08-17-07

By Rich Letkeman

Commercial realtors in Ontario are arming themselves for a little more complexity in the services they offer. Whether they want it or not, "tenant representation" is here and now -- another example of a Big Brother hand-me-down from the U.S.

More than 200 real-estate brokers will be hearing about it October 18th, at the popular annual Fall Seminar of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors (SIOR), booked for the Liberty Grand at Toronto’s CNE. They will focus on tenant representation, kicked off by a 2:00 o'clock keynote address from tenant-rep guru Andrew Zezas of New Jersey. A panel discussion chaired by SIOR president Stan Mullin will follow, and he expects "a good number of smaller, tenant rep broker-agents from Toronto's downtown leasing markets".

"I expect the seminar to be quite energetic, because this component is not prevalent in the Canadian market and many brokers believe this is not the way to go," says Zezas, who is president of Real Estate Strategies Corp. in Kenilworth, NJ and Chair of SIOR’s Specialty Practice Board for Tenant Representation. He equates tenant representation to the 15-year-old, U.S. fair-deal concept embodied in the "Buyer’s Broker" who acts as a legitimate negotiator on behalf of residential buyers.

"The reality is that a corporate buyer getting into a broker’s car for a tour of a property may not really discern that he/she has no agreement with that broker who, by the way, is legally obligated to represent the property owner.

"It’s not a cottage industry in the U.S.; the vast majority of corporate transactions have both the property rep and the tenant broker at hand. This supports disclosure and avoids conflicts of interest. Barring cultural factors I’m not aware of, I see no reason why tenant representation will not become a key component of Canada’s real-estate industry."

Edward Sorbara, CEO of the major GTA developer and landlord known as Sorbara Group, sees tenant representation as an advantage for corporations entering into new leases, because there are a lot of intricacies involved in housing a corporate tenant. "But for renewals, forget it. The horror stories which tenant-rep companies in the U.S. like to mention in their promotion literature are not representative at all. And when a 20-year lease has run its course, what’s going to be so new, except perhaps for required renovations or base-year calculations?"

Sorbara is one of three developer-landlords invited to join the SIOR panel discussion, along with three brokers. The second landlord executive likely will be Michael Snell of GWL Real Estate Advisors, Mississauga, and the third was not confirmed by press time. The three broker-panelists will be: Scott Mulligan of Colliers International, Jeff Flemington of JJ Barnicke, and Dean Newman of LNR Corporation & Cresa Partners.

Sorbara continued: "In a re-lease, when a tenant brings his own agent, he or she naturally tries to beat down my price and I pay a fee for it. I’m sure the keynote speaker will tell us that everybody wins with tenant representation but I don’t see it like that. Tenant reps are coming on, I think, because so much real estate now is owned and leased by institutions and funds that have budgets for agent fees. It converts to annuities for real-estate agents."

Do typical landlords come up with major extraordinary charges that tenant reps can protect their clients against by way of lease stipulations? Sorbara says: "This is not an issue, because the agents and their clients don’t even read the full lease, much less understand it. It’s merely a hand-holding relationship and there won’t be any oil gushers popping out of the ground."

On behalf of tenant reps, Zezas says corporations whose space leases are a large component of their costs now are arming themselves against RE agent "stereotypes" who can’t appreciate all of a tenant’s requirements. "And tenants ready for renewals have every bit as much to gain, financially, as those entering new leases."

In his own firm he prefers calling the service "corporate representation", since it could extend itself from leases to purchases or leases-to-own, provided their purpose is to house the corporation.

Douglas May of Colliers International, who is SIOR’s regional director for Canada, says tenant representation is another example of specialization in various sectors of an increasingly complex real-estate industry.

"It’s healthy for our industry, and it’s coming," he said. "Most real-estate firms do have tenant specialists, and their strength is market knowledge, which emanates from the landlord’s side of things. At Colliers we have pure tenant reps and pure landlord reps on staff, but of course, not all tenants have unique requirements that would justify tenancy research or representation."

At the seminar at the Liberty Grand, SIOR’s Central Canada chapter vice-president -- David Hurst – expects a noisy but vibrant cocktail-and-hors-d’oeuvres party to follow the panel discussion at 5 p.m., and later on, a "surprise" entertainment feature as a finale to the event.

01-12-08

By Rich Letkeman

What helps to build Kitchener’s downtown core and make it develop into "mature clusters" in a way that attracts burgeoning hustle and bustle?

Part of the answer is in the economic development department (EDD), how it recognizes trends and how it supports commerce. There aren’t big signs of a dynamic downtown quite yet, but "Watch out for an explosion because a lot of things are happening in the background that soon will make it so," says Kathy Weiss, Kitchener’s director of business development.

"In marketing our city we’re focusing on two main downtown clusters: biotech and new media. In biotech it’s related to inevitable spin-offs from the University of Waterloo’s new Kitchener Health Sciences campus, containing Ontario’s second School of Pharmacy that’s funded jointly by the City and University of Waterloo.

"In new media, we’re expecting our moderate cluster to build quite rapidly once the existing supplier network is better established."

As we write this, Cadan Inc. has announced that its 400,000-square-foot Lang Tanning building – downtown in "Ontario’s happiest city" – is about to be revitalized by filling the landmark structure with multiuse venues including restaurants, shops, courtyards, health-science suppliers and services, and multimedia offices. The building already contains a community of some 60 artisans and small businesses.

"That’s commercial-residential, with [about 300,000 square feet of] green space and just the kind of thing we need downtown," says Weiss.

To the Tanning project one would add other recent move-ins: a large, gourmet specialty-foods store at King and Gaukel, a commercial building at King and College containing a Shoppers Drug Mart, and a three-acre, commercial-retail-hotel-parking development proposed by Andrin Limited for what’s known as the Centre Block at King and Young.

"These are some highlights of the vibrancy that’s building," says Weiss. "Although the two downtown clusters are just in embryonic stages, we’re working on our marketing strategy, and an incubation or commercialization centre is being developed to support the clusters. We seeing downtown blocks being put up for development right now."

The biotech incubator centre is expected to attract many new start-ups into the downtown core. Around the expropriated Centre Block (at Young and Duke), says Weiss, "the private sector is joining together to make things happen, alongside Andrin’s proposed development.

"Investments into downtown now are tenfold bigger than they were three years ago and developers are enthusiastic about our future," says Weiss.

This year will see the first graduates from the just-opened School of Pharmacy, a 120,000-square-foot facility that will reach a capacity of 1,200 students by 2012, helping to bring an infusion of people into the downtown area.

On the downtown campus, Waterloo and McMaster universities are partnering on the new Michael DeGroote School of Medicine, and a Waterloo university School of Optometry has also been announced. In another partnership, Wilfrid Laurier’s School of Social Work is moving to the campus. A privately funded Family Medicine Teaching Centre, including a walk-in clinic, will soon move as well, from its temporary quarters at the old Victoria Park School. It is expected to relieve Kitchener’s serious shortage of family physicians.

