Steven Serviss reports in Friday's edition of Kingston This Week that council has endorsed the city's arena projects as one of its top three priorities over the next three years. Note: This link on the KTW site, like all links at KTW, is currently returning an error.

Betty Harlow has some thoughts on the larger issues underlying what transpired at last night's at City Council meeting.

Gerard Wyatt just submitted this letter to The Whig Standard.

Derek Baldwin of the Whig Standard reports that City Council had, er, a spirited meeting last night. More details and comments to follow...

Wednesday, October 27, 2004 - 07:00 - In a raucous session, city council voted last night to make a proposed riverfront arena one of its top priorities for this term.

Despite Mayor Harvey Rosen's best efforts to maintain order, the meeting reached the point that councillors Rick Downes and Steve Garrison walked out.

The ugly quarrel began when a frustrated Downes lost his composure after asking city chief administrative officer Bert Meunier if the proposed riverfront arena was a done deal.

Well, it's certainly seems so from here. And it's written about Councillor Downs:

He claimed staff were being preconditioned by some on council to ram through a decision to build.

Which also appears correct. We wonder why Rick Downs is being dissed by council for asking some obvious questions.

(originally, now dead: http://www.thewhig.com/webapp/sitepages/printable.asp?paper=www.thewhig.com&contentID=84342&annewspapername=The+Kingston+Whig%2DStandard )

We've updated our article which questions the touted spillover benefits and the notion that an LVEC will "energize" Kingston's downtown. New photographs illustrating the points in the article, and some distance measurements that may surprise many people.

We've updated the Placement of the LVEC On The Inner Harbour article to mention that the images are of an approximately 80,000 square foot facility, but recently the talk from City Hall is for a 100,000 square foot LVEC facility. Thanks to Dennis Brown for signalling the sudden and unexplained increase in the proposed facility's size.

You'll notice that on our home page we've added a Google search area that allows you to quickly search within the KCAL website. As the amount of our material increases, we expect this to be very handy. Thanks to Bruce Todd for the suggestion.

We've just received this report from Commissioner Lance Thurston. It recommends aprocess for investigating and implementing the findings of the Arena Capacity and Expansion Study Report that was issued last January. Time flies, doesn't it?

Here's a PDF of the agenda and the official press release of the Oct 19 meeting.

Here are the first (very) rough milestones. No allowance, apparently, for finding the best site for the building, nevermind financing the project. So basically, yes, assuming all the money magically materializes, and assuming we can magically agree on a suitable site for this building, and on this basis the proper development partner can be found, then...

Actually, at this stage and considering the meeting delays, it would have been nice to hear more about the tactical aspects of building this LVEC. Instead, it seems the following key steps in bold have been skipped entirely in terms of generic project planning:

1. Gather and analyze the facts of the current project situation. (Done)
2. Set project objectives. (Done)
3. Develop possible alternative courses of action. (Not done)
4. Identify the negative consequences of each course of action. (Not done)
5. Decide on a basic course of action. (Pretending this is done)
6. Develop strategies (priorities, sequence, timing of major steps). (Apparently done, Oct 19 2004).
7. Etc...

So it seems we have a fundamental problem: Mayor Rosen, who hasn't said who'll be paying the piper, is showing pretense of calling the tune. Despite the recently hired guns, he's got a house of cards in the works. The conceptual foundations of this project just haven't been sufficiently developed for even these fabricated pie-in-the-sky goals, this so-called "Work Plan", as presented on October 19th.

The future is likely this: If a private partner can be found, it's likely that, if they are any good, they'll want as little to do with the officials at City Hall as possible. Again, if the partners are any good, they will certainly recognize and won't endorse a half-baked plan that skips such obvious essential steps as seriously analyzing the alternatives, or agree to build a clearly sub-optimally located building. Mayor Rosen would be well advised to do the legwork properly, and lay the proper planning and consensus foundations, so to have something to actually sell to potential partners. What the city seeks to outsource is risk, yet there is no sign that analyzing and mitigating project risk is even on the radar.

