"Put Real Estate Interests First" Coalition, part two: ZAS, Hick and Lloyd get into the act

Prior to this past summer, Brendan Moher was known to the Peterborough public as a nominee for the federal Liberal candidacy for the 2008 election, a position which had also been sought by none other than Lakefield real estate agent and KPR Chair Diane Lloyd, but which was won by Trent University researcher Betsy McGregor.

While the rest of us were enjoying the cottage this past summer, ZAS Architects were raking in $27,000 of your tax dollars to estimate what it would cost to relocate the Board offices to the TASSS site, a proposal that never rang true from the moment it was made.

Hick, as reported by the Examiner, had shaken his head at the May 12 meeting at PCVS when the idea was brought up and said that the Board had no plans to move its offices. At the June 23rd Board meeting, Hick stated again that the Board was “not trying to move” its offices from Fisher Drive.  Indeed, the case for retaining TASSS had supposedly been on the basis of its facilities for educational purposes, not administrative, and the location of TASSS at the opposite end of the city from the current Fisher Drive office made no sense, given that Fisher Drive had been chosen for its quick accessibility to the highways in and out of town, accommodating staff who are obliged to administrate the entirety of the KPR jurisdiction.

ZAS is a high-profile, upscale, internationally-based architectural firm known for having designed the massive towers and waterfront complex in Dubai. Check their sumptuous website here.

They also designed the Hershey Centre sports complex in Mississauga, the Honda Canada headquarters in Markham, and the Bill Crothers School for Athletics in Unionville, Ontario, a bedroom community north of Markham awash with money.

          

 The Crothers facility was built at a cost of $36 million by none other than Hick’s former employer, the York Region School Board, and named after a former Board chair. The glossy, 87-page report regarding renovating TASSS for office use is posted on KPR’s website. You can read it here.

Feel free to skip down to the end of the document to see the final numbers. What you’ll see is an estimate of about $2 million in basic upgrades and asbestos removal and another $10 million in direct renovation costs. Together with other expenses, the total reaches beyond $15 million.

Let’s put these numbers in perspective. Since school building costs in general are estimated between $120 and $150 per square foot, and the Ministry of Education’s funding formulas call for 120 square feet per student, a brand new school for about 1000 students could be built for about $15 million. The value of the current Board office at 1994 Fisher Drive, by comparison, is about $5 million, as acknowledged in the KPR press release regarding the ZAS study on September 16, which was issued by Diane Lloyd herself.

Hick stated in the release that the estimates were “far from what we reasonably or conservatively thought we might expect.”  Hick and Lloyd gave the impression that they had no idea that engaging one of the highest-profile architectural firms in Toronto accustomed to cutting-edge projects with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars would result in a sky-high estimate.

Both Hick and Lloyd state in the press release that they wanted to “share this information with the community.”

But the information wouldn’t be “shared” until a Friday just 13 days prior to the Sept. 29 Board meeting at which they would be pressuring Trustees to make a decision regarding the proposed school closure. Delivered on a Friday, this meant that concerned citizens had exactly one business day to digest the news before the deadline for registering to address the Board at that meeting.

Lloyd was reported by the Examiner to have called the report “a game changer,” conveying surprise at the news, and repeating that “we wanted to get the message out as quickly as possible,” making it seem that KPR was presenting the information in a timely fashion, when in reality the study had dragged on for months and was finally being released with almost no time for anyone to respond.

Surely Diane Lloyd's careers in industrial accounting and real estate sales would have provided her with enough knowledge of building costs to make it obvious to her that:

a) using ZAS would produce a ridiculously high estimate,

b) the Fisher Drive location was far more suitable for Board offices than the TASSS site, and that

c) three new office buildings could be constructed for the price ZAS estimated for the TASSS renovation.

So why did Lloyd play along all summer, then express surprise in September?

And what about the $2 million worth of property along Armour Road, almost right beside Moher’s holdings, that she has listed on her real estate website for sale on behalf of the Peterborough Christian Fellowship?

"Put Real Estate Interests First" Coalition, part one: Brendan Moher joins in the fun

At the May 26 Board meeting, Don Blair presented the contradictory ARC report. But before he could, Trustees had to sit and listen to a steady stream of irate citizens, including some members of the ARC itself, who complained to the Board of the farce that the ARC had been made into.

Just four weeks later, on June 23, Rusty Hick, ignoring the only significant recommendation made by the ARC, which was to close a school as a last resort, and ignoring also the legitimate concerns expressed by many members of the ARC, who had refused to support a recommendation which would simply gave Hick carte blanche, came back to the Board with his preliminary decision to close TASSS and commission a $27,000 study to examine the possibilities of moving the KPR offices to the TASSS site.

This set up a summer of suspense for the people of Peterborough as they waited to see what would develop prior to the Board meeting in September, at which time a final decision was expected to be made.

It also set in motion a group disingenuously called the “Put Students First Coalition.”

“I don't think anybody was expecting” the decision to close TASSS,  said Brendan Moher, the driving force behind “Put Students First,” as reported in this Examiner article. “It came out of the blue.” 



