LeBreton: NCC has been long on process, short on reality

When LRT opens next spring, there will be two central stations — Bayview and Pimisi — book-ending 50 acres of nothing, the desolate flop that is LeBreton Flats.

It’s even shaped like a giant, crooked zero.

Last week’s dramatic news about the failed partnership between Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk and Trinity Development Group chairman John Ruddy is detailed in a $700-million lawsuit filed Friday. It’s a searing document.

In it, Melnyk takes a flame-thrower to Ruddy and consultant Graham Bird, lobs a grenade into the mayor’s office, embarrasses the National Capital Commission, and paints Ottawa as a city run by a cadre of operatives hostile to his ambitions.

Lordy-boo-boo. Truth be, you need financing to build an NHL arena but you also need friends. When the dust settles, the NCC still owns the land; the city still has land-use control; the mayor is still the mayor and the Sens parent company still has no development experience.

Has this bomb not alienated Melnyk against the very forces that can make the deal happen?

Indeed, a cautious lawyer might counsel Mayor Jim Watson and Ruddy & Co. not to be in the same room as Melnyk as long as legal matters are pending. On top of which, the Sens are skirmishing with the very newspaper you’re reading, as though everybody is the enemy.

The timing of the lawsuit, too, makes everyone look stupid.

Thursday we had the NCC wringing its hands over “unresolved issues” in the partnership and the very next day news that the wheels had fallen off months ago, the bus was in the ditch and the house was burning down.

And they all knew it, yet here was the NCC agreeing to a twomonth delay, like we’d hit a speed bump, not driven off a cliff.

So, where to from here? Well, let’s start at the learning table.

The NCC spent four years on a process to have a single private consortium basically build a mini-city over a 10- to 20-year period, with an anchoring public use or two.

In hindsight, this was a mistake. The RendezVous LeBreton group was composed of several strong-willed business people who had never worked together to build a tool shed, let alone a $4-billion project of enormous complexity.

Build together? They couldn’t even plan together.

If we could have a redo — and basically, is this not where we’re at? — would it not make more sense to do the project in workable phases?

First, start with the public realm aspects of the project, which is the only thing people care about. Build the arena in a seamless link to the LRT, add the city’s new main library, then phase out any retail, restaurants, commercial buildings as the market allows. Use multiple developers on an as-needed basis and let them earn the build with sharp designs.

And do the housing last. Or never. Let it evolve organically. Seriously, is there a shortage of condos in town? Instead, the NCC insisted on a grand vision for the whole site, giving us the ridiculous spectacle of car and beer museums and aquariums and Ripley’s this-and-that because these were “national interest” lands.

You know, even that’s baloney. This is not a site for showcasing “Canada to all Canadians.” It’s an imperative for the people of Ottawa, the very people the government stole the land from in the first place.

All of which is another way of saying this: You know who, like Melnyk, has “limited experience” in projects this size? The NCC. They’re just not good at largescale commercial development and take forever to produce bad results.

There was a wonderful piece of insight from a little-known board member — by the way, who are any of these people? — Aditya Jha, who describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur.”

He pointed out the danger of trying to keep a business partnership together over a prolonged period of time, while referencing the NCC’s skill at “consultation” and fancy public expositions. (They do love a meeting, with simultaneous translation.)

“One side of me admires all of us, that we are so long on process and patience, and we are kind of short on reality.”

Boom!

We’re honestly at a point where we need to discuss whether the NCC is the wrong Crown corporation to handle this development. They’ve had plenty of time, plenty of talk, by plenty of smart people — so much, that the current CEO, the plan’s shepherd, is poised to depart in February.

Could it really be time, and it pains to even type the words, to start all over?