In other words, the present goal should not be to proceedand pretend to build an arena, but rather to put the elements in place to build a deal to get a great arena built. This is because Kingston hasn't got the money to be anything but a minor player in the overall process. One high-value thing Mayor Rosen should be doing now is demonstrate, qualitatively and quantitatively, beyond any doubt, that they have an optimum site for the proposed facility. Call this project and operational risk mitigation 101, if you will. The problem is, mayor Rosen's process isn't doing this, and things can only fall apart from there.

Here's an interesting and compelling description of the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium, today a 6890-seat auditorium, first built in 1950, which is about the same time the Kingston Memorial Center was built, and renovated in 2002. One also wonders whether the proposed new arena injectionis, in fact, a cure for what fundamentally ails Kingston: the city arenas' management and administration, which is, historically, clearly incapable of supporting the physical plant of our arenas.

Read about the other OHL arenas, (scroll to get to the list). Looking at this rag-tag bunch of buildings, old and new, why would anyone consider a waterfront location for one of these cement boxes?It boggles the mind...

Robert Mackenzie has updated his article summarizing the planning and zoning issues involved with siting a LVEC on Anglin Bay. We've also updated the introduction to our collection of articles about planning and zoning.

If you've been following, you know that at the Oct 19 2004 committee meeting (also here), the public was told that there were no such zoning issues. Someone from the head table said that the site is zoned commercial. Um, no. Clearly it seems that the Steering Commitee is improvising when it comes to knowing and understanding the nuances of the the Anglin Bay site.

Something that wasn't mentioned in the Whig's account of Tuesday's Steering Committee Meeting:

Apparently, the steering committee members have been proceeding unaware of the fact that there would be zoning issues arising from the planned LVEC on Anglin Bay. During yesterday's Steering Committee at which Don Gedge outlined a "work plan" for the LVEC process, one of our members asked whether there was any intention of addressing zoning questions, and got a surprised "no" from Mr. Gedge. Then someone on the committee (I think it was Mr. Menieur) said, "it's zoned commercial; according to our city staff there's no zoning issue".

Now the site intended to accomodate the LVEC is actually zoned "harbour". According to the bylaws for harbour zoning, although an LVEC could be a permitted use if a "public use", it would have to comply with a 35' height limit and also be set back 33' from the water.

In the LVEC reference materials, there is a memo from the Planning Department to the Task Force, pointing out that the site is zoned "harbour". It doesn't mention the 35' height limit, but does point out that if the building is to comply with the "public use" designation, it should at least be publically owned. (This could cause problems for PPP approaches. ) Evidently, even this information didn't get very far!

After the meeting, one of our members, a retired Queens' law professor, had a long talk with Mr. Gedge, explaining to him that, contrary to what he may have been told, there are, indeed, zoning issues. Obviously, we need to make sure that Council is aware of the need for addressing these issues and going through a proper planning process, at the appropriate point in the development of the project.

See also the KCAL Planning and Zoning page.

Don Gedge clearly stated that the LVEC would be available for local user groups, league hockey, skating, etc, and suggested a user group committee which should be capped at 12 groups, to take part in the project process.

I have two concerns about this. First, any valid user group should be allowed to have a representative. If that means representation from 16 groups or 20 groups, so be it. No public user groups should be denied access to the project. Second, it clearly states on page 7 of the Task Force Report, Section 1. 3, "The LVEC is a large venue entertainment centre with multipurpose uses (Section 3. 1), not a venue for the everyday recreational needs of residents". Mr Gedge needs to clarify this conflicting information.

Don Gedge unveils a draft work plan at yesterday's 7:00 AM meeting. In the article, Mr Gedge allegedly promises that it will be a transparent project, "grassroots-driven". Heh. This has been, so far, anything but a grass-roots driven process. Further to this, why does the City's LVEC website appear to indicate a raiload job in progress, with unsubstantiated and obviously fabricated claims like "Such a facility will have a significantly beneficial cultural and economic effect for the City of Kingston and all its residents" and "The cost of the facility will be between $25 million and $30 million" and "The preferred site and best site is approximately 11. 7 acres on the Inner Harbour along the Wellington Street extension". Normally, official documents don't tout and present as fact the conclusions from plans and studies that, to be blunt, don't yet exist.

We've just posted a new article that asks why the interests of former townships are being ignored in favour of the downtown when it comes to planning all the city's major projects.

