After years of being roasted for his passivity and lack of vision, Mayor Sam Katz has an opportunity to prove he's a leader who can get things done.
Through an odd series of events over the last week, Katz has essentially backed his way into a position where he is now at the helm of the debate over whether to build a new home for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in South Point Douglas, Polo Park, or not at all.
All three levels of government will play a role in deciding where, or if, a new stadium is built. But make no mistake about it, Katz can single-handedly decide whether Winnipeg reinvents a downtrodden neighbourhood or stands by idly while another opportunity for progress slides away.
It was Katz who lit the fuse on the Point Douglas debate when he approached David Asper in mid-June with concerns about the viability of the Polo Park development. Katz expressed doubts that a plan to build a new stadium around the old one would lure federal and provincial funding.
Premier Gary Doer has public money for a football stadium, but never committed to Polo Park. Senior Manitoba Tory MP Vic Toews has been skeptical about the Polo Park development. Although he had migrated from decidedly hostile six months ago to "willing to co-operate," Toews had never warmed to the Polo Park concept.
When Katz called Asper, he wanted to know if the newspaper magnate/real estate developer had any other possible locations for the football stadium. Perhaps it was fate, or just dumb luck, but two weeks before that call, Asper had his architects and engineers draw up a blue-sky development for South Point Douglas that included the stadium and a water park and hotel.
When he commissioned those plans, Asper had no real design on a stadium in Point Douglas; he and the football club had been working for 18 months to build support for a stadium at Polo Park. The Point Douglas drawings were part of Asper's bid to win a $7-million city grant for a water park that was just last week awarded to rival developer Leo Ledohowski. As an afterthought, Asper said he asked his people to sketch the football stadium into the South Point Douglas lands.
Insiders from all three levels of government indicate that Toews and Doer were left speechless by the Point Douglas drawings. They were tantalized by the array of developments included -- residential, commercial and green space -- and the fact the public money needed for the project was just $40 million, half what Asper asked to make the Polo Park proposal a reality.
Everyone liked the Point Douglas design as a concept. But for Asper to abandon Polo Park, sources said he wanted the three levels of government to sign a memorandum of understanding committing to Point Douglas. It is at this point that the inertia set in.
Sources said Doer has been the most committed and offered to sign an agreement almost immediately. Toews was also bullish, but he told the other leaders that federal rules do not allow regional ministers to sign off on infrastructure funding deals. However, Toews has said the Point Douglas proposal fits well with federal funding guidelines and would likely be better received than the Polo Park design.
However, given that all the province and federal government need to do is sign a cheque, their support is not enough to get a stadium built. The fate of this project lies with Katz.
The city is not being asked for as much money up front, but Katz will be responsible for convincing local residents to get behind the plan, and for assembling the land, a task that is bound to be an enormous headache.
The city will likely earn more than $20 million when it sells the land on which the current stadium sits; a term of the Point Douglas deal would see that land sold to Asper to create a retail complex, the revenues from which would be used to support the football club. But with land-assembly costs, possible expropriation, road relocation, rapid-transit development and other infrastructure costs not well defined at this stage, this will represent a significant test of Katz's resolve.
The Point Douglas development has the potential to be "transformative," as Asper likes to say, but it is also a political minefield that will set the stage for the latest, and perhaps greatest, clash of visions for the future of the city's core.
Katz needs to commit to Point Douglas now, or cut bait and find an alternate plan. A long, slow, dysfunctional death of this proposal without a better plan would be a tragedy.
The city, Point Douglas and the football team need a leader now more than ever before. Katz can be that leader.
dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
For more on the Point Douglas stadium proposal, visit Dan Lett's blog at http://www.winnipegfreepress.com
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