REGINA – City council has given its stamp of approval to the Brandt-REAL deal.
By an 8 to 3 vote, council voted in favour of the recommendation from Executive Committee for Brandt Properties Ltd. to purchase and take over a large number of assets from REAL District, including the Brandt Centre, the Agribition Building, Canada Centre Building, the Queensbury Centre and a number of other buildings as well as a portion of the parking lot.
Under the deal Brandt buys the properties for a purchase price of around $6.5 million, but also takes on responsibility for $79 million in capital repair liabilities for the buildings they are acquiring, as well as responsibility for 700 REAL District employees. The details of the actual sale agreement will be hammered out by administration between now and June 30, according to the City with the sale of assets proceeding in stages starting in July and then September.
Mayor Chad Bachynski, who was one of the eight council votes in favour, spoke to reporters afterwards about the approval of the deal.
“It's a big decision. It's a big decision for a city, but for me, how I as the Mayor made this decision was looking at the pros, the cons, and the risks,” said Bachynski.
“And when I look at the proposal that was in front of us and the path that we were currently on and essentially the status quo, I believe this is a huge step forward in getting us out of a riskier business and addressing a lot of our infrastructure deficit that is encompassed into that campus and really creating a transformational opportunity for our city, partnering with Brandt and the vision that they have around that district.”
The approval of the sale of assets to Brandt follows years of mounting financial losses at REAL District. Brandt already has connections to the REAL District as owner of the WHL's Regina Pats, the major tenant of the Brandt Centre, as well as owner of YQR Distillery.
Brandt’s CEO Shaun Sample was on hand along with members of his family to make their final presentation to council in favour of the deal. After the final approval came, he told reporters he was “very happy, very happy that it's gone through.”
“It's been a long process, the last six months getting to this point, but we were confident after the Executive Council meeting that it would go through, and tonight was even better.”
As for why they wanted to do this deal, Semple said they had “been a partner in the park for 20 years.”
“So over the 20 years, you know, we haven't seen much progress. The city needs it, the Pats need it, our fans and the community need it, and if it wasn't us, who was going to do it?”
Semple added that “Regina's been very good to us and to our family. This is our way of giving back. We hope that it'll work out great for everybody included, and it will take the support of the community in order to do it. But we're committed to making it work.”
As for criticism that the deal favoured Brandt too heavily, Semple said “this is a tough, tough business. It's a tough business when it goes well.”
“… You have to, first of all… pick the entertainment. You have to make sure that it doesn't rain on, you know, the Memorial Cup Day like it did, right? Things can happen. So, you know, I think at the end of the day, this is not a get-rich-quick scheme at all, and in fact, I think we've got a lot of work to do over the next couple of years.”
Semple also acknowledged that it took a bit of a selling job among members of the family on the idea of taking on the REAL District properties..
“There's a lot of risk to it,” he said. “Reputationally, there's a lot of risk to it. It's hard to satisfy everybody, you know. We're going to try, but it's more public than what we're used to, right? So that was one of the considerations in doing it.”
As had been the case at Executive Committee the week before, council presentations and discussions on the Brandt proposal took several hours, with council hearing from 13 delegations speaking on the issue both pro and con.
Among those presenting were two former Mayors, Pat Fiacco and Michael Fougere, who spoke in favour of the deal.
The council discussion that followed was extensive, but in the end most council members pretty much followed along the same voting lines as they had done at Executive Committee the previous week.
The one council member who did switch to a “yes” vote was Ward 3’s David Froh. Earlier, Froh moved an amendment which called for recommendations from administration for an asset management reserve for the capital repair and refurbishment of the Co-operators Centre and AffinityPlex. Those are city-owned assets which remain with the city as part of the Brandt deal.
That amendment motion from Froh got wide support and council voted in favour by an 11-0 vote.
Mayor Bachynski said the amendment “completely aligned with my view on where we do need to put money in the reserves to look after these assets, so that way we don't see diminishing assets and that kind of thing happen over time like we've seen in the past. So, supportive of the amendment and the concept of reviewing that and having that information come forward at budget time.”
Another amendment from Councillor Shobna Radons called for administration to bring an annual report to give an evaluation on the status of the community commitment performance measures in the agreement, and considered in future requests for continued tax exemptions. That ended up passing 7-4.
In the end, most councillors stuck to their familiar positions on the Brandt deal. Councillor Radons, as well as Councillors Victoria Flores and Shanon Zachidniak, remained skeptical of the overall deal and once again voted no. Zachidniak said she couldn’t vote in favour, saying she was “not given the information” to make a decision.
Those councillors who voted in favour included Ward 4’s Mark Burton. He said he received “very little negative opinion” from those in his ward, and he noted due diligence had been performed and administration would continue to work on the deal.
“Let the word go forth that Regina city council is prepared to take the bold steps to address problems and not delay or kick the can down the road.”
Ward 2’s George Tsiklis said the deal "transfers the substantial infrastructure deficit risk away from taxpayers while delivering major recreational upgrades that will directly improve the lives of Regina residents and visitors. We will see more sports, more recreational opportunities, more entertainment, concerts, more rodeos, more farm shows, and greatly enhanced food and beverage options."
Tsiklis said he was “voting in favour of this historic opportunity and expect great things to come. Let’s get to work.”
For Mayor Bachynski, he was relieved to see the months of negotiations finally reach the point of approval.
Bachynski called it a “heavy six months looking at the progress of these negotiations,” saying hundreds of hours and lots of expertise has gone into it.
He said that “ultimately I'm excited that we're moving forward because I really believe this is a huge step forward, a transformational step forward for our community and a District that can be something so special for everybody that live here.”
Bachynski said the agreement was a “long way from where we started, like any negotiation.”
“But ultimately we were, you know, brought along the journey as the details were flushed out, and the gives and the takes on both sides were flushed out as it went along.”