How the city stays involved in business and development trends has everything to do with Kathy Weiss’s activities in the 17-person EDD. She organizes an annual "blitz" in which EDD volunteers call corporations in certain industry sectors. "This year it’s manufacturing, with the prime goal being to communicate what municipal and government programs – and trade associations – are available for corporate citizens to take advantage of. It also shows us flavours and trends in these industries and, of course, uncovers issues or red tape concerns that we try to address almost immediately."

"For external marketing, that is outside Waterloo Region, we rely on the fabulous program organized by the Canada’s Technology Triangle partnership (CTT). They focus on specific industry sectors in China, Germany, Silicon Valley and other parts of the globe. We’re not ready to promote our biotech and multimedia clusters in big advertising campaigns as yet, until we can define our product better."

One effective marketing tool EDD has used by way of the CTT is its annual Passport to Success event. Invitations are sent annually to 400 individuals around the world, including developers and site selectors, for an Oktoberfest wingding and Kitchener familiarization tour. Only 25 respondents are selected for an expense-paid trip to the city for luncheons, a presentation by CTT’s chief executive officer, John Tennant, and a trip to -- in last October’s case – the Toyota plant. They also visited the Transylvania Club for Kitchener’s famous Bavarian Festival.

Awareness advertising is used in various magazines and association tabloids to let companies know that Kitchener is open for business, and through its Small Business Centre, EDD organizes seminars on starting, financing, running and marketing a business. EDD also is a member of Communitech, or the association of Waterloo Region tech companies who promote their cluster and whose website links to EDD and other support agencies.

"Our strategic plan will call for some outreaching," says Weiss, "to get the word out that we’re here and that it’s a great place to locate to. And we attend biotech conferences, such as the 2006 exposition in Boston, and automotive engineering exhibitions such as APMA in Detroit. But retention of our corporate citizens is high on our priority list, and we’ve been working on making them aware of our plans for more sustainable infrastructure."

The main challenge to economic development in Kitchener right now is the lack of industrial land, says Weiss. Only six or seven pockets are left, one of which is 100 acres of the BF Goodrich plant site that closed down three years ago. Waterloo Region will see about 1,500 acres of new industrial development within the next five years, with 200 acres of it in Kitchener.

Most available brownfield sites have been remediated, and EDD employs a brownfield specialist for this program. About 85 percent of current land transactions are for expansions involving small lots, but enquiries coming from CTT are in the 5-to-10-acre range. The largest redevelopment parcel is the former Arrow Shirt site, now being developed as residential.

The city is well into its ten-year, $98-million Economic Development Investment Fund for revitalization projects. They include (or included) the Centre Block expropriations, the Waterloo university campus, a Central Library, public parking facilities, a downtown streetscape, improvements to Victoria Park, a Downtown Community Resources Centre, and additions to the Financial Incentives Centre.

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Help Us Compete Globally: Dawson

01-31-08

By Rich Letkeman

Brampton manufacturers, a 40,000-strong employment sector, are feeling the stress from Canada’s loonie attack and are looking for innovative ways of competing globally.

"We have to boost our cash flow, productivity and technology skills," says Bryan Dawson, CEO at Aircraft Appliances and Equipment (AAE) Limited. "Our exports are 60 percent of our output, and we have a flexibility margin built into our pricing, but nothing to account for bombshells like the loonie’s 6.5-point rise in September.

No-one predicted a one-dollar loonie and all estimates of its take-off speed were understated. The company has various "natural hedges" including a U.S. bank account, whereby purchases made south of the border are paid out of U.S. receivables, "so that we take exchange hits only on the difference," said Dawson.

[RICK: THE FOLLOWING PARA. IS A BIG HIT WITH DAWSON’S AUDIENCES. MAYBE YOU’D LIKE TO WRITE ANOTHER ANTI-MCGUINTY, ANTI-UNION EDITORIAL!]

"Forcing the Family Holiday on manufacturers a year earlier than expected, without allowing for planning time, was another bag of snakes, a perfect example of government decision-making without forethought."

AAE’s biggest customer is the U.S. Navy, and its production volumes haven’t changed "but revenues and profits are hugely down, especially when we convert our transactions to Canadian dollars and suffer the consequences. Nearly 40 percent of our output goes to the Canadian armed forces – a 60-year customer for us – but in Brampton I’d say that most manufacturers are exporting more like 70 percent of their output."

One thing the company now does is purchase as many materials as possible from the U.S. for U.S.-bound finished products. "And for imports from U.S., we’ve asked their Canadian distributors to bill us in U.S. dollars. The only other thing we can do now is try not to convert U.S. dollars into Canadian when the market is weak, and once our currencies are at par we switch the U.S. cash into Canadian."

Dawson has many ties with Brampton’s business community. He is a past-president of Brampton Board of Trade, a director of Brampton’s Safe City Association and past chair of Sheridan Institute.

"The biggest problem we manufacturers must overcome is the strong dollar. But the skills shortage probably comes second, here in Brampton, where a third of the workforce is manufacturing. The national average is only half that.

"Do you mind if I discuss globalization?" he asked. "It’s alright to join the trend if that’s where the world is going. But what happened to good planning, such as addressing the very real threat of jobs lost to foreign competition? If we’re complaining, it’s because the governments simply have to confront it, and it’s the squeaking wheel that normally gets the grease."

Another direction into which Dawson is steering the company to compete better globally is toward outsourced companies. "There are a lot of local CNC shops, for instance, that can produce parts much less expensively than we can in our heavily unionized workplace, and this now is a survival technique for us."

Producers across the country say they need a longer window for the government's two-year write-off program on machinery investments, according to Jayson Myers, president of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME). "It's a very important incentive given the economic challenges and cash-flow pressures now facing our sector." Most manufacturers expect this window to be extended sometime soon.

What about new announcements of tax cuts and industrial incentives? Says Dawson of AAE: "They’re worth about a dime. Even I was surprised about how little was said about Ontario’s economic trauma before last fall’s election. Our economic condition is worse than it seems because of performance figures being buoyed by Alberta’s."

The 2007 federal tax cuts will pay back about $13-billion per year -- about 5.6 percent of its overall budget -- to taxpayers until 2012. Corporate income tax has been reduced by one percentage point and will fall to 15 percent by 2012. For small businesses, tax on income drops to 11 percent as part of a five-year, 33-percent cut.

In addition to new consumers’ and industrial tax rates, Finance minister Jim Flaherty's announcement of a five-percent GST is estimated to be $6-billion worth of spending power.

"But the deepening U.S. recession [as of the end of January] is a bigger issue, and a lot of Canadian companies right now are running scared," said Dawson.

Programs like the federal SRED [Scientific Research and Experimental Development] are needed, he said. "But why not make access to SRED easier for small companies instead of confronting them with red tape? And why not reimburse companies in real cash instead of giving them virtually intangible tax credits? SREDs are useless to companies not earning healthy margins.

"The SRED program was a good idea, but the process is so onerous for entrepreneurs that there are SRED-application consultants selling their services around the country."

CME also is pushing the government to make SRED tax credits refundable and introduce employee-training tax credits, since it is felt that both measures are needed to boost innovation and survival potential.

