this is why so many people hate the byward market district authority | opinion
6 minute read
people were out and about in the byward market on a recent weekend afternoon. the market's governing body needs an overhaul to better represent the people who live, work, and do business in the district.
ashley fraser
/
postmedia
it’s rare to find retailers, residents, property owners and a city councillor agreeing on much when it comes to the byward market. yet after speaking with people in the area in recent weeks, i keep hearing a similar complaint: they don’t have a meaningful voice in decisions shaping the market’s future.
it’s been three years since ottawa markets and the byward market bia were folded into the byward market district authority (bmda). one of the roles of the organization is to be a bridge between businesses and the city. as the market prepares to celebrate its 200th anniversary next year, it’s worth asking whether the bmda’s governance itself deserves another look.
the latest controversy centred on the decision to eliminate through-traffic on byward market square for more than two weeks surrounding canada day — one of the busiest times of the year for merchants — as it prepared the area for three months of pedestrianization and street “activation.”
some oppose the plan itself, arguing that removing parking spaces, restricting traffic and complicating deliveries will hurt business. others support the idea of a pedestrian plaza, but question why construction had to occur during one of the busiest tourist periods of the year rather than in the spring or fall.
all sides, it would appear, feel inadequately consulted by the bmda, which they say only notified them two weeks prior to the closure. they believe that once decisions have effectively been made, their concerns carry little weight.
the bmda is a not-for-profit municipal services corporation (msc) created by the city to replace both ottawa markets — an msc previously set up to manage the byward and parkdale markets — and the old byward market bia. the goal was to have a single body capable of looking beyond the interests of any one group. its staff, headed by executive director victoria williston, is overseen by a board of directors chaired by andrex holdings founder and heritage developer sandy smallwood.
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the idea made sense. the byward market, after all, isn’t simply another commercial strip. it’s also a neighbourhood where people live, a tourist destination, an entertainment district, a heritage precinct and one of ottawa’s most important economic engines.
its governance attempts to reflect that larger mandate. merchants and property owners are deliberately excluded from serving as voting directors because the bmda does not allow board members who have a fiduciary interest in businesses or properties within the market.
it’s notable that that restriction isn’t required by provincial or federal legislation legislation. instead, it appears in the corporation’s founding bylaw, adopted when the city established the organization and approved by council when the bmda was created in 2023. that means it is ultimately a matter of municipal governance rather than provincial law.
“it is a deliberate governance safeguard designed to ensure the board’s decisions are made independently and in the interest of the district as a whole,” williston wrote in an email.
people were out and about in the byward market on a recent weekend.
ashley fraser
/
postmedia
businesses, then, are represented through a business advisory committee (bac), the members of which are selected by the board. williston says the committee’s terms of reference were revised after she became executive director to broaden its representation of retailers, restaurants, service providers and property managers.
on paper, that seems reasonable. the question is whether it’s functioning as intended.
when it was first set up, the bac was made up of seven members. but the majority of them have left and it’s now reduced to three.
chateau lafayette general manager deek labelle chaired the old byward market bia and became the inaugural chair of the bac when the byward market district authority was created.
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“it was supposed to be collaborative,” she said. “but from the beginning they were trying to prove themselves and didn’t really want anybody’s opinion. we’d already gone through everything they were trying to learn, and instead of learning from us, it just fell apart.”
eventually she resigned from the bac out of frustration. “it felt like we weren’t going to get anywhere.”
la bottega owner pat nicastro is one of the remaining three bac members. he, too, was enthusiastic when the bmda was proposed.
“it sounded like a great idea,” he recalled. he envisioned a one-stop shop where businesses could deal with a single organization instead of being bounced from one city department to another.
three years later, he says the promise hasn’t materialized.
“not much has changed, to be honest,” he said. “we get an email saying this is what’s happening. we need consultation before things happen.”
like labelle, nicastro had supported replacing the old bia. asked whether, knowing what he knows today, he’d still make the same choice, he replied: “i’d keep the bia. one-hundred per cent.”
brian lahey, co-founder of the properties group that owns and manages a number of commercial buildings in the market, also backed the creation of the bmda. he expected something resembling the governance model of vancouver’s granville island — a single organization with the authority and expertise to guide the district’s future.
“what we got,” he says, “was nothing like that.”
instead, he sees an organization focused on implementing a pre-existing vision — the byward market public realm plan — without enough input from people on the ground.
he doesn’t criticize the bmda’s ambition, but thinks it doesn’t make use of the people who understand how the market works.
“there’s a wealth of knowledge that’s available for free,” he said. “they have to consult with the business community that knows.”
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merchants and property owners aren’t alone in their concerns.
former lowertown community association president sylvie bigras contrasts residents’ relationship with the bmda with that of the neighbouring downtown rideau bia.
“the rideau bia lets us know — this street is closing, this event is coming, here’s what’s happening. they consult with us all the time and ask us for opinions. we don’t have that in the market.
“the bmda needs to restructure,” she adds. “it needs to include businesses’ and residents’ voices.”
victoria williston, the executive director of the byward market district authority, poses in a file photo.
tony caldwell
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postmedia
williston says that the bmda does communicate with the community — directly by email to its tenants in the city-owned 55 byward and 70 clarence st. properties, and to the larger business community through an e-newsletter and physical copies it delivers by hand. feedback, she adds, can be submitted through a form on its website.
additionally, she notes that many of the concerns raised most often by businesses, including parking and street cleanliness, are the responsibility of the city, not the bmda.
but even the local councillor has concerns.
rideau-vanier coun. stephanie plante, whose ward includes the market and whose seat on the bmda board does not include a vote, worries that too many decisions about the market are being made by people who don’t live with the consequences.
“we have a lot of people who don’t have any skin in the game who are making decisions.”
she believes that businesses and residents should have a voting representative on the board, and that her observer status should be amended to give her a vote as well.
council will have an opportunity to consider that: according to plante, a governance review of the bmda is already planned for 2027.
bmda chair smallwood, however, says while greater representation by byward stakeholders isn’t unreasonable, he says the bmda is being asked to do something more complicated than a traditional bia. it must consider not just businesses, but all stakeholders in the area: residents, tourists, hotels, shelters, galleries, the ncc, the homeless. he says that if every group were given seats on the board, it could devolve into endless conflicts of interest that would prevent any sort of governance at all. the board’s independence, he says, is not the flaw in the model — it’s the point.
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he argues, too, that virtually everyone agrees the market needs to change. the difficulty is that few people welcome the accompanying disruption.
what struck me wasn’t that merchants were upset about the most recent road closure or the abysmally executed william street skating rink, or the retail shipping containers that look like something out of season 2 of the wire.
what stood out was how consistently people from very different perspectives described the same feeling: that consultation only occurs after decisions are made, and that the governance model that was designed to avoid conflicts of interest has distanced the organization from the people who live, work and invest in the market.
the bmda was created to give the market a single voice. instead, too many of the people who know the area have been left without one.
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