Leilani Graham-Laidlaw, Staff Contributor
I’m not exactly a sports fan and I haven’t been following the Canada Games: my idea of a good bit of entertainment is a comfy chair and an episode of Sex and The City. But even I can see that there are good reasons to spend public funds on a big booming sporting event replete with music and cheer and general “rah rah Halifax” spirit.
We get to boost civic spirit and community. We also have a reason to build big shiny buildings—and the chance to make a little bit of money back.
The same arguments have been made on behalf of that infamous conference centre. Nova Scotia’s economic problems will go away when the Centre lures in big-spending suits with its sheer shininess. The cost? $159 million plus interest over 25 years out of the public coffers.
That $159 million is going to be split between the federal government, the province, and the city if—and this is a big if—the feds sign off on it and the developers can come up with the rest of their $400-$500 million in expected costs. The original due date for rubber-stamping this thing was Jan. 14, with the financial close date coming up on Feb. 28. But since no one had any idea who in the federal government was dealing with it, never mind whether it was given the go-ahead, the deadline’s been pushed back by three months.
If this does go ahead, that still leaves Nova Scotia and city council to cough up $56.5 million each (again, amortized over 25 years). That’s a tidy sum considering the hullaballoo council raised over having to spend (the horror!) $750,000 in yearly upkeep on the Oval, the temporary skating rink on the North Commons.
But if they made the Oval permanent, nothing would be gained but winter recreation and a community gathering place. This conference centre, however, is going to be Worth It. Instead of subsidizing “citizens having fun” as Tim Bousquet put it in the Coast (whose coverage, I have to own, is the source of most of these numbers), that $159 million in public funds will subsidize … well, what, exactly?
The private developer, Joe Ramia’s Rank Inc., has promised everything from a long-term boost in (minimum-wage service) jobs, a short term boost in construction jobs, and an increase in hotel tax receipt revenue—plus all the ‘business’ this centre will pull in from the throngs of suits descending on Halifax.
Problem is, the only guaranteed outcome is the boost in construction. The “Overview of Convention and Trade Show Demand,” commissioned by Trade Centre Limited—the crown corporation that would be operating the centre—says that 250 trade shows and conventions will flock to Halifax yearly, or at least that’s the average “market share” they expect to be able to pull in.
Realistically, the overall rate of return Trade Centre Limited is projecting has only been achieved by two conference centres ever in North America, out of the hundreds built yearly as harbingers of ‘economic growth,’ and one of those was in Las Vegas. Halifax is not Las Vegas.
Ramia says that if they can’t get public funds for their conference centre, the remaining condo and retail-space will still be built. Either way, development on the site is going to happen. Why, then, should public funds go to support this pet project, particularly when we really don’t need another conference centre? Halifax already has two major ones, the World Trade Centre and the federally owned Convention Centre near Pier 21. Why should the federal government pay someone who will be in direct competition with their own Conference Centre?
Besides, the current World Trade Centre is already bailed out yearly by the provincial government. Every time the World Trade Centre’s operating costs go into a deficit (which they always do), Nova Scotia makes another payment. These payments have ranged from $110, 000 to $2.1 million.
Trade Centre Limited would also run the new conference centre, even though we as a province have clearly demonstrated no aptitude for the conference business. I see no reason why more public money should be flushed down Trade Centre Limited CEO Scott Ferguson’s throat for his next inefficient project.
But the developers believe they deserve the handout. They want the public to pay for their investment, in exchange for the construction of a building that, in the end, won’t even belong to us. As the Trade Centre Limited website notes, “the private partner (that’s Rank) would own the facility … the public sector (that’s Trade Centre Limited, and, by extension, taxpayers) would be responsible for operating the facility itself.”
If Ramia and Ferguson truly believe in the success of the Conference Centre, they should fund it with their own loans, not thinly disguised government handouts for the wealthy. Stop conning us with promises of “economic benefits” and “growth.” The benefits are nil and the government has better things to spend their money on, like the Games. Rah-rah Halifax.
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