In a recent survey by Grant Thornton LLC, 30 percent of manufacturers reported flat performance in 2007 and 38 percent expect this to continue into 2008 especially if the U.S. recession materializes. More than 20 percent are reporting declining performance for 2007, and nine percent expect worse performance this year. Eight percent of them expect less production volume this year and 15 percent expect reduced profit margins. More than a third of manufacturers surveyed had "flat" profit margins in 2007 and expect similar conditions in 2008.

Forty-three percent of manufacturers want to invest in machinery and equipment, and 30 percent are planning increases in R&D activities. But only 21 percent feel they need to increase production this year, and 15 percent will make cuts. Seventeen percent cut their workforce in 2007 and 12 percent will make further cuts this year unless things change. But nearly three times as many industrial companies are still in the growth mode as those that are ready to cut back.

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Infrastructure Vs. Youth Gangs

The Robots are Here, and There

02-15-08

By Rich Letkeman

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Blues Festival: A Really Big Show

08-31-06

By Rich Letkeman

There’s a difference between a big city and a "burb". Suburb cities are envious of the popularity of their big brother.

Small towns and big cities are both remembered largely for their festivals and famous shows or exhibitions. Mississauga, the burb, is barely remembered for any major events. But not so for entrenched communities within Mississauga, like Port Credit, Clarkson and Streetsville.

Port Credit, whose name has no official status except, perhaps, with Canada Post, will never die as a unique, lakeside village. Seven annual Southside Shuffle Blues and Jazz Festivals have "put it on the map" (even if it’s not on the map) like never before. The Shuffle’s eighth and biggest début takes place the weekend after Labour Day.

Kids, parents and music lovers: It’s showtime!

The whole show attracts dozens of bands of the blues-R&B-jazz genre along with about 60,000 people. Twenty or more restaurants and taverns get filled to overflowing after the Mainstage shows, and about 40,000 people show up for the three-block-long, Saturday afternoon Street Shuffle.

The festival is the pride and joy of long-time Port Crediter and singer-promoter Chuck Jackson. As co-founder back in 1999, he can be recognized by way of his apparently simultaneous appearances everywhere. (Local residents Bruce Forth, John Kozak and David deEyre are the festival’s principals.)

Although Port Credit’s bandshell (a spin-off of the Shuffle) hasn’t been built as yet, the expansive, new Memorial Park on the Credit River will host the Mainstage bands featuring a "really big" line-up: Jeff Healey, Jerome Godboo, Downchild Blues Band, Wickens-Knight, the Checkmates, Roomful of Blues, North American Sax Kings, Three Tenors, David Clayton-Thomas, Danny Marks, Danny Brooks, Soul Reason, Sean Cotton, Papa Grey, the Majestics and Motor City Express.

It’s not cheap to run a festival. "The bigger it gets, the more services are needed and the higher the complexity," says Bruce Forth, chairman and legal counsel for the Festival. He breaks services down into logistics, salaries, advertising, policing and insurance. "But that’s after we spend our music budget, which is about $100,000. The total cost is around $250,000, and we expect to meet that plus an extra $50,000 for charities, which is more than last year. We’re a not-for-profit venue largely grounded on volunteer work."

Typical events in the entertainment field call for volunteers, and the Shuffle is finishing training sessions now for 200 to 250 of them.

The possibility of rain will not be mentioned, but net revenues from ticket and liquor sales might reach $130,000. That leaves $120,000 to be drawn from sponsors such as Tim Hortons (the title sponsor), Fram Building Group, Polar Ice, Slokker Real Estate and PPC, and this figure has been surpassed.

In addition, Ontario Trillium Foundation has awarded a two-year, $85,900 grant to support the festival by hiring an executive director and festival coordinator and boosting fundraising activities.

Festivals and Events Ontario (FEO) says event organizers in the province have been "struggling for years to convince all levels of government" of the economic importance of special-event venues.

There was a wake-up call recently in Ottawa’s cancellation of many sponsorships "and it’s putting some major events into near-bankruptcy," according to FEO’s Peter McFadden, executive director. A halt on funding, or cancelling a million-dollar event purely deletes perhaps $10-million in direct economic impact.

FEO hired Enigma Research Corporation to carry out an economic impact study on festivals and annual events in towns and regions of Ontario. Survey data were collected on people’s general awareness of events, visitor demographics, market-sector comparisons, and rough estimates of economic impact by event type.

About 11,000 visitors to 25 separate events were interviewed to collect the data. Fourteen of them were classified as national or international, six were regional or provincial, and five were community-size.

In the first category, the final impact averaged $22-million but ranged from $3-million to $60-million. The total impact for 17 events in Ontario -- really a basic figure because it can’t measure spin-off economic transactions -- was $345-million.

According to FEO, Toronto’s seven biggest events generated about $184-million in direct economic impact in a recent year. They employed 4,700 people and brought $100-million in tax revenue. In the regional festival category, the average was $2.7-million and in the local, about $400,000.

Similarly, five events in the Niagara Region generated $101-million in "impact", employed 4,000 and scooped $50-million as tax revenue.

As far as awareness is concerned, the study estimated that eight-million Ontario adults (and 20-million Canadian) know about the Canadian National Exhibition, with Gay Pride not being far behind, followed by the Niagara Wine Festival and Oktoberfest.

Some 50-million American adults know about the Niagara Winter Festival of Lights and they hold that one dearest. Runners-up in popularity were the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, Niagara Wine Festival and the CNE.

In surveys to both Canadians and Americans, FEO found that the strongest lure to festivals is hotel-ticket-tour packages. Other strong lures include direct transportation and family-package pricing.

FEO also got a good handle on what visitors spend at festivals. Ontario non-locals part with about $126 per person per event, but it’s more like $250 with out-of-province visitors. Exhibitors and performers, however, spend nearly double those figures.

Advertising to the young population is extremely important for annual festivals and events because the under-25 group reported the biggest expenditures, followed by the over-65s.

Best tools to promote, according to data they collected, are newspaper ads, TV advertising, and home-delivered brochures. "Money spent can bring results."

The typical local festival attracts 36,000 visitors, according to FEO, but at regional or provincial events it’s about 130,000. In quite a few cases a "local" event over a ten-year period evolves into a "regional" one.

According to Bruce Forth, attendance last year at the "Shuffle" was at least 50,000 during the three-day event. The Saturday-afternoon Street Shuffle alone attracted 35,000, and this year’s venue should draw a total of 65,000.

"But there normally are tremendous indirect spin-offs at music festivals, especially in the blues and jazz category," says Forth. "For example, what if one of our corporate sponsors, such as Fram-Slokker, sells five condominiums or inks a $10-million business deal in one of the corporate tents we’re setting up this year near Mainstage? This is real growth to a community, attributable to the atmosphere, the festival and the people."

The idea behind the corporate tents is to give major sponsors private space, with a view of the Mainstage, where clients and VIPs can be invited to "have a chat" or be entertained.

Well organized lures at festivals not only add "gross economic impact", but they enhance the quality of, and awareness about, a community. There are many examples of this in small towns, although they’re more evident in California (i.e., Carmen, Santa Barbara, etc.) than in southern Ontario.

