Canal Project feasible “engineering-wise” and Sandra’s Weltanschauung

Updated update: 10:45 p.m.: 

Some interesting tidbits of information in the Windsor online edition.

1.  The mayor would reveal little of the financial or engineering findings contained in the feasibility study, which has been conducted over the last six months by a committee led by former MPP Dave Cooke.

(More secrecy – until the Mayor is ready to ensure his six council members are on-side).

2.  The 40-foot-deep basin would be shadowed by a condo and retail development.

(A certain downtown recipient of free land will certainly cash in).

3.   Also included is conversion of a three-block stretch of either Pitt Street or Chatham Street into an eastwest  20-foot-deep canal filled with municipal water.

(Great!  The hidden costs: approx. 10 meters wide by 300 meters long by 7 meters deep =  21,000 cubic meters.  This equals 21,000,000 litres of municipal water to fill. WUC is smiling from ear to ear.  Conserve water in Windsor?  Why?)

4.  Cooke said Thursday he was not at liberty to talk about the findings, since the report belonged to the mayor.

A business case, engineering conclusions and five-page letter of observations were turned over to the mayor, he said.

“I can’t talk about contents of the report,” Cooke said. “My way of handling this is to turn it in and then it belongs to the person who commissions the report. If (Francis) wants us to make comments, we will at a later time.

(Speak when only allowed to speak.  And who commissioned the report?  I thought it was the private sector driving it? 

 Councillor Hatfield was obviously mistaken when he said:

 ”He [Hatfield] doesn’t feel it is unusual for a private sector proponent to undertake and pay for a feasibility study and then present findings to council — including on the marina-canal proposal.”)

5.  Council, if it approves the plan, will also likely discuss putting aside some funding for the canal project before it completes its budget deliberations over the next month, Francis said.

(Yup – city hall employees facing layoff ought to feel really good about this one.)

6.  The mandate we had was to take a narrow look at the whole thing and determine what’s feasible to do. Anything is feasible – if you can send people to the moon, obviously you can do this.”

But cost will be the determining factor, Cooke said.

“That’s something the mayor may want to talk about when he releases the report,” he said.

(I couldn’t agree more.  Except the Mayor isn’t talking about the finances just yet.)

7.   The project is doable financially, but will need support from the provincial and federal government, Horwitz said.

(Yes – that’s right.  Elevate expectations and then should the Provincial or Federal governments decide not to fund this, the Mayor, council and the Windsor Star will have another opportunity to slam our cabinet ministers.  Then again, the Mayor is crafty.  If a waterpark is part of the plan it can be honestly said the infrastructure dollars will create long-term jobs.  By the way, how’s Windsor Water World doing?)

Will this be a repeat of Greenlink all over again?  Postcard campaigns, bus ads, police car stickers reading “Support the Dunkin Canal.”)

UPDATE 6:30 p.m.:

A-News reports the canal project will come in at $50-million plus additional land acquisition costs. However, the marina will no longer be located at the Caron Avenue location – but further east.  A potential family waterpark is also being considered.

Mayor Eddie Francis states funding for the project could come from Federal and Provincial infrastructure dollars.  Downtown BIA chair, Larry Horwitz is asking the community to lobby federal and provincial governments to “come to the table.”

So while technically feasible the question of finances remains outstanding.

I’ll have more to write on this tomorrow – but using infrastructure dollars intended for roads, sewers and watermains for this project is just mind-boggling considering the City of Windsor has a reported $700-million infrastructure deficit!

The A-News Report

_____________________________________

Written earlier today:

Now there’s a shock.

AM800 reports:

The proposed canal and marina project in downtown Windsor is feasible and “do-able.”   Mayor Eddie Francis says a draft report has been completed by the project’s working group.   He’s pleased with the pricing estimates and says there’s nothing “engineering-wise” to stop the project.

Not bad – it only took about 30 weeks instead of the 10 – even though it is only a “draft.”  

But still no word on the “business feasibility study” and nearly two months overdue from the deadline the Mayor gave on Face-to-Face in December:

The 10-week feasibility study that began in August 2008 has not been totally completed and will be presented to council in February 2009 – some 24 weeks later, according to Mayor Francis on Face-to-Face. 

