page_title: Lansdowne Park redevelopment
section_title: Glebe Community Association
hierarchical_section_title: Lansdowne Park redevelopment / Opposition / Glebe Community Association
caption_attribution_description: English: Lansdowne Park during renovations. Visible is the Aberdeen Pavilion to the left, and the north stands to the right. Photo take from the intersection of Bank St. and Holmwood Ave.
context_page_description: The Lansdowne Park redevelopment is a public-private partnership redevelopment of the Lansdowne Park fairgrounds in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. In September 2007, cracks were discovered in Frank Clair Stadium, and a portion of the south-side stands were demolished due to safety concerns. The City of Ottawa subsequently initiated an international design competition to redevelop Lansdowne Park. However, it suspended the competition when a group of Ottawa businessmen known as the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, who had been awarded a Canadian Football League franchise on the condition of securing a home venue in Ottawa, proposed a public-private partnership with the City to rebuild the stadium and redevelop the grounds with residential and commercial uses to finance the reconstruction and annual upkeep of the site. Ottawa City Council decided to enter into a partnership with the OSEG group and cancelled its competitive process.
  The redevelopment plan split into two components after the City rejected the portion of the OSEG proposal regarding the lands bordering the Rideau Canal.
context_section_description: In October 2009, the local Glebe Community Association demanded that the City of Ottawa go back to the drawing board. An Association vote for a  "fair, open and competitive approach" to developing Lansdowne Park was unanimously endorsed. A competitive process would require the city to end its consideration of the Lansdowne Live project and invite new bids to redevelop the park.
  Glebe resident Ian Lee, who runs the MBA program at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business, has been an outspoken critic of the cost of the project. The plan approved by Ottawa says rebuilding Frank Clair Stadium, constructing underground parking, developing an urban park and relocating trade show space will cost $172.8 million, a number disputed by Lee, "Capital projects have a very bad habit of having major costs overruns." He predicts, the total cost will be "north of $300 million." The City had its auditor-general review the business plan who concluded that the plans' financial assumptions "are reasonable and present a realistic expectation for the future." However, Lee contends that the auditor-general should have remained neutral and uninvolved, and subsequently he filed a complaint with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.
  The Association agreed to the mediated settlement with the city in April 2011.
caption: Lansdowne Park under renovation in early December, 2012. From the intersection of Bank St. and Holmwood, the Aberdeen Pavilion is to the left, and the old north stands are to the right.
exif: {"Image Make": "QCOM-AA", "Image Model": "QCAM-AA", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "142", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[16, 58, 16]", "GPS GPSDate": "2012:12:03", "Image GPSInfo": "358", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "0", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:12:03 11:58:16", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:12:03 11:58:16", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FocalLength": "363/100", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "328"}