Big events also persuade people to entrench themselves, contribute to their community and even boost it by inviting out-of-town friends or relatives to the events. There’s nothing quite as powerful as linking a name on a map with something like: "Oh, that’s the town on Lake Ontario with the big blues and jazz festival." It’s called spin-off, spin-off, spin-off.

FEO encountered 100-percent approval for many events when they surveyed local residents, and about 60 percent of them said they invited non-locals. In fact, three-quarters of visitors surveyed said their image of the community was enhanced by the event.

And a good meal, of which there are 101 available in the vibrant little village on the lake, can accomplish similar results.

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Hatfield's Open 60 sails around the globe

Alone around the world. One man and a dinghy. A 60-foot dinghy. A two-million-dollar 60-foot dinghy, supported by a "team" of business sponsors particularly in Mississauga.

Only 126 sailors have raced solo around the world all the way to the finish line, compared with about 2,000 people who’ve reached the summit of Mount Everest.

Derek Hatfield of the Port Credit Yacht Club did it in 2002-03 in a 40-footer, and will do it again in an "Open 60" called Spirit of Canada. So you know where his mind is at: It’s his personal drive, and his passion for Canada’s sea-salty heritage.

The reason we call this 60-footer a ‘dinghy’ is that it has a dinghy’s lines, designed for speed. Traditional and modern yachts are much fuller and deeper in body, but they can’t reach speeds of up to 25 knots. The Spirit’s displacement: only 18,500 pounds.

The Around Alone Yacht Race that Hatfield completed in 2003 was founded 20 years ago by a group of sailors in Newport, Rhode Island, an Atlantic port well flavoured with U.S. yachting history. Derek placed 3rd in Class II (the "Open 40"-footers) after spending five years building his boat at home with family and friends and a lot of resolute patience.

The five-year project gradually accumulated funding and enthusiasm, sustained by a not-yet-lost "school" of traditional Canadian yacht racing and building. Time was when Canadians and Englishmen were the world’s most renowned sailors.

At 50, in September of 2002, Derek reached the start line of the Around Alone Race in his Open 40.

His boat pitch-poled and dismasted near every sailor’s most feared nemesis, that of Cape Horn off Chile’s southernmost tip. He was thrown into the cold ocean, but with the yacht’s ton-and-a-half ballast bulb now sitting aloft, the boat righted itself quickly and scooped him back on deck. Damages were major.

He motored to the port of Ushuaia in Argentina and spent five weeks in repairs, then motored back to the calamity point and re-entered the race, finally finishing 3rd after 182 days and 28,700 n.m. at sea. Average speed: 158 n.m. per day.

Derek’s supreme feat won him the 2003 Rolex Sailor of the Year and the coveted 2003 Gerry Roufs Offshore Sailing Award, making many Canadians spine-tinglingly proud. Some of his sponsors suddenly realized there’s more to business than the ‘glory’ of profit margins.

The new race program, the sixth in four-year cycles, is scheduled for September 2006 and has been renamed the 5-Oceans Solo Around the World Yacht Race, now run by the famous British single-handing sailor and author, Robin Knox-Johnston. Last month, Bilbao, Spain was chosen as the start-finish port and Freemantle, Australia has been confirmed as one of the ports-of-call where race events will be held.

"Europe is ideal as a start-port for North American entries," says Hatfield, "because the race qualifier entails a solo trans-Atlantic voyage, and I need six months of shake-down sailing."

When finalized, the five ports-of-call for the 5-Oceans race will host major race events (fanfare) that will attract fans, media and commercial film crews, the general public, and Grand Prix-style "pit-stop" crews and supporters.

Derek is from New Brunswick, where he must have peered out over the Gulf, thirsting for what lay beyond and eastward. After graduating Administrative Studies at York University he joined the RCMP in 1971 and became a Corporal specializing in fraud investigations. But he also started yacht racing with a friend in Whitby.

He joined the staff of TSE in 1986 to manage the Compliance Department, then to National Bank Financial as Regulatory Requirements manager. Meanwhile, solo-sailing became a passion.

The dream became real. To-date, Derek has sailed 90,000 n.m. – entailing at least 10,000 hours under sail – and competed in many national and international regattas. He raced in the ‘96 Europe One solo TransAt, which took 28 days and covered 4,000 n.m. in treacherous waters; the rigging failed but he completed the race like a true Canadian. He placed 3rd in Class II in the ‘95 Bermuda One-Two; 1st in the ‘94 Labatt’s solo Race Series. In 1997 he launched Spirit of Canada Ocean Challenges.

Open 60s have a liberal "box-rule" design involving caps on draft (14.5 ft.) and overall length (60 ft.). The longer the boat, the higher the speed.

"Built here in Canada, without a manufacturer’s and dealer’s mark-up, the cost will be about $1.5-million," says Derek. The building site is at Decoma International’s plant in Concord (City of Vaughan).

Construction began in September with laying of the keelson, or ship’s backbone, which in the olden times of wooden vessels was traditionally the first sign of a yacht.

Spirit will require 18,000 man-hours of labour, or about one man-hour per pound, using leading-edge materials and technology exemplified by Dupont’s Kevlar-honeycomb hull matrix, previously seen mostly in the aerospace industry.

Another of these is super-high-strength carbon fibre, supplied in "pre-preg" sheets that are heated in order to cure the epoxy binders.

For speed, the skinny fin-keel of the Spirit and of most Open 60s have canting mechanisms and a 6,000-pound ballast "bulb" at the bottom end.

The budget for the whole Spirit of Canada program is $3.5-million, says Derek. "Generally it doesn’t involve cash donations, although about $1-million will be needed for expenses. For this, I have an itinerary involving a program of, sort-of, grass-roots speech presentations to many associations and club gatherings."

Called the "Around Together" program, the speech engagements are drawing donations from an average of 15% of the audience. The target of 100,000 listeners is well under way.

Donors’ names are painted on the boat in various letter sizes depending on size of donation ($100 to $5,000), plus team clothing, colour posters, subscriptions to Canadian Yachting, chances for a trip to a 5-Oceans start line, and a mention on the Spirit of Canada (dot.net) website. Donations of $1,000 or more include a sail on Spirit with up to 16 guests. Last race, there were a total of 2,500 donors.

Partnerships with Spirit of Canada Ocean Challenges now are available that will allow major corporations to join in with the publicity-generating fanfare that takes place at each official port of call. Here, Derek and his support team may be looking at entities such as Budweiser, and Nike, whose TV and print-media ad agencies will be at the ports-of-call with their film crews.

Spirit of Canada Ocean Challenges has a charity partner in Earth Rangers, an organization that distributes environmental-education messages to children through videos, literature and field trips. When time and weather permit, Derek will be producing videos onboard for Earth Rangers, illustrating many aspects of the marine environment in real time.

"Apart from the environmental-education focus, a corporate partnership will involve, for the partner, a considerable amount of visual branding," says Derek. "It will reap literally millions of dollars’ worth of media exposure value, logos on hull and sails, VIP cruises for corporate guests, a major presence at the port-of-call events, partnership with Earth Rangers, links on Spirit’s web site and printed materials, and exposure at speaking engagements.

