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Beginning this week, Torontonians will start to hear a lot more from Sidewalk Labs Toronto as the company, a subsidiary of Google\/Alphabet, embarks on an extensive consultation exercise and charm offensive designed to not only solicit feedback on the firm\u2019s yet-to-be-revealed development plan but also embed itself in the city\u2019s social networks.<\/p>\n
Yet, even as this extensively promoted undertaking rolls out, questions continue to surface about both the geographical scope of Sidewalk\u2019s plans and the tendering process that Waterfront Toronto (WT) used to deliver this opportunity to a technology start-up with no previous land development track record.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one is a fairly radical departure from the way [WT] normally works,\u201d says York University business professor James McKellar, who is director of Schulich School\u2019s Brookfield Centre for Real Estate and Infrastructure<\/a> and sat on committees advising the agency on its requests for proposals for a dozen years.<\/p>\n The consultation\/outreach process, announced earlier this year, will have multiple elements:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These include everything from conventional public open-house-style meetings with break-out roundtable sessions to pop-up kiosks; the first sessions begin March 20. According to Peter MacLeod, who heads the consultation consultancy MASS LBP, Sidewalk will also run a \u201ccitizens reference panel,\u201d mirroring an approach that the City of Toronto has used in recent years, with groups of demographically representative participants selected from responses to a mass mailing within the city proper. Eighty volunteer workshop leaders have also been recruited to participate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Based on a call for applications, Sidewalk will recruit a dozen young Torontonians, ages 19 to 24, to take part in a summer program that will involve them being taken on an all-expenses paid research trip to five cities (New York, Boston, Vancouver, Amsterdam and Copenhagen). The goal is for the participants, who need not be enrolled in higher education, to produce a joint report on what other cities are doing with various smart city-style policies.<\/p>\n Sidewalk is footing the $12,000 cost for each participant and will provide further stipends in case of financial need. (Ryerson University planning professor Pamela Robinson, a Spacing<\/em> columnist, is an academic advisor for the project.) Asked how this initiative contributes to Sidewalk\u2019s consultations, MacLeod notes that it has been modeled on other local programs, such as CivicAction\u2019s Emerging Leaders Network. \u201cIt\u2019s not PR,\u201d he insists. \u201cThey\u2019re going to say some bold things\u201d in the final report.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The company and the YMCA of Greater Toronto will jointly run three one-week summer camp sessions, with all expenses covered by Sidewalk. Each one will have a dozen children, ages 9 to 12, who live in one of three neighbourhoods: St. Lawrence, St. James Town or Regent Park. Participants won\u2019t pay, but Leigh Coffey, the YMCA\u2019s manager of summer day camps, says the lottery selection is only based on home address, not financial need. Participants, she says, will spend half the day with members of Sidewalk\u2019s design team and the rest in conventional summer camp activities. Coffey says Sidewalk approached the YMCA with the idea.<\/p>\n Sidewalk, MASS and WT officials stress that the consultation and town hall sessions will be run using accepted transparency practices, such as making preliminary reports of public sessions available to participants so they can confirm accuracy. WT spokesperson Carol Webb says WT will be posting raw feedback to its November consultation session on a website in coming days.<\/p>\n Yet Spacing<\/em> has learned that Sidewalk is also continuing to invest in the PR required to broadly promote its efforts. For example, recently retaining Real People Casting, a local casting firm, to find \u201carticulate citizens\u201d willing to talk on camera about what makes Toronto work for a fee of up to $300. In the past few months, Sidewalk CEO Dan Doctoroff has also made appearances at well-attended local events.<\/p>\n What\u2019s less clear, however, is what, precisely, the participants in all these consultations are to be consulted about, at least initially.<\/p>\n While attendees will be canvassed about their views on the broad themes that have been part of SWL\u2019s public pronouncements from the beginning \u2013 affordability, mobility, sustainability and privacy, etc. \u2014 there will be little detailed information about development plans for Quayside, Sidewalk\u2019s pilot projects and the deployment of a network of sensors that will gather information about what\u2019s happening in the public realm. (WT has long-standing policies about affordable and mixed-income housing<\/a>, sustainability, and green infrastructure<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Sidewalk and City officials have been working behind the scenes on the details of the company’s pledge to invest US$50 on pilot projects over the course of this year, but spokesperson Dan Levitan said in an email yesterday that the company has “nothing to announce at this time.”