Interestingly, Gord Henderson already wrote about this  on December 20, 2008:

Cooke said the study indicates a marina in the Caron Avenue cut might be prohibitively expensive. “It’s feasible. It can be done. But would it be cost-effective?”  He explained that an extremely deep excavation would be needed to accommodate boats and that would entail either steep, concrete-reinforced walls along the cut or gradual slopes that would gobble up significant amounts of adjacent land.

And what a coincidence of timing for a rehash of old news too! 

Greenlink is set to take the stage again April 4th in New York,  in what will most definitely be a banner weekend in terms of press coverage for the Mayor:

According to my New York sources, the city’s Greenlink concept will receive the Diamond Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies, New York Chapter, at a gala dinner April 4, 2009 at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

Strangely  enough  in my blog stats today there were about a dozen search requests for the above quoted article, “Googling for Diamonds”.    Someone was desperately looking for what I had written.

This is clearly all gearing up for a europhoric moment in Saturday’s Star and to pad the Mayor’s State of the City address.

Brighton Beach may be sold for about $30-million – ironically just enough money to kick-start the Mayor’s promised economic development fund he talked about last year:

I will also be asking City Council to make a historic, one-time $30 million dollar investment from existing sources to kick-start this fund.

And how much do you want to bet that “phase one” of the canal proposal will come in at about that price because of course it will be done in phases.

 Sure, we already knew it was feasible from an engineering standpoint.  Pretty much anything is feasible if you’re willing to spend the bucks.

But it is finacially feasible?   Note the Mayor’s very careful description,  “…there’s nothing “engineering-wise” to stop the project.”

I suppose it all rests upon how much infrastructure funding the city will receive from the Federal Government and the Province and when and how much the city will receive for Brighton Beach.

Whether or not that is good use of scarce dollars is debatable and a topic for another blog.

Until then, we’ll just have to accept yet another “draft” report. 

In english that means the 10-week feasibility study will need some more time.

Sandra’s Weltanschauung

While our local political officials talk canals and feasibility studies, our cabinet minister, Sandra Pupatello has been filling the pages of German media this week promoting Ontario as the place to invest – ironically ignored by the very paper that claims to cover the issues our national media will not.

The Sudwestpresse reports that Sandra Pupatello says now is the right time to invest in “green” technologies in Ontario promoting its close proximity to over 158 million people and promoted the  Province’s “725 Millionen Euro Firmen” to help create high-tech “green” jobs.

Pupatello also talked up the green automotive potential of Ontario and highlighted incentives available to manufacturers of such vehiches.

In Automobilwoche, despite all the poor economic news coming out the US and Canada, Pupatello highlighted the success stories of international companies who have located in Ontario from Japan as well as the Big 3.

She boasted of Ontario’s position in North America in terms of automobile production and the huge potential that offers and again pumped up the 725-million Euro incentive fund as well as the 310-million Euro Advanced
Manufacturing Investment Strategy Fund.

And finally in VDI nachrichten, Pupatello boasted that Ontario’s green companies open up markets to Germany.    Here she promoted Ontario’s decision to shut down coal-fired power plants by 2014 and spoke about the opportunities this presents to Germany to invest in Ontario.

Why all this focus on Germany?

 Many innovative German companies have advanced to become international technological leaders, providing key components for the wind energy, hydropower, solar energy, geothermic and biomass sectors. “Renewables made in Germany” are considered amongst the world leaders and are therefore being used all over the world. The Federal Ministry of Economics is supporting this dynamic industry with a multitude of instruments and wishes to use these pages to provide information on innovative technologies and successful “made in Germany” projects, as well as events and ways in which companies can participate in the foreign trade fairs of the Renewable Energy Export Initiative.

So while the Mayor and the Windsor Star will surely squeeze out all the great PR they can out of the canal and Greenlink, our MPP, the ones our members of council and the Star Editorial Board love to bash, is out there slogging away at bringing new green manufacturing to Ontario – and hopefully Windsor.