Let’s talk again … in about 2023
LRT’S effect will be known in 2023
Planning committee chair Peter Hume is in no rush to redevelop the baseball stadium parking lot,
Redeveloping the parking lot at Ottawa’s minor league baseball stadium is a great idea but should wait until about 2023, says the chair of city council’s planning committee.
By then, everyone will have an idea what five years of lightrail service and a baseball team have done for the neighbourhood, Alta Vista Coun. Peter Hume said Tuesday.
The problem, however, is that the redevelopment might be key to getting that baseball team going in the first place.
Hume’s comments help to explain the slow progress of talks to bring a double-A team to the Coventry Road stadium. On Monday the president of the Eastern League, in which Ottawa wants a team, said the league and potential owners are hoping a land-development deal will be a source of money to bring the 20-yearold stadium to modern standards. That’s proving more expensive than anybody expected, and the $5.7 million city council has agreed to put into the publicly owned building isn’t enough.
“The decision-makers in Ottawa need to fully grasp and understand what’s going on,” said the league official, Joe McEacharn. The hope is to provide a lot more than baseball at the site, he said, as part of “out of the box” thinking about how to finance the renovation. The problem for a lot of sports teams is that their operations might be profitable but won’t necessarily make enough to pay the big up-front capital costs of the buildings they play in.
The negotiations among Mayor Jim Watson, the league, potential owners and the Toronto Blue Jays (who are interested in an affiliation that would have prospects playing here) have gone on for months, with the latest round last Friday. McEacharn said he’s optimistic but there’s a lot of work to do and the chances of fielding a team even in 2014 are now almost nil.
In an email exchange from Chicago, where he’s attending the American Planning Association’s annual conference, Hume wrote that he’s working closely with Watson on the issue.
With the $2.1-billion light-rail system due to serve the Via Rail station starting in 2018 and an $8.8-million footbridge in the works to link the station and the stadium, it makes sense to plan a “transit-oriented development” on the stadium parking lot. But the city deliberately left the lot out of a set of rezonings that will allow 20- and 30-storey buildings to be constructed close by.
“Due to uncertainty around the site, we didn’t designate it in the (transit-oriented development) plan or zone it,” Hume explained. “We did, however, identify it as a possible development site from the servicing perspective and allocated a significant theoretical capacity.”
In other words, the city plans to upgrade the water and sewer pipes for a large development but isn’t sure what the development might be.
“At this time any speculation is premature,” Hume wrote. “I expect that five years of revenue service for the LRT and a similar time for full operation of the stadium would give you the complete picture on what would and would not work on the site. That is why we have allocated servicing capacity but not zoning or design as the operating experience is critical to make sure that whatever is proposed does not hurt the stadium operation.”
Parking is widely considered crucial for the stadium, even with good transit service. The city’s sale of a chunk of the lot contributed to the demise of the Triple-A Ottawa Lynx after the 2007 season.
Hume has championed the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park, where the renovation of Frank Clair Stadium for professional football is being underwritten by commercial and residential construction on the old fairground in the Glebe. The Ottawa Stadium parking lot is tiny by comparison. “(A) Lansdowne type development is simply not on for the Ottawa Stadium property,” Hume wrote.