Viki Colledge, in this letter to the editor of the Kingston Whig Standard today (Oct 15 2004), questions putting the LVEC atop Anglin Bay, obliterating 382 years of Kingston's marine history.

We've updated this article, which questions the over-touted stimulus effects, with observations from the recent Tragically Hip concert, which failed to stir much business downtown after a 10 pm disbanding of 20 thousand people into a beautiful balmy September evening. Recall that parking garages downtown were all full, as was every legal and illegal parking space, and moreover this was a parched and largely underfed bunch of folks in the correct demographics. One wonders about the reality of expected LVEC stimulus effects.

The Large Venue Entertainment Centre steering committee has postponed its October 13th meeting until Tuesday, October 19, at 7:00 a. m.

This comes on the heels of stiff public opposition to several elements of the project as currently conceived. While the reasons for this postponement haven't been disclosed, this may be a sign that, thankfully, the LVEC process is being steered in a more measured and considered way than we've seen until now.

Update Oct 12 2004:Today's Whig Standard, print edition page 8, reports committee chairman Councillor Ed Smith as stating the postponement is to give new project manager Don Gedge time to "digest the project".

From the Whig Standard Friday, October 08, 2004:The legendary civic leader, Justice William J. Henderson, often called the founder of Amherstview, has condemned a proposal by the City of Kingston to raze the Memorial Centre. He says the idea of razing a living memorial to veterans is an affront to Kingston's heritage. Henderson suggested that if council continues to push for the selloff of the Memorial Centre and its 23 acres of green space, the decision could hurt some city politicians in the next municipal election.

We received this this letter from Mary Louise Adams containing several external links to studies and lessons learned from projects past where the predicted economic benefits of entertainment venues failed to materialize.

From the Whig Standard: Lance Thurston, Kingston's community services commissioner, said the Memorial Center could be considered a premier location, among others, for a new four-pad facility for minor hockey and skating organizations. All this hinges on whether the Memorial Center is to be sold to finance the LVEC (which, given the strong opposition, is looking less likely).

Don Gedge, the new LVEC commissioner for Kingston, as been on the job only a few days, and already a number of mixed messages have come from his office. Read the whole comment.

Don Gedge has been quoted in the Whig Standard on October 1, 2004 as saying, in regard to usage of the proposed LVEC, "We have 365 days of the year and 80 to 100 days of events, so the rest of the time we will have hockey groups in there. There will be minor hockey and figure skating using the facility when it's not being used for concerts or Major Junior A hockey".

I rather think that Don Gedge is perhaps spinning a line. It is all very well for him to say that there are many free days per annum but you can't seriously run things this way.

The M-Centre operates on the principle that certain things - minor hockey schedules, ice skating schedules and all such things are booked well ahead of time. You cant wait until you see if there might be a trade show before you slot groups in for time, on the other hand, such facilities need to both be booked ahead of time and have free time

This is the official City of Kingston press release about Don Gedge. It's very complimentary of Mr Gedge, and there can be little doubt that he brings lots of game to Mayor Rosen's LVEC plans. It's not yet clear, however, if he's got the leeway or the common sense to steer the project to one of the better sites than Anglin Bay for this new facility.

We've just updated this article about LVEC's elsewhere with several hyperlinks to the arenas and resources mentioned in the article.

We've updated the chronology of the LVEC process to date.

The on-line article Six Myths About The LVEC has been updated in light of comments by Don Gedge, the newly appointed LVEC project manager, and by comments from a former Councilor of the City Of London where the John Labatt Centre was recently built and which is, apparently, not much used for community purposes.

Several comments from Don Gedge in the Kingston Whig Standard on Saturday, October 2nd 2004.

"I have quickly eroding faith in Mayor Rosen's rationale behind this project and am, like people associated with KCAL, against losing the Memorial Centre and its accompanying green space. I have sent E-Mails to my councillor (Rick Downes) and Mayor Rosen expressing my feelings on this subject. "

We received this this letter from Irena Manoliu addressed to City Council about the premature hiring of a project manager.

The Kingston Whig Standard reports that Don Gedge from Thornhill has been named project manager for Kingston's proposed riverfront rink.