By Devon Burke
If you build it, the sponsors will come.
That was the reasoning behind the approval of a new Rideau Canal footbridge linking the University of Ottawa’s campus to Somerset Street West.
In January 2005, council approved $3.8 million for the project, bringing the total cost to $5.2 million. The decision came with one condition: city staff, Mayor Bob Chiarelli, as well as councillors Georges Bédard and Diane Holmes, whose wards will be linked by the bridge, agreed to ask the National Capital Commission, area businesses and the University of Ottawa for contributions.
Now, more than a year later, the city has yet to receive any money. However, the university has invested upwards of $100,000 in landscaping and lighting for the bridge, says Bob LeDrew, the school’s media relations manager. He says staff will continue to invest time and resources by patrolling the bridge on the Sandy Hill side. The school and the city are working together to look at sponsorship opportunities.
The bridge will be complete by fall, with or without funds that could offset costs to taxpayers.
“At best, it was naive to expect agencies such as the NCC and the University of Ottawa to contribute funds for a project that the city already had the funds for,” says Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Gord Hunter. “At worst, it was an attempt to dupe certain councillors into voting for the project.”
He says throwing the fundraising condition into the mix helped put councillors at ease who were wary about the price. The final vote was 12 to 10 for the bridge.
Bédard, councillor for Rideau-Vanier ward, says he doubts that councillors could be duped into voting for the bridge.
“The intention was one to try to get additional funding for the bridge but it was always recognized that the bridge would move forward anyway,” he says.
He says the lack of private funding is partly the result of poor fundraising co-ordination.
“It’s not the kind of thing where you write a letter and hope to get money,” he says. “You have to have an organized, concerted effort and we at the city are not equipped for that.”
Nevertheless, Bédard says he wrote to all the commercial establishments on Rideau
Street and some in the market to ask for sponsorship. He says there is a general belief that funding should be the responsibility of the municipality.
Holmes, councillor for Somerset ward, agrees.
“When we build a new road out to suburbia, we don’t ask the people to help pay for the road, so it’s quite unusual to ask businesses to pay for a piece of infrastructure,” she says.
The NCC, which is involved with construction and maintenance, did not provide any funds. Media relations advisor Eva Schacherl says it did waive some fees and supply building materials.
“Beyond that we didn’t have the resources or the rationale for contributing,” she says.
Holmes says the proviso, and the fight about costs, shows that some suburban councillors are not sympathetic to the needs of pedestrians in the urban core.
She says the bridge costs a fraction of the money spent on roadways. The 2005 tax-supported capital budget allocated $78.4 million for roads, while $3.8 million went toward the footbridge.
Hunter calls the bridge expensive. He voted against it because he says it was not a big need in the community. The Laurier Avenue bridge is 400 metres south of the new site, a distance he says is not that far off.
“If they have to go the extra distance to Laurier or Pretoria (Bridge), when was walking ever bad?” he says.
University students who will walk the bridge will benefit from the location, near the campus transitway stop. But some people across the bridge on Somerset Street West have in the past expressed doubts about the project.
Doug Ducharme, of Triole Investments Limited, surveyed the tenants in two of the apartment buildings he manages about a year ago. They are each within two blocks of the bridge site. Almost all the tenants were opposed to construction.
“This was just catering to university students to get to the bars faster,” he says.
Ducharme says he has not received any requests for money. If he did, he says he would not donate.