"But the business of sponsorship of the building project involves about two-dozen companies and corporations who so far, at this early stage, have donated ‘dollar-in-kind’ services and products, not only to build the yacht but to promote themselves, locally or nationally, with Spirit of Canada."

The main Mississauga sponsors are:

Outside-Mississauga sponsors are:

In his speeches and interviews Derek displays a modest and soft-spoken mien but, as he has learned brutally, "I’m facing, once again, one of the most demanding challenges on the planet, but I enjoy promoting Canada and the immense privilege of doing it with supporters standing behind me."

04-24-06

by Rich Letkeman

More and more women are reaching their potential in the commercial real estate sector, but statistics show a major deficit.

A recent survey by the U.S.-based Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) network revealed that only 36 percent of commercial real-estate professionals are women, and that less than half as many women as men in the industry earned more than $150,000. A vast majority of them earn the lowest salary levels.

While these statistics came from only 1,834 people responding to a U.S. survey, the likelihood of results being similar in Canada is high. So is the likelihood that as few as 29 percent of people making it to CEO or CFO are women, even though 44 percent of vice-presidents with "equal experience levels" are women.

The CREW network wants to change this. So far, the organization is made up of about 6,500 woman members in the U.S. and 300 in Canada who have senior job functions in commercial real estate.

Members network with each other for information, contact generating, and social events including speaking engagements. Toronto CREW's stated mandate is to "facilitate communication and interaction amongst senior commercial real-estate women on local, regional and national levels". The Toronto chapter was the first outside-U.S. branch to organiza itself. There now are chapters in Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver, and there soon will be a fifth and sixth, in Edmonton and Ottawa.

TCREW has set up three initiatives to attract women into commercial real estate:

CREW Careers, which involves a program called Real Estate 101 -- beginning in April this year -- to introduce 11th-grade students to available career paths;

Real estate scholarships -- fifteen of them valued at $3,000 each -- toward studies leading to a Schulich MBA or a University of Guelph B.Com.; and

A Mentorship Program designed to help recruits and graduates navigate through new jobs in commercial real estate.

Members are very supportive of TCREW's Annual Golf Classic which -- some say with enthusiasm -- is "about the best career-boosting and networking aid we've ever experienced," says Carol Van Mierlo, who is O&Y Enterprise's director of Property Management and is based in Mississauga.

That's before mentioning the substantial charity funds raised at the tourney for the Canadian Women's Foundation and its economic initiatives for women in workplaces.

"TCREW is for women working in all aspects of the industry, and it has proven to be a useful for our career-building members," according to Van Mierlo.

She travels throughout the GTA organizing operations and strategies for O&Y's property-management clients. In fact she oversees about six-million square feet of office space from Windsor to Brockville, much of which consists of office towers in Toronto and Mississauga.

"Networking among members probably is the most visible aspect of how TCREW helps us in our industry and our careers," says Van Mierlo. "A lot of this networking is by means of e-mail, which we use to a huge extent to transfer information back and forth, when requested, and it's about the best medium for free advice that I've ever seen.

"Not too much in the way of commercial real-estate news and events gets by our members," says Van Mierlo, who joined TCREW about three years ago. She recognizes the power of e-mail as an informal but effective communication tool.

Carol hails from London, Ontario where she found her career in commercial management. Prior to that she had graduated in Capetown with a business degree and left South Africa. She has a nine-year-old daughter, has taken on golf as a major passion, which she now gives extreme precedence over squash.

As a active supporter of TCREW's Annual Golf Classic, "It's no ordinary event for me," she says, but hastens to mention that numerous other social itineraries such as speaking presentations and seminars have made TCREW "an indispensable career builder for its 175 members".

She points out how key these meetings are -- as in many other professional associations -- to the task of getting to know people and getting one's name spread through the industry, even to national and international levels.

"The meetings are always interesting, because we hear and meet dynamic individuals, motivational speakers, and analysts from large real-estate companies who provide market updates and forecasts.

"We learn how to compare our industry with the U.S. counterpart, how U.S. markets affect ours, and how to use the information to deliver valuable advice to our clients. Our strategies end up moving forward to new levels of expertise."

After six years in O&Y territory, Carol now directs all aspects of O&Y's Greater Toronto commercial leasing division. This involves operations, marketing and planning. Her typical day at the office begins with managers reporting to her on ongoing issues and operations. She spends a lot of time making sure they not only keep clients well-informed on O&Y's new and existing leasing services but stay in vocal contact with them.

Monthly reporting on building and maintenance conditions is another important leasing-service task that she manages, using input from on-site staff. Another is managing the finances, of course, and yet another is tenant satisfaction, "since we are the buffer zone between tenant and landlord," she says.

Cara: From Steamships to Kelsey’s in 125 Years

06-18-07

Frank Prosia has a claim to fame. Actually it’s half a dozen of them rolled into one mover-and-shaker transport entrepreneur, who grew a small brokerage operation into a $45-million transport company in just 16 years.

But he’s expanding rapidly and is moving TransPro Freight Systems from five congested acres on Columbia Road to a 15-acre block in a Milton industrial park.

"Mississauga as a transport hub is second to none, with the huge airport and most of the GTA’s 400-series highways coming together right here. But land is getting far too expensive in this city," he says. "I bought into 15 acres in Milton at $275,000 per acre, or 60 percent less than in Mississauga."

He laments the move, but faced with the cost of paving the Mississauga property his strategy is to move to Milton instead.

Analysts who analyze what makes Prosia tick would have to say he’s a master at being in the right place at the right time with the right product and right thinking. For one thing, his purchase last year in Milton has already appreciated 27 percent.

For a second thing, Prosia has transformed the transport industry across Canada and along many major U.S. routes. Ninety-nine percent of his business is cross-border. Setting it all up was no easy task, but made less difficult by being a passion thing.

"Our heavily unionized trucking industry of the ‘50s to ‘80s was becoming extremely inefficient, especially during the recession and especially in Canada. Deliveries were tardy due to slow turnarounds, trucks flew empty and there were too many dedicated half-loads compared to LTL orders (less-than truckloads). Even the independent drivers were travelling empty for hundreds of miles per trip, as reflected in the high freight costs."

After a bit of brokering experience, building databases of drivers and small trucking companies and offering them LTL opportunities, Prosia realized he could not only lower freight costs dramatically for consignees, but increase profits and cost efficiency for truckers.

Eight months later, in 1991, he took on his brother-in-law as investor-partner: Joe Carusi from the tool-rental business. So far it’s been Carusi’s greatest financial move.

As an innovator, Prosia collected the freight charges, delivered his product and added brokering commissions averaging 15 percent. Small unionized shipping companies began dropping like flies. The industry was deregulated in 1987, to the point where transport insurance was still mandatory but not municipal, tribunal-type licenses.

"At first they (mostly the owner-operators) thought I was a fly-by-night, wheeler-dealer of a guy and didn’t trust me. Then they realized they were getting paid in 15 days. And manufacturers were delighted to see shipments coming in faster, mostly in only 25-percent of the time, and at 40 to 50-percent less cost."

Reducing inventory is a big cost-saver these days for manufacturers, distributors and retailers, and TransPro was able to help them with that. He became the patron saint of just-in-time delivery.

