Save Union Station

Bulletin

SAVE UNION STATION, Special Bulletin No. 13, February 8, 2003.

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In this issue:

After a week of many long in-camera meetings, and several long periods of public debate, City Council has finally charted a new course with respect to Union Station.

1. The unsustainability of the process up to that point was clarified at the Administration Committee on January 29. At that time, the resolution seemed to be that much information about the bids would be released on the decision of Council, and that the whole bid process would be reviewed by some independent party to ensure its fairness and integrity.

By the time the matter arrived at City Council on February 4, concerns seemed to have deepened. Staff were questioned at council for two hours on the morning of February 5, and council spent much of the afternoon and next morning meeting behind closed doors, debating the issues more fully. It appears the in-camera debate concerned the evaluations of the bids that had been done (of which the originals had been shredded, an incident which considerably raised the heat before the Council meeting) and the matter of evaluators’ scores. Apparently councillors were told that planner Paula Dill, who had been the senior planner working for North York in the years prior to amalgamation, had awarded the LP Heritage bid zero in respect to financial matters, and a very low score for design. It is possible that this scoring was detrimental enough to LP Heritage to allow the Union Pearson bid to emerge as the favourite. Another part of the debate apparently centred on what information could and should be made public at this time.

2. Once the public debate resumed on Thursday afternoon, Councillors Holyday, Duguid, Kelly, Silva, Li Preti and Sutherland indicated their desire to enter into a lease with Union Pearson. Most councillors were much more reluctant to take that action and their reluctance forced councillors leaning in favour of a lease to back away. The vote to refer the matter to an independent judge, Mr. Justice Coulter Osborne, carried Council by a vote of 38-1, with Norm Kelly the lone dissenting voice.

The operative motion that carried was pieced together by Brian Ashton and Pam McConnell and reads as follows: “Mr. Justice Osborne, Provincial Integrity Commissioner, be requested to review the full process for developing the Request For Proposal terms, the evaluation of these RFP decisions and the City Council’s process to select the preferred participant for the Union Station Request For Proposals, to ensure it has been conducted in a fair and proper manner based on the criteria established in the Request For Proposals.”

David Miller, who was the moving force behind this whole initiative to review the process – the positive roles of Rob Ford and Michael Walker should not be overlooked - proposed to ask the judge “as a first priority to review the disclosure issues regarding the scoring spread sheets and provide evidence as soon as possible.” That motion carried.

Several other motions were passed by Council. Sandra Bussin proposed asking the judge to review the role of the engineering firm Marshall Macklin Monaghan in the advice, preparation, and distribution of the RFP report, given that the company worked for Larry Tannenbaum’s firm during construction of the Air Canada Centre. (Mr. Tannenbaum is a principle in the Union Pearson bid.) That passed.

Brian Ashton proposed that both Union Pearson and LP Heritage “provide their consent of disclosure of the competitive aspects of the essential elements of the proposals, including the financial and business terms.” That passed. It is thought that if these firms agree, then the City Solicitor will not object to this material being made public.

3. The force of the Council decisions is three-fold:

First, much of the important information about the bids and the process will be made public in the reasonable future. This is good. It will allow everyone, including members of council, to make their own decisions about which is the better bid.

Second, the independent review will help shed light on how this whole Request For Proposal has been dealt with by staff and by politicians. This will not be a thorough public review in the sense that the MFP Inquiry is, but it should provide a reasonable view into the city’s handling of probably the most important site in downtown Toronto.

Third, the delay might help the public and the city to get a new focus on the opportunities for Union Station. The RFP process so far has excluded any attention to transportation improvements such as widening platforms, installing escalators and a better roof over the tracks. It has not included consideration of links between Union Station and the TTC, Union Station and the GO Bus Terminal on the east side of Bay Street, Union Station and the Skywalk. These are important issues and they should be addressed in any plan to improve Union Station. At the same time the city might wish to rethink whether it lease all of the station to a private company or whether it should keep the public parts of the station in public control and only rent out the parts of the station that would be managed by private companies for retail facilities, hotels, etc.

4. So there is now some breathing room on Union Station, but the issue clearly has not been put to rest. The heritage parts of the station need careful repair, the transportation parts need substantial renovation which will be costly, and decisions must be made about elements of design particularly as they affect links to surrounding streets and buildings. There is now an opportunity to ensure these issues are fairly addressed.

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