Jail Baiting

More on WE-DRIC. That is the new jail proposed to be built here: the Windsor-Essex District Regional Incarceration Centre

Wow, the Star is really trying to put the heat on us local folks with that huge story about the Police favouring the Mayor’s preferred site. Ooops, I mean the preferred site of the Chair of the Windsor Police Services Board. Oh heck, what Eddie demands! I mean, what else would they say!

Trouble is, the big Star story was all scare. If you finally got through it to the end, you read:

• "The province recently announced it was going to upload the costs of prisoner transportation.”

Do you think the big cost differential would have been reduced if they used the actual price of gasoline today rather than $1.20 per litre

End of issue. Except there is MORE going on than we are being told I am sure. Surprise, surprise! This is Windsor after all. My fear is that if Eddie keeps mouthing off, Windsor will lose big time. Again!

Eddie Francis is an amazing guy. Not only is he the Mayor of the City of Windsor, Chair or member of various City committees but he is also a border operator, an airport operator, entertainment impresario, new business development promoter, land developer, cross-border financial guru in sophisticated financial deals, downtown visionary, road builder, advertising blitz expert and so much more.

In spite of all this, he has decided that he has the time to be a real estate agent as well. Not officially of course, because then he would need a licence but here he is helping private individuals sell their property. As the Star reported,

• "Even though the province backed away from its offer to buy city land in the west end, Francis said Thursday there may still be suitable private properties in the area, which police favour over the Azar property as the site of a new jail.
  
  "There are a number of privately held parcels of land that, perhaps, would be better suited than popping it into the area they're suggesting," said Francis."

I wish that Eddie had held up that sign as I requested when he made some of the comments in the Star story. Was he speaking as Mayor or as Chair of the Police Services Board? I hope he was doing it as Chair because otherwise he would be accused of making "planning considerations or judgement calls" without a Planning report in front of him.

I wonder who some of these private owners are. It would not surprise me if they are clever real estate people who can see which properties are the smart ones to buy before we mere mortals are aware of anything. I wonder if they were some of the people who bought land around the arena. You know who I mean. In Eddie’s words:

• "Shrewd investors [who] are already picking up properties."

The guy who has nerves of steel has to be Tony Azar. From my limited experience, land developers are very smart operators. They have to be tough as nails in their land dealings because this is a very difficult business. It must be very hard these days to get financing for projects given the meltdown in the economy and yet they have to buy land today for developments years from now.

Yet here he is in a Star story not blowing up because this deal may fold on him but saying very calmly:

• "I believe in the system and we'll let the system work itself through," he said. "We have a good system in our country and we'll see where that takes us."

What a terrific attitude to have. However, I have practised litigation long enough to feel a lawsuit coming if the City is the cause of the Province not buying the property that they seem to want to buy.

If Mr. Azar wants to guarantee that the jail will go on his property, all he needs to do his start a rumour that the Province is considering moving the Jail to the empty Project Ice Track land in Tecumseh. Isn’t there a couple of hundred acres there? If that story hits the Star, then there is no doubt that the Mayor and Council will do everything in their power to ensure that the Jail is built where the Province wants it to go now.

To be quite direct about it, the terms upon which the land is held seem very onerous to me but then again I’m not in the land development business. I do not know if these terms are the norm these days are not. However, if the land deal falls apart, then look at what the claim for damages could be:

• Since it seems unlikely that the land would be sold otherwise because of the poor economy, "a "fixed bonus" of $1 million is due to the lenders if the property doesn't sell within five years.
• There would be a huge claim for interest at the rate of 10% until the property is sold
• I do not know how many acres were purchased but it appears that the package being offered for sale was about 60 plus acres. We are told that the purchase price of the land is $1.5 million or about $25,000 an acre yet some acreage in the area sold for between $4-$500,000 an acre in the area. The Jail itself would be about 30 acres and there would be a gigantic loss if the land was sold ultimately for less sometime in the future assuming that it even could be in this horrific market.
• If the mortgages on the land of the $3.2 million and $600,000 went into the default because of the lack of sale, that could be another claim as well perhaps.
• Of course, some amount would have to be taken off the damages because of the "bonus - ten per cent of the net sale price - if the property is sold."

While there might be other heads of damages, you could see that the claim could be quite substantial. Mr. Azar would claim the damages as a result of the lost sale and would even get to keep the land too.

Of course, someone has to take the blame for this if there was litigation and the case was lost.

Naturally the word blame and Eddie Francis do not go together. He has a legitimate position about the transaction that he has told us on a number of occasions except for the uploading of costs it seems:

• "locating a jail in "a heavy commercial area like that "would "cause problems" and increase prisoner transportation costs."

