Since local tycoons William Shenkman, Roger Greenberg, John Ruddy and Jeff Hunt recently announced their proposal for the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park, debate over the best vision for the site has picked up.
The location is currently a waste of space and money, an eyesore that isn’t much more than a parking lot taking up prime city real estate. But everyone seems to have their own idea of how to transform Lansdowne Park into something more substantial.
The Shenkman group’s vision is built around bringing a CFL team back to the city. The proposed on-site hotel and commercial strip would likely cater primarily to people attending the football games or stadium rock concerts.
Others, including many Glebe residents and some city councillors, imagine Lansdowne as a large cultural space like Central Park in New York City or Boston’s Quincy market.
The two ideas are mostly very different, but they both reflect Ottawa’s inability to find something unique and interesting about itself.
Ottawa is a pastiche of things that are popular elsewhere. The SuperEX is a smaller version of the CNE in Toronto and the PNE in Vancouver. One of the main downtown attractions is a generic mall. Even Winterlude is strikingly similar to Quebec City’s Winter Carnival.
The recent plans to give Chinatown an ‘authentic’ gate would succeed only in making it look like almost every other Chinatown in North America.
There are historic gates at Chinatowns in Victoria, Vancouver, Montreal and many cities in the U.S.
Instead of trying to perpetually keep up with the Joneses, Ottawa needs to find what makes it different from other cities in Canada, beyond being home to the federal government. This unique vision should steer both Lansdowne and the tourism industry as a whole.
And since Ottawa is so fond of looking to other cities for ideas, here are some general pointers borrowed from the rest of Canada.
From Montreal: Appreciate your local history. Ottawa will never be able to emulate Old Montreal. But Ottawa Tourism should be doing more to market some of Centretown’s architectural and historical treasures, such as Saint Patrick’s Basilica and Somerset House (at least, before the city tried to have it demolished).
From Toronto: Embrace your diversity. Toronto’s Caribana music festival brings hundreds of thousands of tourists to the city every summer. There are many cultural groups in Ottawa, and the city has a particularly strong Middle Eastern population. With the right marketing and a large facility to house them, festivals like the upcoming Lebanorama could become cultural staples in the city, and attract more tourists.
From Halifax: Get a recognizable food. For a number of years, the donair has been almost synonymous with the city of Halifax. Beavertails are all well and good but they’re now available in many other Canadian cities. This city does have a lot of shawarma joints though, and Ottawa more well-known for the dish than any other city in Canada. Adding a shawarma element to Lansdowne would not only satisfy locals but also introduce tourists to this local flavour.
From Vancouver: Play up your natural flair. The tall trees and trails in Vancouver’s Stanley Park attract both locals and tourists. Ottawa is lucky enough to have hundreds of kilometres of paths and trails as well, but only two bike rental businesses. The Rideau Canal is another attraction ripe with tourist possibilities, such as romantic gondola rides, that could be centred around Lansdowne.
A new Lansdowne Park will change the city’s flavour, and provide an opportunity for Ottawa to establish itself as an interesting place to visit, rather than merely a little brother to Canada’s major metropolises. Let’s hope the developers are up to the task.