Union
Station's close call
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 The winner in Toronto's competition to renovate and operate Union Station was decided by just 15.5 points out of a possible score of more than 3,000, according to a controversial spreadsheet used to tally the scores. The spreadsheet, which city officials have fought to keep from being released to the public, shows that by simply adding up the scores of the six judges on the selection panel, the successful bidder, Union Pearson Group, would have won by 75.5 points. But due to concerns about three scores of zero assigned by one judge to the losers, LP Heritage + Union Station Consortium, chief administrative officer Shirley Hoy said the city decided to eliminate the highest and lowest judge's scores for both finalists. City staff then determined the winner based on the remaining judges' scores. Using that formula, Union Pearson, which includes construction and sports magnate Larry Tanenbaum and the O&Y development firm, won by 15.5 points — less than one half of 1 per cent — out of a possible score of more than 3,000 points. Councillor Michael Walker, who was one of only two councillors who voted last July against giving the deal to Union Pearson, said that the winning margin is so thin that it amounts to a dead heat. "As far as I'm concerned, the process is now invalid and the competition should be cancelled," said Walker (Ward 22, St. Paul's). "Staff should be ordered not to complete the negotiations." Walker wondered if the reason staff have been so adamant against allowing public access to the spreadsheet is because the winning margin is so tiny. Senior city bureaucrats have been insistent on keeping the spreadsheet confidential. They have never even allowed city councillors to examine it or even hold a paper copy of it. The only time they have ever shown it to councillors was in a closed-door meeting last month, where it was displayed on an overhead projector, but without any names attached to scores that would allow councillors to identify the marks of individual judges. The only scores that could be positively identified by councillors were those of Paula Dill, the city's commissioner of urban development services, who told the meeting that she was the judge who gave three marks of zero to LP Heritage on financial issues. She said she had concerns over the consortium's financial stability. Before that, the only time councillors saw any version of the spreadsheet was in another confidential meeting last July, when only the total score of each judge was shown on an overhead projector — again without any way to identify any one judge's score. The spreadsheet has been the focus of controversy since it was revealed in January that the original worksheets which each of the six judges used to record their scores on a category-by-category basis were discarded by the city lawyer in charge of the project. The lawyer, Patti Simpson, has said throwing out the individual score sheets was an honest mistake. The high level of secrecy which the city has maintained around all aspects of the scoring process and its ongoing negotiations with Union Pearson has only heightened the concerns of those who have questioned the deal, particularly councillors who have been pushing for more information from staff. Those concerns grew after the Star reported last month that Dill had assigned three marks of zero to LP Heritage over the nine categories of judging. A copy of the "evaluation and scoring matrix" used by the judges to guide their marking shows that a zero score stands for a "thoroughly unacceptable" status in the category, and indicates that the proponent "would not be able to meet project requirements." After it was revealed that the individual scoring records were discarded, council voted last month to have Ontario's integrity commissioner, Mr. Justice Coulter Osborne, conduct a review of the entire Union Station deal. No date has been set for the release of his report. The six judges on the selection panel were Dill, Joan Anderton, the city's commissioner of corporate services, city treasurer Joe Pennachetti, two Transport Canada officials, Helena Borges and Rob Bergevin, and local heritage architect Michael McClelland. All the judges have said they cannot discuss the selection process because they signed confidentiality agreements that prevent them from doing so. Calls from the Star to Hoy, Anderton, Dill and Simpson were returned by Margaret Doherty, a spokesperson for corporate services, who said that city officials would no longer discuss the Union Station deal until Osborne completed his review. "It's not a matter of confidentiality. I just don't think it's right, considering council asked (Osborne) to look at this," said Doherty. "We just think it is only fair to allow Mr. Justice Osborne to complete his review, without continuing to have this information debated in the media." After the city purchased Union Station in 2000, it set out to renovate the historic railway terminal. A request for proposals was issued to the private sector, on the basis that the winning proponent would have the right to re-develop the station and operate it under a lease of up to 100 years. Six technical review teams were set up to deal with various aspects of the project and their findings were handed over to the selection panel, which evaluated them before it decided the winner. When Union Pearson was chosen by the selection panel, staff came to council last July with a recommendation that it endorse the decision and allow negotiations to commence. They are still continuing. The deal calls for the consortium to invest from $115 million to $150 million on renovations. Union Pearson would pay the city a modest rent of $500,000 a year initially, adjusted for inflation every five years. Hoy held a Jan. 31 news conference, just a few days after it was revealed that the scoring records had been discarded, in an attempt to clarify what happened. "As part of the selection process, each member of the selection team was asked to provide a scoresheet on which to report their notations and scores, based on the established criteria," Hoy said at the time. "These scores were then transferred to a spreadsheet that formed a permanent record of the selection process. I wish to state clearly that there was no intention to conceal any relevant information that was used by the selection committee to determine the successful proponent. An honest mistake has been made." She added that the high level of confidentiality surrounding the deal and ongoing negotiations "exist only with respect to financial and legal matters. This was to maintain the integrity of the process and to negotiate terms that obtain the best possible result for the city." The marks assigned by some of the judges have also caught the eye of city councillors who were shown the spreadsheet. While Dill, whose expertise is in city planning, assigned zero scores to LP Heritage on all financial issues, Pennachetti, who is an accountant and is experienced in municipal finance, gave LP Heritage average marks in that category. When Dill was asked to explain why she assigned the zeros to LP Heritage, she said she had been told during the evaluation process that the prime realty arm (of LP) was in some financial difficulty with their bankers. The financial considerations
had three categories of scoring, for which Dill assigned a total score
of 140 to the successful Union Pearson group, sources have said, while
assigning LP Heritage three zeros. © Copyright 2003 Toronto Star |