The letter P, and the scoop on Scoopz

What a difference the letter P can make.

Jim Thompson is not a fan of the Lorne Street parkade. Jim Thomson is a huge fan.

Neither of them seems to be a fan of the Armchair Mayor.

Jim Thomson, the parkade fan, told me in a personal email after the Council of Canadians public debate what he thought of our coverage. Since it was a personal email I won’t go into detail, but I’m sure he won’t mind me revealing that he found it odd our story left out the height of the parkade, for one thing.

He doesn’t like the way I’ve been writing about council’s handling of the situation, either. And he was miffed that we’ve run letters from Jim Thompson without pointing out he’s not the same guy as Jim Thomson. So now we’ve been doing that.

Jim Thompson, meanwhile, has his own bone to pick.

Monday, we published a letter from Jim Thompson saying it’s odd that an editor’s note to a letter from Brenda Klassen didn’t mention that Tom Gaglardi’s Northland Properties bought the property for his Sandman Signature Hotel from the City.

“Yes, odd you didn’t mention that fact,” he repeated in the letter, suggesting, perhaps, something nefarious.

Well, I figure if two people on opposite sides of the issue both think I’m on the wrong side of the issue, I must be doing something right. But I want to deal with the hotel property matter, again, because it’s an important chapter in the story of the parkade.

I didn’t include it in the editor’s note any more than I include the entire chronology of the issue every time I write about the parkade.

This newspaper has mentioned the sale of the Scoopz (also known as the Levesque) property on many occasions, beginning with the announcement of the hotel project in August 2008.

After that sale was announced, a Daily News editorial stated, “It’s troubling, for example, that the sale is not conditional on a minimum number of parking spots being reserved for public use at arena events… According to City Hall, it will work with Gaglardi to examine the parking issue, but clearly there are no guarantees.”

An Armchair Mayor column two days later said, “The plan was always to eventually sell it (the Scoopz/Levesque property) for a hotel, but to ensure that an adequate number of spaces was reserved for public parking as part of any development…. I’m assured that the parking issue will be raised with Gaglardi by and by.”

I wrote in another Armchair Mayor column Oct. 30 last year, “. . . Fact is the City once owned the land on which the Sandman will be built — and that land was acquired specifically for parking. Yet, when the City sold it to Tom Gaglardi, there were no strings with respect to public parking…. And now, we could well have parkades across the street from each other butting up against our number one park.”

So, no, The Daily News hasn’t ignored the matter of who sold the property to Gaglardi. And if the City ever explains why it allowed that sale without a provision for public parking, we’ll be happy to publish that, too.