City of Winnipeg plays hardball over Shaw Park lease

The City of Winnipeg's civil service is recommendinga tough stanceover a new lease for Shaw Park, the downtown stadium where former mayor Sam Katz's Goldeyesbaseball team plays.

The new termsinclude a rise in rent from $1 a year to $150,000 as well as the end of property and entertainment tax subsidies.

The city also wouldtake back two parking lots, from which the ball club has been getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.

Details of the proposed deal are in a report to the city's property, planning and development committee.

One section of the report says the city has provided an estimated $7.47 million in subsidies and tax credits and lost revenue to Riverside Park Management from 1997 to 2018. It also estimates a loss of $5.2 million in parking revenue from two lots (at 110 Pioneer Ave. and 41 Westbrook St.).

The city leases the ballpark land to Riverside Park Management, a registered non-profit organization that thensublets the stadium as well as nearby parking lots to the Goldeyes,owned by Katz.

The lease and parking lots around the stadium have come under scrutiny in the past.

• No leasing fees, taxes paid on ballpark parking lot for years: officials
• Mayor's stake in ballpark won't affect city decision on parking lot: Katz

Riverside and the city have been in a lease agreement that runs from1997 to 2023, but Riverside asked the municipality for a new agreement in order to obtain financing for some capital improvements to the stadium.

Katz declined to speak publicly about the proposal until a meeting of the city's property and planning committee, scheduled for Oct. 28.

The report to the committee shows the two sides have several disagreements on the terms of a new lease.

The negotiations have been going on since 2016.

Committee chair Brian Mayes saidit will be up to politicians to strike a balance between getting fair rent and terms from the tenant and not scaring the team away.

"We do need more than a buck-a-year rent, I will say that with certainty, but some of the other issues, if you don't have somebody using the ballpark there is a lot less money in [for example] for parking, so I think we have to look at the bigger picture here," Mayes said.

The city hired a consultantin July 2017 to do a market analysis and property research comparing sports facilities in other municipalities and sent a proposal to Riverside.

In December 2017, Riverside rejected the offer, and the two sides have been back and forth ever since.

Riverside and the city agree a new lease agreement would run 15 years, but the two sides can't come to terms overtwo five-year extension optionspast the first 15 years. The city wants those extensions to be subject to a review of rent and other fees.

The report also says Riverside is pushing back against a$150,000-per-year rent increase. The city has hired an external consultant to do further analysis on the rent numberasthree years have passed since it originally proposed $150,000.

The non-profit company also doesn't want to lose $42,000 a year it receives in subsidies for property taxes and $300,000 it gets for entertainment taxes. Those breaks fall under an amateuraccess agreement in the current lease deal.

The report also says Riverside opposes a term of the proposed deal in which any sponsorships would have to comply with the City of Winnipeg's sponsorship policy.

Katz's tenureas mayor of Winnipeg featured several controversial issues, including land swap deals, accusations of conflicts of interest and a massively over-budgetpolice headquarters project, which prompted in a still-incompleteRCMP investigation.

• Sam Katz got $127K cheque from HQ contractor he initially denied dealings with
• Winnipeggers believe mayor in conflict of interest, poll suggests

Mayes, who is the only current councillor to have served on the city's executive policy committee under both Katz and Mayor Brian Bowman,said perhaps the perception of past transgressions could bleed into discussions about a new lease for the ballpark, but it shouldn't go that way.

"If the Goldeyes fold up, we might be without a tenant for our ballpark for a long time," Mayes said.