In fact, many Peterborough citizens close to the process knew that TASSS had the fastest-declining enrolment, greatest costs to operate, and most inaccessible location of any of the four secondary schools, and had deduced that if KPR was intent on closing a school, despite the fact that nobody in the community wanted one closed, TASSS would be the logical choice.



What most citizens didn’t know, however, was that the proposal to close TASSS may not have been entirely genuine. They didn’t know that the “feasibility study” around moving the Board offices to the TASSS location appears to have been intended to show that it wouldn’t be feasible.



And they didn’t know that Brendan Moher himself owned $2 million worth of rental and business property within a stone’s throw of TASSS.



The same Examiner article indicates that KPR administrators had already “suggested an alternative plan of closing PCVS and moving that school's integrated arts program to TASSS,” dovetailing exactly with the vision Moher would spend the summer promoting.

As later observed by one community member in a letter to Peterborough this Week, the organization was not a broad-based coalition but actually a small group acting in its own interests. The group appears to have been largely driven by Moher himself, a TASSS alumnus, real estate lawyer and neighbourhood land-owner. Although ARC member Tammy Salem was ostensibly the group’s chair, Moher and former TASSS principal John Ringereide were its primary spokesmen.

On its website, press releases, and letters to the editor, the group never failed to put the word “grassroots, community-based” behind its name, giving the impression that the group was much more broad-based than it actually was. Moher and Ringereide led the public-relations campaign to promote a new “vision” of a “merger” of TASSS and PCVS student communities at a newly-renamed “Peterborough Academy of Arts, Science and Technology” using the existing TASSS facilities, as documented here.

The group’s website states that “we owe it to current and future students to ensure their interests are the most important consideration in any decisions that affect them.”

The degree of hypocrisy in this statement can only be fully appreciated when one considers just how much civic and historical continuity would be eliminated, including not only the 180 years of PCVS history but also the recognition of Thomas Stewart himself as an important historical personage, partly in order to justify the protection and enhancement of the $2 million dollars worth of rental property in the immediate vicinity of TASSS.

Moher's real-estate law office is located in a small commercial plaza at 880 Armour Road, just a few minutes walk south of TASSS on the other side of the street. It is one of the only commercial properties in the area, which is dominated by condominiums and the Peterborough Golf and Country Club. The Auburn Mills Plaza, as the property is known, was assessed by MPAC for 2011 at a value of $800,751, and is owned by Moher Development. In addition to the ground-floor businesses, there are evidently several residential units upstairs.

Just up the road at 898 Armour, almost immediately across from the Auburn Bible Chapel, is another of Moher’s properties, held in his own name. Apparently a single-family home, it has no residential listing but is linked to Moher Development on several real estate websites. The property is assessed at $317,750.

And just around the corner, tucked away where Vinette St. meets the Rotary Trail, a company called “Moher Celtic,” owns a large residential multiplex at 721 Vinette. That property is assessed at $759,500.

The Moher family have been landowners on the northeast of Peterborough for a long time, stemming from early settlement in the area of Douro. It has been reported that much of the condominium development along the west side of Armour Rd. occurred on what had been Moher property, and that the building currently housing the CMHA offices at 724 Paddock Wood was once a Moher family home. Some Mohers still live in the neighborhood.

Despite the relatively recent residential developments just off Armour Rd. around Frances Stewart and Scollard Drive, now virtually complete, it’s easy to see that the neighborhood is not economically “booming.” “For Sale” signs are clustered around the entrances to the condominium developments. Most of the area’s residents are retired, and the most popular spot is the Rotary trail itself. TASSS is by far the most significant institution in the neighborhood. Were TASSS to be shut down, there is little doubt that more “for sale” signs would accumulate and property values fall as property-owners tried in vain to sell residences without a school in the neighborhood.

One cannot blame Moher for trying to protect his $2 million in real estate assets and the considerable monthly rental income his many units bring in.

But is it not hypocritical to hide these business interests behind a facade of “putting students first,” and to use that facade to promote the closing of PCVS, an event which would negatively impact thousands of other residents, property owners and business owners in central Peterborough?

Moher’s failure to be up front with the public regarding his real estate interests in the TASSS neighbourhood undermines any credibility the “Put Students First” vision may have possessed. 

Moher and Ringereide vigourously promoted the idea of relocating the entire PCVS community to TASSS, promising that the “vision” they would unveil late in the summer to the Board would “create a buzz of excitement in the community.”

They failed to note that none of the PCVS feeder schools (Highland Heights, Prince of Wales, Queen Mary, Westmount) could or would be redirected to TASSS, thereby dispersing the PCVS community entirely. It appears that all they wanted was the Arts program, and they were ready to sacrifice the living being of PCVS itself to get it, and then throw the rest of the institution away. They seem to have tried to sell their idea to the public with double-speak, suggesting that “no school would have to close.”

Yet, obviously PCVS would be no more, and a 180-year-old institution, which had been the cornerstone of the city for as long as the city has existed, would simply vanish, partly swallowed by the drive to protect property investments.