of a downtown NHL arena, the Senators’ plan is a sure thing. It also has the advantage of offering fewer, shall we say, wildly imaginative elements that are unlikely to come to pass and wouldn’t add much if they did.

There isn’t a single thing that has happened in the years since the government razed LeBreton that would create even a shred of hope that it has the wherewithal to make the site something grand. Credit to the NCC for bringing two substantial development teams to the table. Now, it’s time to get out of the way.

Beyond what it has already done, the NCC has little ability to add value and people in Ottawa don’t need the agency to tell us how to develop our city.

The site should be sold and subjected to the usual municipal planning and zoning controls. The alternative is letting bureaucrats armed with a points template determine the nature of our downtown.

No thanks.