<\/p>\n \u201cThe level of specificity at the public roundtables will track the coming into focus of our planning process,\u201d says Sidewalk\u2019s head of external affairs Micah Lasher. \u201cThe early discussions will reflect where we are.\u201d Development proposals and a business plan, SWL officials say, will only be released later in the year.<\/p>\n While Toronto developers working on large-scale projects have become ever more circumspect<\/a> about heading into public consultation processes with plans that look pre-cooked, there’s some evidence from other cities about what Sidewalk may have in mind.<\/p>\n Along with a few other giant tech players, parent Google\/Alphabet has been making vast real estate investments in creating tech campuses that are embedded in downtown areas, according to a report last week in CityLab<\/a>, which noted that Google has amassed 4.6 million sq.ft of owned or leased office space in Manhattan’s Chelsea district, including the recent $2.5 billion acquisition of the Chelsea Market building. CityLab also reported that Google has or is building large-scale urban tech campuses in several major cities, including Los Angeles, London and San Jose.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also still somewhat ambiguous whether the two parties\u00a0\u2014 which are aiming to complete negotiations on a proposed master innovation and development plan by year end\u00a0\u2014 are canvasing feedback only about Quayside, a 12-acre site at the foot of Parliament, or the much larger Portlands area to the east, which continues to figure prominently<\/a> in Sidewalk\u2019s online materials.<\/p>\n In a joint phone interview last week, WT and SWL officials stressed that the consultations will focus on Quayside. Indeed, as a city staff report<\/a> published in late January tersely noted, the master development plan will focus on Quayside because it is \u201cpremature\u201d to be looking at a wider implementation on the Portlands. (The report was referred back to city officials for further review).<\/p>\n Yet WT officials point to a qualifier in that report about how the two parties will also be exploring \u201copportunities to implement new technologies and innovations at scale.\u201d These likely include the deployment of automated transit vehicles, modular construction or district recycling systems. WT officials, however, declined to be precise about the size or location of the area required for \u201cat scale\u201d deployments.<\/p>\n York\u2019s James McKellar says WT and its board should clarify such ambiguities. \u201cWe don\u2019t really know what the winner [of the original Request For Proposals, held last spring] got.\u201d<\/p>\n When Sidewalk and Waterfront Toronto went public with the outcome last fall, officials on both sides stressed that all that had transpired was that the company had won the right to negotiate a proposed development plan, which WT’s board would have to approve. Sidewalk Toronto was describing the relationship as “a joint venture” on its twitter account until the bio line <\/a>was changed in response to questions today from Spacing<\/em>.<\/p>\n McKellar points out that in much of Europe, and increasingly in North America, governments seeking private partners to develop innovative solutions use what\u2019s called a \u201ccompetitive dialogue<\/a>\u201d tendering process. Under this approach, a select group of prospective bidders work closely over a period of time with the tendering agency to devise tailored solutions. Such procurements, he says, are favoured when the government agency doesn\u2019t know exactly what it wants. The key, he adds, is that the agency ultimately selects among competing bids. \u201cCompetitive dialogue would have been an excellent approach.\u201d<\/p>\n In this case, however, WT did chose from two bidding groups at the end of the RFP process, but opted to give only Sidewalk the opportunity to spend a year developing a proposed development plan. By only negotiating with a single entity, McKellar says, \u201cyou\u2019re putting yourself in a tough position\u2026 They could end up with the proposal that was turned down.\u201d<\/p>\n WT officials stress that the RFP that led to the Sidewalk deal was overseen by the agency\u2019s longtime fairness advisor, retired Ontario justice Coulter Osbourne<\/a>. He\u2019s not currently involved, however. \u201cWhat we\u2019re in now is the planning process,\u201d says WT\u2019s chief strategy officer Marisa Piattelli. \u201cI\u2019m not sure this is what we\u2019re looking for at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n McKellar has a different take because WT\u2019s counterparty is a company with very deep pockets and extensive experience in the technology sector. \u201cIt\u2019s not exactly a level playing field,” he says. “You\u2019re dealing with some pretty smart people.\u201d<\/p>\nPublic engagement sessions<\/h3>\n
An urban \u201cfellows\u201d program<\/h3>\n
A YMCA\/Sidewalk summer camp<\/h3>\n
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