A look at the many risks of Lansdowne 2.0
Ottawa is facing a major infrastructure deficit. Past generations have built parks, libraries, community centres and pools, investing tax dollars in social infrastructure that we have all benefited from. All buildings and parks need regular maintenance. We’ve not invested in the sort of regular repair and upgrade and maintain our public places.
For decades, Lansdowne sat empty for much of the year; decaying pavement and chain link fences were enlivened with the annual Exposition or the odd concert that filled the stadium. In 2012 an investment partnership was struck in a Public Private Partnership (P3), bringing us a dozen or so football games and a renewed CFL franchise. Some apartments, businesses and shopping formed part of the new facilities, though the result fell far short of the promise we were sold. New south-side stands, a toboggan hill, public art, a grocery store and some underground parking made Lansdowne an attractive place again.
In that context, its easy to say, “is it better than before?” Sure, but that’s a low bar: it would be hard not to be.
Is it perfect? No. But it’s fine. We’ve never addressed our moral obligation to the bankrupted businesses from Lansdowne’s initial construction, but we’re generally happy with the result.
Does it make money? Should that be our concern? The point of the P3 is that the private sector takes the risk. If they aren’t making money on the deal, that’s unfortunate, but should the public bail them out?
What’s missing from Lansdowne?
People: more housing is needed, bringing more people not just for events, but for everyday activities, to make it a neighborhood, a diverse community.
Transit: day to day transit to Lansdowne is as okay as regular service on Bank Street will ever be (at least until bus lanes become a priority). Event days are miserable.
Maintenance: the municipally owned buildings haven’t been maintained nor upgraded over the years. The longer this is put off, the harder and more expensive it is to do.
Into this challenge steps Lansdowne 2.0. How well does this plan address the challenges?
Not well.
To begin with is the sustainability challenge. The most sustainable building is the one that already exists. Destroying the existing arena, stands and adjacent 12 year old buildings is a poor choice, compounding our landfill problems and sending tons of embodied carbon into the dumpster (even if some of it is recycled). Touting the new facilities as designed to LEED Silver sounds nice but isn’t ambitious; this is barely better than code minimum and ignores the impact of demolition. It would be more sustainable, and cheaper, to renovate and upgrade the facilities. Is that easy? No, but it’s not impossible.
Investment in regular maintenance, periodic accessibility upgrades (as codes and human needs change) is necessary. This is a current challenge that is prevalent across the city in our aging buildings and parks. We need to do something about it, as the City’s own July 2025 Asset Management Plans suggest.
It’s attractive to think that if we built something new, we’d solve the problem. But there’s no guarantee that we won’s also have the same problem in 20 years.
If we spend this money on Lansdowne, we’ll have one new facility. We could spend the same amount and fix every single other aging, crumbling, public facility and benefit every single community across the city.
Financial critics say that this project will deliver money for affordable housing. We could choose to fund affordable housing in other ways; the same goes for funding of transit and other public services. The axiom “The truth about a city’s aspirations isn’t found in its vision. It’d found in its budget,” remains true.
The rosy financial projections for Lansdowne 2.0 are dependent on waterfall profits from the development that may or may not happen.
Should we pin our financial hopes for this project on a hope, without any guarantees the sports teams will be here in 10 years, let alone the 50 year contract life?
Everyone agrees that something needs to be done to address maintenance and accessibility. But we have no idea what our options are because we’ve been given exactly one choice.
City council opted to sole source the design work to one firm; this one, talented, firm, has provided us with a single idea, at the behest of the development proposal, in a format that meets the business needs of the sports team owner/developer and their profitability targets.
We’ve spent over $20 million public dollars to present one idea and try and sell it to the public. By contrast, a properly run design competition could have cost 10% of this or less, and provided a range of options and ideas that the public could support. We could have seen ideas about the sale of air rights to cooperative or affordable housing providers; ways to renovate buildings to embrace leading inclusion and accessible goals; sustainability targets to address embodied carbon and mass-timber or net zero energy strategies to tackle climate change or broader design ideas to address transit and access to the site.
The range of options is unknown because we opted to sole-source the project to ensure private profitability of public land.
We know we need to do something to make Lansdowne an accessible, vibrant, public, part of our city for the remaining decades of its life. Council must decide if a singular idea, tied to a 50 year contract with no guarantee of profits to offset expenses, is in the public interest.
Because the risk is that in 10 years, we will have no profits, no team, and no plans for maintenance and still have hundreds of other public places that need work.
Originally published in The Ottawa Citizen.