"The key was being able to handle small shipments and LTLs. We were just about the first to employ fax machines for contracts and confirmations, in 1990, and I guess I talked a lot of customers into buying them, even at three-thousand bucks apiece, and trashing their telex machines. In fact, we were using cell phones at that time – at very high per-minute rates but not out of line with costs of doing business. Four years later we were among the first users of sitcom, and of course, we now use computer programs and automated fax-messaging."

"The faxes were our only paper flow," says Prosia. "An early version of Word Perfect was our software, ruled notebooks were our spreadsheets, and we constantly had to turn away new customers. Of course we were rogues in a vastly unionized industry and the unions are counter-productive."

Third-party brokerage now rules 60 percent of Canada’s shipping including air and sea. "And 75 percent of the industry now is contract truckers," he said. TransPro grew into a network of 150 owner-operator truckers with Prosia and his staff doing brokering, marketing, logistics and contract-writing, sans the corporate livery. Less than a handful of similar brokerage houses existed in Canada in 1995.

"In the late ‘90s we saw many competing consignees wrestle for space on trucks that were mostly mine, or our network’s," he said. "So we started buying our own rigs and vans for LTL shipments."

Never expecting to grow so rapidly, TransPro has moved its base three times, and soon will take over the 15 acres at Highways 25 and 401 with an 80,000-square-foot building containing a garage, 15-bay terminal and a warehouse.

Says Prosia: "The high cost of land is a stifler of growth, and so is the gridlock for traffic eastbound from Milton or Mississauga. From Milton, just voted Canada’s fastest-growing city, we’ll be looking to southwestern Ontario for more of our shipping business -- in some neglected locations such as Brantford and Guelph. Brantford’s industrial base has tripled in just five years, for instance."

Prosia’s company has won two ‘top 100 fastest-growing companies’ awards from Profit Magazine (in ’95 and ’96), a MBoT "Business of the Year award (’98) and, almost, a Canada’s "Top 50 Best Privately Managed Companies" award. The firm also is well known for its support of United Way and Rotary charities.

06-09-06

By Rich Letkeman

Last summer the City of Mississauga's Community Services department passed a by-law to protect natural areas of the city, and Peel Environmental Network launched a website and youth-education program for litter awareness.

Moves like these have followed frustrated municipal attempts to reduce the growing litter problem in cities of southern Ontario. Wherever volunteers or city maintenance staff don't tread, litter is strewn on riverbanks, vacant lots and streets, getting wind-blown against fences and buildings and into alleyways, apartment properties and retail parking lots.

In industrial and commercial operations, trash collects along property peripheries when companies have no-one on clean-up detail. Kids throw garbage out of cars and school buses in spite of the lectures they get when they're caught.

The source of visible trash is the same as that which causes obesity: the glut of packaged junk-food products jamming the shelves of variety stores and gas-station snack shops and emanating also from ‘drive-thrus’. In the summer it's a predominance of pop (or beer) cans. In spite of enlarging the network of trash receptacles, municipal garbage services have a hard time facing Monday morning's trash.

Jim Wilson, vice-president in Royal LePage’s Office Leasing division, is a fly-fishing enthusiast who says urbanization usually spoils the ecosystem around waterways, raising water temperatures and allowing trees to be cut and natural habitats to be destroyed. "This could be changed by adopting the Bobby Kennedy school of sustainable planning and development," he says.

"I see garbage everywhere," says Len Yust, a member of Trout Unlimited Canada along with Wilson. "It pollutes the environment, it’s an eyesore, and many sections of Ontario streams have been closed to fishing because landowners were fed up with garbage strewn next to their properties. I strongly advise fishing hobbyists to pick it up when they see it and find a bin."

The future looks brighter when good news is announced -- as it was in Mississauga last year when long-term capital funding was allotted for naturalization of Credit valley lands. But the trash keeps reappearing.

Mississauga has revived the Litterbug Mascot (bug-clown) and "Don’t Be a Litterbug" campaigns, and by making the relevant logos, promotion and printed materials available to other municipalities, the city has ‘networked’ the program to at least 30 cities in southern Ontario. The program includes campaigns for by-law enforcement and youth education.

Through its Litter…Not program the city registers private-sector volunteer groups who wish to adopt districts of the city for scheduled clean-up, but it also focuses on people themselves as the real source of the problem.

Efforts of volunteer groups often fail because members expect too much too soon, rather than recognizing that the litter will return unless behaviour patterns are changed.

Residents in Japan, for example, don’t need garbage bins on the streets or retail areas: They carry litterbags with them at all times and take them home, acknowledging that nothing destroys a community’s beauty or property values more quickly than litter.

Motivators

So what is the best motivator for keeping things clean? Some say it's civic pride, which sees most adults picking up their own trash but not that of others, and doesn't take into account boys growing up alongside "macho" peer groups. Some say it's education, but that involves lectures, to which children (and others) respond by day-dreaming or dozing off. At youth outings, the females may put principles into action but the males are just as likely to 'suffer' through the event and then forget about it until some future time.

Some would say that enforcing stiff fines is the answer. But that would require Parks police whilst we already feel we're being controlled to death. Others would slap fines on the packaging industry for materials that pollute. But that means deleting the packages' preservative function and adding chemical substitutes to the "food".

Perhaps the best method of "keeping Ontario beautiful" would be for the provincial government to legislate that all businesses, condominium corporations, institutes and property owners must have designated or volunteer staff to pick up trash regularly in their exterior surroundings.

For youth who toss things helter-skelter, teaching discipline is the responsibility of adults, who should use a somewhat aggressive "Pick it up" command on these occasions.

Watersheds

Anyone noticing a figure bent over a storm drain late at night with a container of some kind should know what's happening -- The worst kind of "trash" too toxic for a toilet is being dumped into the watershed. -- and report it.

In the absence of legislation other than fines for littering and illegal disposal, the Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) Board for the past 20 years has supported people and groups contributing to the Credit Valley environment with advocacy, education, restoration, land donations and watershed conservation.

In Mississauga, Kirsten Burling and Audrey Oswald received CVC's top award last year for their 20-year stewardship of the Rattray Marsh Protection Association in coordination with the South Peel Naturalist Club.

Enthusiasts like Eugene Furgiuele and Gary Mascola have been recognized for educating youth and helping to restore valleys and ravines in the city. Cantox Environmental Co. has helped naturalize Levi Creek, and the Evergreen Foundation & Ecosource spearheaded fourteen clean-up events last year.

In a more sinister example, a Port Credit entrepreneur five years ago organized a Credit River clean-up "festival", selling sponsorships to more than 140 businesses and pocketing an estimated $40,000 -- just to send a dozen volunteers upstream one sunny Saturday afternoon to remove a few hundred pounds of junk from the riverbank.

In other examples, youth Stephanie Crocker from UTM coordinated the Peel Environmental Network and organized the Peel Environmental Youth Alliance, and youth Anna Przychodzki of Brampton co-founded the Brampton Sustainable Communities Collaborative with her principles of "Smart Growth".

