[waterloowarrior]

REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS
That the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee recommend Council:

1.Withdraw its endorsement of municipal and provincial funding for the community concert hall, since the Ottawa Chamber Music Society has not met the funding requirements by the Council approved deadline of November 30, 2007, resulting in the termination of the community concert hall project at 150 Elgin Street;

2.Direct staff to advise Morguard that the City will not exercise its first option to lease or purchase the concert hall space for another municipal cultural facility project and that the City and Morguard will now negotiate and enter into a new agreement for the redesign and construction of the concert hall space for alternative public benefit uses in accordance with the provisions of the Development Agreement between Morguard and the City dated 21 December 2005; and

3.Direct staff to recover any unexpended portion of the $500,000 advanced to the Ottawa Chamber Music Society in 2006.

from
http://ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/cit...%20(final).htm

Since the Ottawa Chamber Music Society did not meet its commitments to Morguard Elgin by February 2007, Morguard Elgin has been in a position since that time to advise the City that it will proceed with its project without the inclusion of the community concert hall. Notwithstanding this, Morguard Elgin has been cooperative with both the OCMS and the City in making every reasonable effort to include the concert hall in its project and, therefore, has not yet triggered the provisions in the Development Agreement to allow it to proceed without including the concert hall.

Although Morguard Elgin has been continuously supportive of the OCMS and the community concert hall project, they recently advised that they are considering other options for the space in the event that the community concert hall project does not come to fruition by February 28, 2008 and the City does not execute its option to use the space for City purposes.

As stated above, the Development Agreement gives the City the option to exercise its right to lease or purchase all or a portion of the space, or to enter into an agreement with Morguard Elgin to provide another alternative cultural facility on the site. However, there are no alternative cultural facilities that are presently funded and ready for development and construction on this site. Any other option, such as a proposed 38,500 square feet home for The Ottawa Art Gallery (included in the Council approved Ottawa 20/20 Arts and Heritage Plan), would be starting at the feasibility stage and its layout, collections storage and environmental requirements are not compatible with the Morguard Development Plan for a multiple use high rise building. There is no funding currently in place, and like the OCMS project, it would take at least three years to reach construction readiness and get confirmed funding from all levels of government and the private sector. This would cause major delays to start-up of construction of the entire site.

The City Archives building program is another critical cultural infrastructure priority in the City's Arts and Heritage Plan, however its requirements and layout (48,000 sq ft) are not necessarily compatible with Morguard Elgin’s proposed development at 150 Elgin and the Archives' long term expansion requirements would, in any event, not fit within the Morguard Elgin project. A multiple use high-rise building also presents unacceptable risks for the Archives holdings (e.g. water damage from above, fire, security). The archival vault should be at ground level with nothing above it or underneath it. The majority of the floor space for Archive uses is assigned to storage and staff use and these uses are not necessarily suited to, or compatible with other uses in, a high profile downtown complex such as the one proposed for 150 Elgin. A report on relocating the Archives to another site was carried by the Community and Protective Services Committee on November 1st 2007.

In the event the Ottawa Chamber Music Society does not raise the funding for its project by November 30, 2007, the City has, for the reasons set above, no clearly identified alternative civic use nor funding for the Concert Hall Space at this time and would not be exercising its first option to lease or purchase all or a portion of the space.