Reopen Lansdowne design competition: councillor

An Ottawa city councillor brought in some heavy hitters Monday to help him in his pitch to reopen the design competition for Lansdowne Park.

Clive Doucet, the councillor for Capital Ward, said the city is going against its own procurement rules by continuing to work with the Lansdowne Live group of developers.

On Monday, Doucet appeared at city hall as part of an expert panel he'd assembled to talk about the procurement process.

The unsolicited Lansdowne Live proposal which would see Lansdowne Park again become a home to professional football was submitted to the city around the same time as another unsolicited proposal to build a soccer stadium built in Kanata.

After weeks of debate over the two proposals, the city voted on April 22 to begin negotiations with the Lansdowne Live group without putting out a call for tender.

Earlier that day, council had voted against renewing a design competition for the site the competition Doucet wants renewed.

Among the experts who appeared was Allan Cutler, the whistleblower in the notorious federal sponsorship scandal, who said the city should be wary of doing away with competition.

"The elimination of a competitive process to favour an unsolicited proposal is a demonstration of favouritism or bias. It's dangerous," he said.

John Reid, who heads up the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance, however, said the city should be more than simply wary.

"Sole-source contracting is a type of corruption," he said.

"What's happening at the local level at Lansdowne just doesn't pass the test."

Ian Lee, who is with the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University, said he hoped the federal government would step in and declare that the city's sole-source contract was undermining national policy.

The city, however, is continuing its negotiations with the Lansdowne Live group and has given the developer a 30-day extension to unveil its official proposal.

When council passed the motion in April, the city and the Lansdowne Live group then had 60 days to negotiate an agreement on how to redevelop the site.

If an agreement can't be reached even with the extension there's still a chance that the project won't go ahead.