As I Blogged before:

• "He could have come up with the solution that the Chief did which was to ask the Province to pay for the costs. Instead, he whined and was a naysayer."

But that is nitpicking. Eddie has a perfect alibi, if I can use that word.

Unfortunately the finger of blame will be pointed at the Councillor who seems to be getting most of the publicity about this matter, Councillor Marra. He has taken a very reasonable and legitimate position that people want

• "full disclosure… they want to see the information that was used that allowed them to conclude this to be the preferred location."

He also has a very legitimate position with respect to planning matters respecting the lands that were taken over by the City of Windsor

• "there would be "a very clear process" of proper planning guidelines established before any development proceeded -- "and then we have this."

However, do you think anyone will care about Bill’s reasoned approach when the Province has had enough of the City of Windsor and decides to pull this project from this City and out of the region. They’ve gone through years of torture with respect to the border road and they certainly do not need this on top of that. The Premier is not going to be that friendly to a City that keeps poking him in the nose when he tries to give us money.

We will lose hundreds of construction jobs, the permanent jobs needed to run the jail and we will not have access to all the professionals who will be required to provide services for the jail and its inmates. Several hundred people a day need to be fed and clothed and looked after. Local tradespeople will also lose out.

When I said in my recent Trifecta BLOG that Councillor Marra would get "shafted," I did not think it would happen this quickly. Being blamed for huge potential damages in the lawsuit and the loss of the project and jobs would be almost fatal to any chance that he had to be the next Mayor of Windsor.

Where however is the "MORE" part? Azar’s land parcel for sale is slightly over 60 acres. The jail would only require about half of that amount of land. If the Province is buying the entire site, and none of the Star stories have mentioned that for some reason, than there are about 30 acres of land left.

In these days of economic distress, I would not expect that the Province would buy more land than they need. Accordingly something is going to be done with those other 30 acres. Presumably they are going to be redeveloped for Provincial purposes.

I was scratching my head trying to make some sense out of this when I happened to remember my drive to London recently when I had to go to a hospital there for a family medical reason. Just as one turns off Highway 401 and hits Exeter, there is the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre at 711 Exeter Road. It is a 450 bed maximum security detention residence, about one third bigger than what is being proposed for Windsor.

Guess what is very close to that building and our Mayor should be very familiar with the address: Southwestern Region office of the Ministry of Transportation at 659 Exeter Road where some of the senior DRIC people are located.

It is no wonder that there is so much conviction in their work!

In other words, it appears as if the Province could be planning a massive redevelopment including the jail and another Government Department at that site. Imagine the jobs and economic redevelopment that this could help bring to this City. Talk about potential users and spenders in that commercial area of Walker Road if a big number of Civil Servants located there.

Isn’t that what the Mikhail Brothers have been advocating in the Henderson columns although obviously they would like the Province to move those workers downtown perhaps to fill up some of their empty space. However, jobs are jobs and that is what is needed in our area today.

• "The Mikhail brothers, who have a vested interest in this as office landlords, think the city should lean on its cabinet ministers to move a ministry or government department to Windsor to help the city withstand the shock waves as it tries to reinvent itself.
  
  Mikhail said the transfer of government jobs to Sudbury when the rock-bashing industries were in rapid decline played a key role in that city's turnaround. "One thing the politicians can do is relocate government jobs to distressed areas. That's something totally within their power." Mikhail said if the labour ministry and its 400 jobs had been moved here in the early 1990s, as promised, it would have made a difference.
  
  He believes the province could save significant money by moving workers to low-cost Windsor. For starters, he said, it would free up immensely valuable Toronto real estate and ease the burden on that city's clogged transit system."

Our Mayor is playing a dangerous game. Unless Councillor Marra is very careful, he might get blamed if the Province decides to pull out of this area and takes the jail jobs and whatever else might be going beside the jail out of this area and moves it to who knows where.

I cannot help but feel that this entire jail story is nothing but our Mayor negotiating on land values so that he can get a huge amount of money from the Federal Government for the Brighton Beach area based on jail land values negotiated with the Province and then trying to direct the Province as to where they should put their offices in Windsor. I wonder where he would want the development to go. I would expect to the downtown except is it the existing downtown or the "new" downtown next to the new East End arena?

My problem with all this is that Eddie is not that good a negotiator as we have seen from all of his failures. It is time that the Councillors found out what is going on.

Interestingly, inmates in these Detention Centres serve a maximum term of two years, less a day. Our next election is on November 8, 2010. Hmmmm similar maximum sentences for inmates and citizens!