More than 1,300 people turned out for the first public consultation on a proposal to redevelop Ottawa's Lansdowne Park Monday night, and some residents were not happy about the nature of the meeting.
Many of those who attended were residents of the city's Glebe neighbourhood where the park is located, and the meeting started out as a show-and-tell with sketches and conversations with developers and city officials.
The city had hoped residents would express their thoughts on paper. Everyone who attended was asked to fill out a consultation form.
However, about 90 minutes into the evening, one Glebe resident decided to shake things up.
"If there are people here who want to say something about what's going on here, by all means step forward," said Louis Helbig, standing on a chair with a megaphone.
"I am also a citizen of Ottawa. I was invited here tonight to join the conversation on Lansdowne Park. This is entirely a fake. There's no conversation at all," he said to the cheering crowd.
Several unidentified residents also offered their opinions.
"It's a complete piece of whitewash that allows them to check the box and say, 'Oh, we consulted.' There's no consultation going on here. There's no space for me to say, 'Sorry, it should have been an open design competition,' " one said.
Public-private partnership
The proposal to renovate the park was offered to the city unsolicited by Jeff Hunt, owner of the Ottawa 67's Ontario Hockey League Team, and local developers Roger Greenberg, John Ruddy and Bill Shenkman in October 2008. It was called Lansdowne Live.
A revised version, renamed the Lansdowne Partnership Plan, was released on Sept. 1.
If the city proceeds with it, it will be a public-private partnership between the City of Ottawa and the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.
Coun. Clive Doucet, who represents the ward where Lansdowne Park is located, has criticized the proposal, and said recently the turnout at the consultations will make a difference.
"If no one comes out and protests it they will simply say, 'Hey, we consulted on our project, everybody seemed to like it,' and the whole project will go through basically unchanged," he said.
Monday's open house was the first of six that will be held across the city in the next week. There may be fewer Glebe residents at Tuesday's open house at the Ron Maslin Playhouse, since it is being held in the city's west-end Kanata neighbourhood. It starts at 6 p.m.
The last consultation on the plan to revamp the park's Frank Clair football stadium, expand its greenspace, and add condo towers, townhouses, a movie theatre, shops and restaurants, will take place Oct. 6.
The plan was originally supposed to go to city council for final approval in November. However, a judicial review of the plan is scheduled for Nov. 12 after a request from Ottawa businessman John Martin. Martin alleges that in moving forward with the proposal, the city violated a bylaw requiring it to take competitive bids for projects worth more than $100,000.
