By John Chenier
The municipal services corporation established to oversee the management of the Parkdale and ByWard markets, Marchés d’Ottawa Markets, has been in place for five months now. That’s just long enough for people to start wondering what the plans are to execute the mandate of the new corporation.
According to Jeff Darwin, Executive Director of Ottawa Markets, the next move will be up to the city to decide. Ottawa Markets is about to submit a five-year strategic plan which will cover the mandate of the next council. That plan, which Darwin hopes will be accepted by city council at its end-of-June meeting, will go a long way to determining the scope and pace of change that people can expect.
At the moment, leaving Parkdale aside, Ottawa Markets manages the two city buildings in the ByWard Market, 50 Byward and 70 Clarence, as well as the public spaces adjacent to these properties including the George and York Street plazas— essentially a large T shape. (See Map) Its operations are self-financed, coming from the rent paid by tenants of these two buildings and rent from the market stalls. Missing from this list is the revenue from the most lucrative facility of all — the parking garage at the back of the building between Clarence and York.
At an informal briefing with the Echo, Darwin laid out the essence of what they are proposing to council. It is does not include a detailed plan describing what they hope to achieve or how they hope to achieve it. There is much consultation to be done before that part of the puzzle is complete.
Rather, the submission to council is Ottawa Markets’ list of things it needs before any real change can take place. In order to proceed, management says it needs three things:
access to a better revenue stream (i.e., more money to do things);
a bigger and better defined area under its jurisdiction;
delegated authority over that jurisdiction.
If the market is to go back to the future, the main market building must be repurposed and to do that, it will need to be refurbished. For both of these, the building needs to be emptied of tenants, which means cutting off the main source of revenue. A seemingly impossible task even when the costs of renovations aren’t included.
Clearly something has to give on the financing/revenue side, if even for a short while, if progress is to be made. The management team would prefer that to be in the form of a permanent revenue stream (i.e., parking revenue) rather than an item in the city budget.
The issues and options are not so precisely defined with respect to the other two requests — expanding the zone of control and delegating the authority to manage it.
The current sphere of influence is a small part of what most would consider to be “the Market.” (See the map) Yet, it is not exactly clear what would be gained by expanding the sphere beyond the two buildings owned by the city and the public space on the plazas. Not that it shouldn’t happen; but the case has not been made, at least publicly, for why it would be better to extend the territory under market management.
The third item on the list seems straightforward. At the moment, market management has no authority to enforce the rules which are outlined in the complex bylaw governing the market. This bylaw, which has been revised and added to over many years as disputes arose among market factions, is now almost 60 pages long. Currently, when the management team spots an infraction, it must call in a bylaw officer from the city to enforce what are often confusing rules.
The new team wants the bylaw thrown out and replaced by clear policies and regulations that reflect modern conditions that it would develop and enforce. What those policies and regulations would be are as yet unknown.
Sound good?
The city went through a long process of harmonizing all the rules and regulations that existed in the various municipalities before amalgamation. The last thing it might want is a jurisdiction in the city that can set and has different rules for noise, on-street parking, vendor licensing and so on. Something along those lines played out recently when market management was going to require buskers in the market to carry liability insurance. The city, which has adopted a policy encouraging music in the streets, demanded, and got, a retraction.
A middle ground will need to be found which gives market management appropriate control over its territory while at the same time, not giving it carte blanche to essentially turn the market into a place with a totally different set of rules.
While it may not get everything it is asking for, the outcome of the council meeting at the end of June should give Ottawa Markets, the merchants and residents a sense of how serious the city is with regards to bringing about redirection to the ByWard Market.