Feature Article October 2, 2002
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Commentary - Frontenac Management Board moves too quickly on the "Frontenac Centre"by David Brison Requests for proposals for locations for the Frontenac Centre went out to selected property owners and real estate agents this last week. I received mine on September 24 via email from Kathryn Wood, General Manager, Natural Capital Resources, RR1 Sydenham. Ms Wood has evidently been hired by the Frontenac Management Board (FMB) to develop the prospectus for the proposals.
The deadline for submissions is 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 3, 2002.
In the requests for specific sites, the The Frontenac Centre is described as, ..a year-round showcase of the arts, culture/heritage and natural environment of the Frontenacs. The Frontenac Centre would have a waterfront location in a truly wilderness setting, accessible year-round in less than 30 minutes off a major highway. The Centre would have facilities for six artists-in-residence, a maximum 50 rooms for overnight accommodation, high-quality dining and conference facilities for small gatherings. Recreational programming would have a distinct adult orientation with an emphasis on low-intensity outdoor activities.
There are 16 characteristics listed for the ideal site and a submission form attached which matches these characteristics - such as access to water, less than 30 minutes from a major highway, locations for buildings of at least 70,000 sq. ft., etc.
The big problem as I see it is that the request for potential sites is not a public one. I for instance got it through email, presumably as a property owner. I know numerous other property owners who didnt get it and therefore havent been given an opportunity to submit.
Further, only a little over a week was given to make the submission. I would be hard pressed to complete the application if I wanted to propose property that I own for consideration.
We are told that there will be a shortlist [underlining not mine] of properties for future consideration if The Frontenac Centre turns out to make good business sense. The Management Board says that they are not committed to negotiating a purchase with everyone on the shortlist.
The proposals from property owners and agents are made on a confidential basis. This confidentiality is designed to let a landowner or agent propose a particular property without a general awareness in the community of an interest in disposition of the property.
The shortlist of properties will likely turn out to be very important if the centre is to go ahead. It is hard to see how a site not on the shortlist would get the go-ahead.
This whole process is wide open to serious charges of conflict of interest. The fact that the request is not public and therefore not open to everybody, and that there is such a short time to submit proposals, means that anyone close to the Management Board planning process, who might have known in advance that the request would come out, has a decided edge in getting on the shortlist. Further, because of the confidentiality, none would know if an "insider's" property was chosen until after it was a done deal. This request never have should gone out as other than a public request that was duly announced in the newspapers. A reasonable time should have been given for submission. Then confidentiality could have been part of the process. The FMB has moved too quickly and in doing so, perhaps unwittingly, opened themselves up to the appearance of conflict of interest. My own view, which I've expressed before in these pages, is that we are putting all of our economic development eggs in the wrong year-round tourism basket. That point of view has been supported both by letters to the editor and personal comments (a lot of them) made to me. To date, there has been one public meeting - can't we have more public discussion about economic development before devoting all our economic development resources to this one idea?