Peel Environmental Network organized Ecobuzz education events for youth throughout Peel; Lorraine Symmes of Caledon organized the Credit River Alliance and proved herself as a key spokesperson for the "valley lands"; David Rutherford of Caledon donated time and heavy equipment to construct a ramp at Rogers Creek that reconnects a fish passage.

All of these private-sector efforts point to the likelihood that our governments either don't collect enough taxes for the environment or don't have it in their list of priorities.

Most people have too much pride to expose guests to their own unclean washrooms, but that pride doesn't tend to extend into the gullies, forests and natural surroundings of their own homeland.

The "trashing" of the urban countryside is rampant, leaving few places to sit in peace and/or meditate without surrounding oneself with garbage, and where there is no trash, city employees are probably busy, not far away, trying to keep up with it.

There are some professional environmental consultants in Mississauga for groups or companies seeking help with naturalness and rejuvenation:

Chemical Emission Management has "MPRI" emission-compiling software, professional pollution-prevention programs and assessment services.

Golder Associates specialize in restoration, environmental audits, site decommissioning services and groundwater management services, among other things.

KMK Consultants (Brampton) provide water and wastewater treatment services as well as land-development engineering expertise.

Pinchin Environmental specialize in controlling hazardous materials using environmental management techniques.

URS Dames & Moore Canada are familiar with brownfield redevelopment and site assessments, water resources and wastewater management. This company exists globally with 300 offices.

01-22-06

by Rich Letkeman

There's a new focus in Canadian universities, and particularly at UTM -- the University of Toronto at Mississauga. It involves forging direct partnerships between researchers and industry while measuring the real impact of research.

Without research, according to Prof. Ulrich Krull, who spearheads Life Sciences at UTM, "our economy and culture would lag seriously behind other Western countries. The future of any country is dim without institutions and innovation."

He says it's easy to compare university-research funding by dollar value alone (referring to UofT's $625-million receipts for funding in 2004). "But the intensity and impact of research are much less, say, in the Humanities field than they would be in the Medical."

A better gauge of impact is the output of publications within the institute and how quickly they are applied to industry and technology, says Krull. "UofT ranks about fifth in North America with the impact factor because it's rich in applied medical sciences and other disciplines, but to reap an impact we have to drill through continually into another dimension -- the real world."

As the former Dean of Science at UTM, Prof. Krull led UofT's western-campus expansion a few years ago by luring funds into the Life Sciences school, where he quickly developed the now-well-known Master of Biotechnology program. It is a "seamless" marriage between physics, life sciences and the biotech firms.

"I see it as the life-sciences version of Xerox's recently opened engineering "entrepreneurship" school at McMaster University. In fact the two schools are very much alike."

The biotech program draws on the ideas and experience of the biotech cluster in Mississauga. Taking time to incubate, it has evolved into a course-based graduate program that necessitates co-op job placements for students; with the required business background they work toward taking on leadership roles as scientists in the biomedical industry.

"To partner with industry we had to take the idea to CEOs of biomedical companies such as AstraZeneca and SmithKLine. The program hosts guest lectures not only from industry and government but from North American scientists involved in ground-breaking research, and from the student researchers themselves."

AstraZeneca, for example, now stages a seminar program on-campus that exposes students to skill sets for teamwork, leadership, communication and entrepreneurship.

The marriage between industry and institute led Prof. Krull into another idea: the UTM Convergence Centre. "Actually, I was asked to investigate how to make a bigger footprint in the community."

When UofT decided in the late '90s to expand east and west (to Scarborough and Mississauga campuses), funds became available to UTM for doubling.

"How to grow was the big question, and I seem to have answered it by proposing the Convergence Centre, where the university would take a leadership role by partnering more closely with the large, life-sciences business community."

Biotechnology was a working example of collaboration, he said. Then the Ontario government proposed catalyzing the biotech industry with research activity on grounds that the 'pharmas' were becoming a major economic engine for Ontario. The government launched a Biotech Cluster Innovation Program aimed at municipalities.

With Prof. Krull as director, the Convergence Centre was launched last fall to commercialize curricula, develop a research platform with hospitals and other institutions, and enhance the impact that research has on community services. This even includes the development of green space in the city.

"We've been extremely fortunate to have Hazel on our side," he says, "because no big-city mayor I'm aware of has her passionate interest in improving the quality of life for residents."

Krull mentions also that the life-sciences community in Mississauga has a large 'pipeline' to the World Health Organization that puts the city in more limelight than it otherwise would receive.

The government gave up its biotech-cluster idea because the designation excluded too many companies, and decided instead to invest in a Regional Innovation Network. This RIN funding supports the Convergence Centre's pursuit of enhancing community life-quality services.

But how to have more impact? "We've tied into UofT's medical school, with resources that help us develop research programming, alongside those of Credit Valley Hospital, for instance. We're plugging into numerous organizations whose systems integrate with common households."

"One thing we learned," says Krull, "is that Mississauga is not totally in control of its destiny; it relies on Peel Region for many community services such as hospital, police and water supply.

"So we've created the Healthy Cities Stewardship Centre to partner with all city and regional departments in programs that enhance all of the region's social services."

The Convergence Centre is fully functional in its present form, he said, and one of its partners is the new Mississauga's Technology Business Accelerator (MTBA), set up last year to help high-tech companies grow and stabilize their business environment. MTBA focuses on providing infrastructure services and educational-industrial partnerships.

Also, the centre is supported by technical services from outside, including methods developers, industrial engineers, consultants, software developers and accounting firms.

When he's not busy promoting the Convergence Centre, Prof. Krull is either meeting with his research staff or he's at his laboratory grindstone, working out how to build biosensors that detect a few molecules of harmful bacteria at a time rather than billions.

If his leading-edge biosensor gadgetry works the way he hopes it will, the world finally will have a way to find just a few molecules of "something" in airport luggage, find contaminants in food-processing plants, find chemicals and biochemical markers in air, food and water, and biochemical markers in the human body.

One of his former students, Lisa Studnicki with her firm GL Chemtec International, is developing molecules for use in future cancer drugs, and she is producing experimental, molecular 'glues' with the goal of finding one that will make Prof. Krull's micro-biosensors a reality.

The biosensor project receives funding from Genome Canada, Ontario's Agriculture ministry and others. "The challenge we're facing is taking biosensors right into the pathogen phase far too small for microscopes to discern. The Walkertons of the world -- in which only a few cells of E.coli can spell trouble -- will want to have these biosensors."

11-17-06

by Rich Letkeman

"What a difference a little TLC from caring residents can make," says Scott Plavnick, who helped spearhead efforts to transform an unsightly ravine into one of Mississauga's most attractive marshy wetlands.

Four years ago the acreage surrounded by subdivision homes under construction was a muddy, marshy expanse with a creek running through it and down into 16 Mile Creek. Today, Osprey Marsh boasts one of the four Mississauga 2006 Urban Design Awards of Merit.

Giving the award, the city lauded the Lisgar Residents' Association and Rotary Club of Meadowvale, along with the parks department staff, for their "community initiative of environmental significance".

The jurors in the awards program stated: "Osprey Marsh provides an excellent example of the positive outcome of engaging community in environmental stewardship and community design."

