Leasing Out The Civic Center To Private Business
Thursday, August 9, 2012 @ 3:45 AM
One of the ideas tossed around at the recent KPMG, city resident "get together" dealt with the notion that the Civic Centre would become known as the Delta Civic Center.
That idea no doubt comes from the proposed hotel complex being put together across the street which will see a combination of hotel rooms and private condos. If you don’t have to build space to hold your convention and meetings rooms etc., you save money, big money. That however should not come at the expense of the general taxpayers who put up the 20 million that it cost to build the Civic Centre.
The Core review is obviously trying to come up with a few hot ideas that would justify the $350 grand the review will cost the city taxpayers. It’s all meant to find efficiences and savings, and that is good, providing the taxpayers doesn’t find themselves paying to use a facility they paid to build.
Before heading down that road, a couple of questions are in order.
The revenue for the Civic Center is budgeted at $ 1,370,000 this year with expenditures of $1,860,835, a difference of $534,921 dollars. Would a hotel be prepared to pay forty grand a month above and beyond revenues? More importantly, how would the City and those people who use the facility (such as young groups and public meetings) be charged?
There also is the matter of the Winter Games. The Civic Centre is a key piece in the feeding and caring for the Athletes. Would we get that to use the Civic Centre for nothing during the Games, or do we as city taxpayers have to come to the table under a new lease?
The idea of selling off the assets to private industry is not new. It was tried in Europe long before we ever got hold of the idea and it hasn’t fared very well.
In the case of water and sewer, companies charged more , a whole lot more to the public and then let the services disintegrate to a point where cities had to step in and take them back, of course at a major price.
Sitting right beside the Civic Center is the Coast Inn, whose taxes helped build the Civic Center. The existing hotels, like the Coast , should receive some consideration for their contribution.
All these ideas make you feel warm and fuzzy until you take a second look at them and then you realize that in the end it is the taxpayer who will pick up the slack, maybe not today but down the road.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s’ opinion.
Comments
What a horrendous and insulting concept!
The City has bent over backwards to facilitate this far-fetched concept of high end condos on top of a hotel. 300-800K condos facing the base of a hill, or the roofs of aged downtown buildings. Really ? Sign me up !
â¢The RCMP parking lot had a hasty sale prepared.
â¢10th Ave was conveniently closed without any regard for library, pool and Civic Centre access.
â¢The City and NDI Trust have allocated 5 Million dollars of tax abatements to this project ! In itself, nothing but a mockery to other business proposals and developments not within the designated area of âdowntown redevelopmentâ. The taxpayers are tired of hearing about âdowntown redevelopmentâ. Itâs a waste of our money!
This project has been smoothly stickhandled since its initial concept. No other developer â Well, except Mclaren and Commonwealth, have received these courtesyâs. And now, this hair-brained idea of renaming a public facility to a âyet to be announced hotel chainâ, come on ! This far from passes any kind of smell test. Whos taking care of who at City Hall ??????
You hit the nail on the head B.P.P.
“The revenue for the Civic Center is budgeted at $ 1,370,000 this year with expenditures of $1,860,835, a difference of $534,921 dollars.”
Here is a novel (probably unacceptable) idea:
Increase the revenue.
Decrease the expenditures.
Problem solved!
A change in fees, a change in management, a change in spending priorities until the budget is balanced…with an eventual surplus being the goal!
Apply that formula to other taxpayer owned facilities and live happily ever after! If it can’t stand and walk on its own two legs – it’s toast! Sell them off to the highest bidder!
Selling off ownership, management and operational rights of public assets might seam appealing upfront and may result in an increase in revenue in the short term, but when it becomes obvious ongoing maintenance and much needed repairs are being neglected in order to meet private sector profit margins we will see user fees increase to justify these costs and there is almost no way to reverse ownership of these public assets once you travel down that path. At least keeping our current public assets in the public sector allows for more scrutiny and accountability when things go wrong and at election time we can toss out those who are not acting in the best interest of all Citizens and for the greater good of the entire community.
You could always lease it out for 999 years….some people would think it made good sense?
Delta developer has ZERO hotel experience, never mind trying to run a 2 million dollar a year convention centre that loses money.
We paid 350K for this nugget of wisdom from KPMG !
I like the idea. The civic centre is an albatross. After all don’t we lease out the civic centre to private business everyday! isn’t that what the civic centre does, lease itself out to business!
Should the city be in the business of renting meeting space? Is that really a core function?
if all the core review does is ditch the civic centre it will have paid for itself with money to spare.
If the civic centre made money it would be a different story but it doesn’t because its run by union labor and there is no profit motive.
I will agree with Ben on one point. If the coast wants it, all the better!
The city of PG should take over BCs liquor distribution, they can make $400 million a year…lots of infrastructure money there!
âOne of the ideas tossed around at the recent KPMG, city resident “get together” dealt with the notion that the Civic Centre would become known as the Delta Civic Center.â
I do not know what the details of that would be. For example:
1.Naming rights with the purpose of advertising and community support as a âgood neighborâ, similar to the CN Centre. CN does not operate the multiplex nor do I think it has first rights of refusal of renting event space there. I do not see anything wrong with that in these days of event centres in North America doing that.
2.Naming rights with some type of priority for event booking and possibly some agreement with respect to catering services with respect to hotel operated events. I am not sure if that is workable, but that should likely go out to an RFP to allow at least the Coast to bid on that as well or even allow the Coast and âDeltaâ to go into a joint proposal. Donât know how that would be different from now other since that sort of offer should be there already on an event by event basis.
3.Naming rights plus operating contract to operate the Civic Centre and giving recognition to the community user groups for whom the Centre was partially built. Again, that should be offered on an RFP basis to allow not only the Coast in on it, but also the Ramada and any other potential single operator or consortium of operators.
What I take away from that sort of âbrainstormingâ idea, which should not be rejected at these initial stages, is that the Civic Centre should be at least at a break even position or a profitable position. However, I suspect if that were the case, it would be almost unique in Canada. But we can try.
Now, remember this, a business-like operation would have to take care of the cost recovery of the building, any preventative maintenance, any costs for alterations and renovations to the building, etc. That, in itself, would be a totally foreign concept, I suspect.
So tell us how the City can make $400million a year through liquor distribution handling in PG. Tax on liquor is a separate item to the business of distribution, so the liquor tax would have to still go to BC, otherwise they would have to make that money by increasing other taxes.
I am sure that the net profit, outside of taxes, is nowhere near $400 million a year for the running of the outlets. In fact, I would think that if it were close to $4million it would be high.
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