By Pepper Parr
December 26th, 2021
BURLINGTON, ON
Part 3 of a 3 part feature on bringing the Commonwealth Games to the area.
Antonio Gomez Palacio was part of a delegation to a city Standing committee where the plans for bringing the 2030 Commonwealth Games were set out for public discussion.
Previously Louis Frapporti and Paul Paletta who is now President of Penta properties, owners of the land much of the Games activity would take place on, delegated. Links to their participation are set out below.
Thank you very much, Lou, (Louis Frapporti – Chair of Games Bid committee) and thanks to everybody.
We come into this very much from the perspective and the true belief that there is a tremendous opportunity through everything that we do to meaningfully improve the well being of community.
And as Lou described, this sense of greater purpose is what aligns the initiative that brings us all together, but ultimately is the guiding post that we’re using as we continue to move forward.
In doing this, we’ve also partnered with the Conference Board of Canada and building on a foundation of research that they’ve been doing for many, many years that culminated in 2018 on the publication of the community well-being framework, but has continued to be a huge part of the research, and has developed a series of evidence based indicators around how we can design and plan communities and environments and parks.
In a way that truly and meaningfully improves the well being of communities. The Conference Board through the Commonwealth Games will continue to be involved and refine and nuance with city input and from your own staff and your own community.
The indicators that we will be using so that we can continue to bring evidence into the entire planning and design process. And of course, City of Burlington already has a tremendous amount of really good thinking that we’re keenly aware of and we want to make sure is brought forward in everything that we’re doing. Your newly minted Official Plan and the work that is being done around major transit station areas and many of the initiatives the city are bringing forward and many of the priorities that you’re bringing forward.
So through the Commonwealth Games, we’re currently in the process of starting to identify and elicit interest in all of the different opportunities that may exist for specific sites, then use interventions, programming, all these kinds of things, which is where the very excitingly opportunities exist.
There’s an enormous amount here to unpack and we have no hope of having you fully understand the opportunity on a call of this length. So we’d be delighted to make ourselves available for independent or other discussions with you to explain further what it is that we have in mind. But the one point I would make is as you’re trying to understand what this means, is that we’re talking about a specific development site as part of a Commonwealth Games. In the very early stages of our work it was made very clear to us that bids had failed principally for a couple of reasons.
One, there was really insufficient private sector support. And number two, you had a small group of bid proponents or enthusiasts who created a bid without really consulting with the broader community and simply asked the broader community to accept or support their bid. What we felt in consultation with the Commonwealth Games Foundation (CGF) was that a way to differentiate the bid is not to start with what the bid people want, but to identify with communities that would be impacted by the bid want, and then to make that the bid and the way to do that and activate that necessarily depends on private sector, land owners, private sector developers and other organizations to step up,
And there are three catalyst projects of which the King Road site would be one. The other is the downtown Hamilton redevelopment project and the third is a large redevelopment project in the city of Brampton.
Highway 403 was mistakenly labelled Highway 401.
So the question then becomes what is it we would wish to have here at present. The CGF has not finalized its sports program and very helpfully, they’ve indicated to us that they have considerable flexibility around the sports that are included.
We had initially thought that Burlington would be the site and home of lawn bowling in the initial bid relating to 2030. We’ve since moved profoundly beyond simply having lawn bowling in the city of Burlington to explore with you a variety of different opportunities that relate to sports and recreation, infrastructure and facilities.
Both discussions have already involved partnerships with post secondary institutions around the site. We’ve discussed and are having consultations with leading advanced manufacturing innovators who might be interested in being a part of this catalyst project. Of course, as Paul alluded to, we’re very focused on integrating innovative, thoughtful level affordable housing initiatives into the site and beyond as part of the accommodation programming for the games. But in creating housing inventory, that would be available as of 2030, and very notably creating really an internationally significant and thoughtful blending of the natural heritage in the region, to the development, recreation and sport. assets that we hope to create
Burlington as an International Centre for Gymnastics Excellence?
Among the opportunities open to us are discussions that I’m currently having with respect to a number of sport organizations, track and field in athletics is searching for new Canadian national home. And as Canada is interested in international home, there were a variety of organizations that would be very interested in gymnastics, for example, in creating a centre of excellence for facilities in the city of Burlington, both projects would absolutely require the support of the private sector in the support of senior levels of government, and should any of those projects be of interest to the city of Burlington, being potentially located in the King Road site or otherwise?
We’d be delighted to advance those conversations on your behalf with you with those sport organizations and senior levels of government as an element of the big but at all events. We’re not prescribing that you do anything in the city of Burlington we’re looking to commence a process that we call the framework in that exploring what might make most sense for the citizens in the community.
One of the most exciting opportunities that we have that we’ve been working on now with with Paul and others for the better part of a year and a half, is in partnership with academic institutions creating a new and innovative ecosystem in the digital economy centered on gaming, and all elements of gaming, graphic design, coding and programming.
eSports is well entrenched amongst students – many parents have yet ti hear about it – including Burlington’s Mayor
And rather than creating a facility around the gaming, creating an ecosystem that collides all of the capacities, experiential learning, technical skills, training and private sector partners, as part of the development project at King road in the coming months. Having engaged Deloitte and their national gaming practice consultancy practice, to provide us with modeling around this. We really look forward to carrying on that conversation with you and what might you say. Does eSports have anything to do with the Commonwealth Games? The Commonwealth Games has announced its desire to integrate eSports and gaming into the Commonwealth Games as an element of those games as all of the major gaming properties are doing.
And we’ve decided to embrace this given what it means from a skills training and economic perspective as a key element of our work here around the 2030 bid. And we see Burlington potentially as incredibly significant place that combine young people skills training experiential learning and economic investment in digital media or digital gaming as a potential element of this development.
So to conclude, we see the games is focused on sustainable development, wellness and well being as providing all of us with an opportunity to collaborate on attacking some of the biggest challenges of our time and doing it on the world stage, giving the city of Burlington an opportunity to be seen by over 70 countries a billion and a half people and not just in 2030, but in the years leading up to it as the centre of activity around the delivery of something that’s internationally innovative in its approach to combining private sector development, a variety of new and different stakeholders to the return of the games 100 years after their birth.
Related news stories:
Burlington learns about plans for bringing Commonwealth Games to Hamilton/Burlington.
Paul Paletta now President of Penta Properties