Reconstruction of an old concrete storm channel and transforming it into a "storm-water management pond", according to Mayor Hazel McCallion, "shows how urban design can contribute to the quality of business, residential and community life in Mississaga.

Said the jurors: "The project provides environmental benefits through the filtering of stormwater contaminants, and provides an opportunity to return fish and wildlife to the marshland. Through the addition of pedestrian pathways, extensive tree-planting, benches and sign plaques, the Osprey Marsh has become a well-used recreational jewel for the community."

The winner group was commended for creating an example of retrofitting existing, under-utilized natural resources.

The project could not have taken happened had the Lisgar residents not obtained a $74,000 grant from Trilliam Foundation, says Plavnick. "We finished planting in May of last year, with help from Allan Munro as president of the local Rotary Club. Before that, residents here at Lisgar were working together trying to clean and naturalize the green areas along the creek, and they discouraged an expanded concrete stormwater system in favour of a water-retention system -- a natural waterway broken into a series of ponds."

Plavnick says the ravine area, about two kilometers of it, used to be marshy and wet, but was neglected in its urban environment and left to the Lisgar residents, who formed an association in 1990 and worked around the ravine trying to groom it.

"Neil Evans was the founding president of residents' group, and one of our first discussions was how to guide the creek through the area in a natural way. There were a lot of small projects. TD Bank and Friends of the Environment joined in with assistance in the planting of trees, shrubs and flowers and other work. But a few years ago, when those sources were more or less played out, and while the city was installing more trees and greenery in the surrounding area thanks to residents' prodding, our association decided to get the Rotary Club involved and apply for a Trillium grant.

"What we got was much more money than anything the city's Forestry department could contribute. The paved path was built around the pond, benches were installed, trees and thousands of plants and flowers were put in by the City, and the whole place has been transformed into a thing of beauty."

The project did not involve any sodding or other artificial enhancements except for the paved pathway to keep the grounds in more pristine condition. "We were determined to naturalize everything. The city's Urban Forestry department helped us select plantings and wild flowers, indigenous trees and shrubs. In fact the city donates seedlings every year."

The result is stunning, according to Plavnick. "We now see the marsh in constant use, by residents, many immigrants, people who fish -- because there now is a lot of fish life in the ponds -- ducks and geese, at least a couple of herons. If a heron's in there, you know the fishing's good because the heron's there to eat.

"This marsh looks like a marsh, with lots of marsh grass, and it only took two or three years to mature. At the same time, it's a series of ponds, making up a natural water retention system that supports the marsh. The ponds replace what would have been a rapid storm-drainage system, so that water levels vary by a couple of feet depending on rain and dry spells. Heavy rain doesn't flood the ravine and take tons of silt down a spillway, but fills the ponds until they start joining, allowing the water to drain slowly. In dry periods, spits of earth jut out from the ponds, but a month or two of dry weather may expose the bottoms of one or two of the ponds.

"The difference between photographs taken today through your picture window compared to just four years ago is absolutely amazing," says Plavnick. "Formerly there was seldom anyone seen in this ugly ravine, but now there are hundreds of local residents who take daily promenades," says Plavnick. "Homeowners on three sides have a magnificent, colourful view.

And no one is surprised to see property prices rising, either.

04-23-07

By Rich Letkeman

Youth detention centres in Ontario are taking on a new look and name, although there is no firm nomenclature as yet, as long as they're not called "jails". An $81-million "campus-style youth centre" will soon be underway in Peel just north of Mississauga to replace several closed-down centres in Toronto area.

At the old Vanier Institute for Women, the site for the youth centre, protestors recently protested the provincial government's uninspired approach to how our courts should deal with severe delinquent acts by youth, rather than merely separating them from adult inmates in prisons.

Critics like to call the future Vanier a "superjail", but it's an "innovative, youth-focused, campus-style environment" for young offenders, according to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services (MCYS).

Even though Vanier is a mere 38 years old, only two of its buildings will remain and eight new ones will fill the landmark site, "because with some exceptions the former facility was aging and could not be retrofitted or renovated cost-effectively."

The $81-million price of obsolescence apparently will correct the lesser talents of prison builders of the past, and it will house 192 youths, costing $421,875 per inmate, plus perhaps $80,000 per year over the terms of their "rehabilitation".

But most of the public have little say in the matter – unless we’ve missed something, which we’ve been known to do. But the provincial government states that "The objective. . .is to offer a safe, secure and healthy rehabilitative living environment for [managing] youth in conflict with the law."

"It will address community safety needs while reducing peer-on-peer violence. It will create a normal environment for learning and rehabilitative programming while contributing to reducing recidivism."

It will follow LEED’s Silver-level green-design standards, save some of the trees on the site and, says MCYS, "provide screening of the facility to public sight lines". Does that mean it will be fully walled?

The GTA Youth Centre, also called GTA Youth Justice Centre, and recently referred to as the Brampton Youth Centre, arrived hardly noticed, and its (other) purpose is to try to turn "youths who get off to a rough start [into] productive adults".

Which is "one crux" of the matter, apparently. A lot of people prefer thinking that youths should be supported in a happy family lifestyle at first, then not to worry and just let them become productive naturally as they grow into adulthood.

A lot of them also think social programs, especially those having to do with parenting and encouragement, need more funding than jails. They say: "Imagine what could be accomplished with an $80,000 annual budget for each law-breaking youth who lacks that kind of support."

But then again, perhaps the MCYS has a new system: "[The centre] will provide detainees with rehabilitation, education and vocational services, housing and counselling". Or does conventional psychotherapy ever touch root causes?

The project is being managed by Infrastructure Ontario and partially financed by CIT Group Securities (Canada) Ltd. It’s probably part of Ontario’s five-year, $30-billion ReNew Ontario program.

There was some public involvement via discussion. One public meeting was organized just before sod-turning in March but actually turned out to be an Open House and public viewing instead.

A year ago, a vocal group calling themselves the 81 Reasons Campaign claimed they had to force their rights over an extended period to gain an audience with MCYS minister Mary-Anne Chambers, and failed, although at least they were acknowledged with snubs, lockouts and scoldings.

The protestors "crashed" a press conference but were ushered out by the OPP. They then returned for their personal effects but pulled out banners and vocalized their opposition to the project, causing media cameras to roll and flash in earnest.

"The Minister stated that locking young people up far from home does nothing to tackle root causes such as poverty, unemployment and racism facing youth every day – and that’s why we feel she shouldn’t be spending $81-million on a super jail."

Still, twelve "youth centres" were allegedly opened in Ontario last year and there now are 28, whose programs are said to include those we’ve already mentioned, plus anger management, employment skills "and other issues".

Sean Lee-Popham of 81 Reasons Campaign reiterates: "[The money] is [would have been] better spent focusing on the root causes of crime."

He had been hoping the Meffe inquiry of early 2006 that strongly recommended that youth not be held in large-scale prisons would be honoured. The Meffe conclusion resulted from Filippa Meffe’s suicide by hanging, after suffering tragic circumstances in the Toronto Youth "Assessment" Centre in Etobicoke.