FOI docs show parkade Plan B was a Hail Mary pass

Back in the first week of May, when City council was getting publicly flogged over the parkade-in-the-park issue, a harried City director of engineering and development services sent a last-minute email to Mayor Peter Milobar.

The time was 12:11 p.m. on Tuesday, May 3 — a little more than an hour before City council was scheduled to meet to vote on the contentious project.

“Based upon your inquiry on whether the top floor of the parkade could be removed and it still be economical I offer the following comments based upon a quick look from Stantec,” the message (a copy of which was sent to administrator Randy Diehl) began.

Dave Trawin then outlined, based on specific questions from the mayor, the number of stalls possible under a two-storey scenario (355), revised estimated cost ($7,275,000) and cost per stall ($20,500, or $33,200 per “new stall”).

Revenues from hourly and event parking, plus a street parking increase of 25 cents an hour would yield an annual surplus of about $23,000 per year, Trawin wrote.

He then outlined the heights of the structure in two storeys, and painted a rough picture of what it would look like.

Armed with that information, Milobar went into the meeting and proposed his two-storey scenario, one that saved the project as most councilors jumped at the compromise.

Trawin’s quick-and-rough report to Milobar, obtained Wednesday by The Daily News as part of an application under Freedom of Information and Privacy legislation, confirms that the mayor’s Plan B was cobbled together just in time, and that there was little if any discussion — at least on the details — among members of council before the meeting.

It came after a flurry of activity during the week or so leading up to that crucial decision, including councillors firing email questions at staff about details of the parkade plan.

In the background was local developer Casey VanDongen, trying to get a private-public partnership on the table before the council vote was taken. (Possible locations were redacted from the documents provided to The Daily News.) He was busy exchanging emails with Milobar, Trawin and City real-estate manager Dave Freeman.

VanDongen, the present of Tri City Contracting, was trying to get a meeting with the City a few days before May 3. At one point, Trawin wrote VanDongen, “I am swamped writing council reports my assistant will help set up a meeting with the mayor.”

On the Friday before the council meeting, VanDongen wrote, “I find myself in a bit of a vacuum as to how to proceed….”

There’s no indication from the correspondence whether a meeting ever took place, but the general response from City staff was that it was too late to put the proposal to council before the meeting, and that injecting a P3 into the mix could only be done only via a competition among any interested developers if council should turn down the Lorne Street site.

VanDongen, it should be clear, had no objection to an open call for proposals

It’s no secret fuses were growing short between Milobar and Coun. Denis Walsh leading up to May 3. In one email, Walsh asks, “What is going on in our City.” The rest of the email is blacked out, but he concludes, “I really hope this week is done, because this is far too much to digest in 48 hours in our little city.”

Milobar responds at one point, with copies to other councillors, “I’m obviously frustrated and tired of the non-stop innuendo that I and staff are trying to hide things from you or that we are trying to mislead you.”