Chow cheers as Tempo’s $1 land deal sent to city council
· Toronto Sun
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Olivia Chow is giddy about giving the Toronto Tempo city land for $1 a year.
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“We are just mightily proud of the Tempo and your leadership,” a beaming Chow told Teresa Resch, the WNBA team’s president, who had just given a short presentation to the Toronto mayor’s powerful executive committee on Tuesday morning.
“I’m already imagining what’s possible,” Chow added.
Chow’s committee on Tuesday emphatically endorsed a plan to give the Tempo, owned by billionaire Larry Tanenbaum , a parking lot near Exhibition Place on a $1-a-year four-decade lease to build a practice facility for the expansion women’s basketball team.
That the deal is still subject to the approval of city council at the end of the month did not seem to be on Chow’s mind Tuesday. “Hurry up and build it!” Chow told Resch.
The deal requires the Tempo develop parkland at the site and allow some public access to recreation programming at the facility.
It would also see the city lose out on about half a million dollars in parking revenue and take on about $800,000 in new operational costs. In exchange, it’s expected the Tempo would provide the city with $2 million in year five of the lease.
Against council’s rules of decorum
So esteemed with the moment was Chow that she called for a formal counted vote – a mere gesture, as her allies on the committee had not signalled any reluctance.
After it passed, Chow cheered: “Yes, we can clap! Woo!” as she herself applauded. She then acknowledged that all the applause, including her own, was against council’s rules of decorum.
The bulk of the remarks about the practice facility at Tuesday’s meeting were not about the deal, but about the Tempo as a sort of social landmark. Resch, at one point visibly emotional, told the committee that the Tempo is like the city itself: “Diverse, inclusive and proudly global.”
Of young boys in Toronto, she said: “They now will never know a world without professional women’s sports.”
What is deal’s upside to city?
Ausma Malik, the councillor whose ward includes the parking lot, at 701 Fleet St., did try to establish the advantages of the deal itself. The committee heard from city bureaucrats that the value of the Tempo’s “investment,” in the form of a $100-million basketball facility, would be greater than the market value of the land, which the city has refused to disclose.
“Does that mean the city is not subsidizing the Tempo at all?” Malik asked.
But an executive who works in Toronto’s real estate industry, who spoke with the Toronto Sun , questioned the upside to the city – and its taxpayers – in the Tempo deal. (The Sun has agreed not to name the executive or the executive’s employer to protect the firm’s relationship with the City of Toronto.)
In an earlier report, the Sun cited a city estimate that pegged the 701 Fleet St. lot’s value at perhaps near $10 million . The executive said that would be more like a floor, valuing 701 Fleet strictly for its current operations as a parking lot.
For the true value of the land, the executive said a conservative estimate could be between $10 million and $15 million.
Still, the executive said, there would be limited uses for the parcel of land despite its standout location, given that city hall wouldn’t want a tall condo tower to block views of the nearby Princes’ Gates, or to greatly add to the traffic at the sometimes frantic intersections where Strachan Ave. and Fort York Blvd. meet Fleet and Lake Shore Blvd.
While the city won’t say how greatly it values the 701 Fleet lot, it’s clear Chow doesn’t prize it at all.
“To think about what this deal is about, it’s a true win-win,” she said. “What was there before? A really ugly parking lot, OK? Really ugly parking lot.”
Tempo fever spreads
The mayor wasn’t the only one with Tempo fever on Tuesday morning.
Councillor Amber Morley told the committee it was once her dream to play in the WNBA. Councillor Paul Ainslie spoke only to congratulate Resch on the Tempo, saying he had recently been at a game.
City manager Paul Johnson, meanwhile, said the Tempo was having an “absolute impact” on the area around the Coca-Cola Coliseum, where they play 22 home games a season and have thus far drawn capacity crowds of about 8,200.
But no one at city hall had more to say than Chow.
“Tempo is not just a basketball team,” Chow said. “It’s a dream for tens of thousands of young girls and moms and Torontonians coming true.”
What lies beneath the land?
A potential unknown in the City of Toronto’s deal with the Toronto Tempo is if the city would be on the hook for the cost of making the land at 701 Fleet St. suitable for parkland.
While an expert told the Toronto Sun that’s typically a non-issue for a parking lot, previous industrial uses of nearby land could pose a problem. In years past, a large Molson brewery overlooked Fleet St., and much of the land in the neighbourhood had industrial uses.
As well, at least part of the 701 Fleet lot, also referred to as the Gore lot, is made up of reclaimed land. The soil used to fill in that part of Lake Ontario could be much poorer than, say, what’s at nearby Fort York, which sits at what was once Toronto’s shoreline.
Any problem with the land would likely be a mystery until a second phase environmental assessment is done at the site, but city hall has told the Sun that only a first phase has been done so far.
The deal, still subject to city council approval, requires the Tempo to pay for its own environmental assessments .
The cost of brownfield remediation can be negligible, but it can also run into the millions of dollars.