Let’s just build it already

As I write this, Mayor Rob Ford and his executive committee have just voted 9-4 to open the door to a downtown casino, although the Star reports that new “no” votes increase the likelihood city council will kill the proposal. Council spent the morning questioning city staff, and in particular city manager Joe Pennachetti, who tabled a report itemizing 43 conditions he thinks council should impose if they grant approval.

The Star distilled them down to: money (hosting fees from OLG in the neighbourhood $100 to $148 million annually); the ability to attract the huge conventions we don’t have room to host now (also distillable down to “money”); jobs (estimated at about 10,000 net new jobs and 7,000 temporary construction jobs); size (OLG wants between 175,000 square feet and 250,000 square feet; city officials say a 135,000-square-foot gaming floor is plenty); location (now limited to Exhibition Place and the downtown core with the Port Lands off the table) and the “other” casino, with council urging support for an expanded gambling venue at Woodbine Racetrack, which already has 2,500 slots and could offer table games because it would fall in a different gaming zone than a downtown casino (it looks like council will support expansion at Woodbine).

Money and jobs are good, and downtown is where it makes sense, especially if we’re hoping to host some really big conventions. The size thing to me is just silly — reminds me of an old, slightly off-colour joke:

“Madam, would you have sex with me for $1 million?”

“Oh, sir, I suppose I would!”

“How about for $1?"

“What do you think I am?”

“I think we’ve already established what you are. Now we’re haggling for price.”

Whatever damage a casino might do, it’s immaterial whether it’s laid out over 175,000 or 135,000 square feet. Seems like a puritanical grasping at moral straws. More square feet will not change the nature of the casino or the neighbourhood, so why not make more money and not look back with regret in 10 years, wishing we’d gone bigger in the first place?

Can we please just get the deal done already? Toronto is a city of (not even including all its ‘burbs) nearly three million people. It has the diversity, the wealth, and the social services in place to support a casino, and if we’re ever to stop being relegated to poor relation status behind New York, LA, and Chicago on the chic & cosmopolitan scale, we’re going to have to stop acting like colonials. Remember not that long ago when you couldn’t shop on Sunday? Loosen up, people. You don’t have to live next door to it. (And if you already do, take comfort in the fact that casinos statistically usually bolster property values. Sell and move up!) We haven’t had a real commercial game-changer in this city for years. Let’s build ourselves a spectacular downtown convention centre and casino resort, and instead of running off to Vegas to lose our money, keep it a little closer to home.

City council is expected to make a final decision next month.

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Non-competition suit fails to rock resale world

The Competition Bureau this week lost its high-profile attempt to make the Toronto Real Estate Board make it easier for web-based brokerages to compete. The case resulted from the Bureau’s decision that he TREB, which represents about 35,000 agents to make it Canada’s largest real estate board, was keeping data about home sales away from online services that compete with its agents, i.e. eat into their commissions.

The Bureau said the case has now been dismissed. A decision has been pending since the matter was heard by the Competition Tribunal last fall, but this week, the Tribunal released a brief saying that the Bureau had filed the case under the wrong section of the Competition Act and may have been more successful under a different section.

TREB says it is upholding privacy laws and protecting the personal information of home buyers and sellers, but the information it purports to protect — accurate, current information about previous listings and previous sales prices — is available from an agent in person, by email, fax or phone, but just can’t be looked up online by the consumers themselves. The Bureau says the real estate board as operator of the Multiple Listing Service system is anti-competitive because new online services cannot post online data about what homes have sold for in the past.

The question then becomes, how much value does a real estate agent or broker add to the transaction? There’s no question that negotiating the world of legalities and counter-offers is not for the layperson, but are we approaching a day when consumers can do all the preliminaries online, and just hook up with an agent for the short period of time when an offer is on the table?

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OHBA says home starts stabilizing

The Ontario Home Builders’ Association (OHBA) said this week that the number of homes being built in Ontario is returning to a “relatively stable” number after a year of extreme speculation. Urban centers that have shown a good deal of new growth include Barrie, Guelph, Oshawa, Hamilton, Peterborough, St. Catharines-Niagara, and Windsor. The data for January to March saw 10,972 new home starts versus 16,045 last year (and 10,914 during the same period in 2010).

The OHB predicts 65,000 new homes will go under construction in 2013, illustrating increased confidence by builders in the home sales market. Ontario’s new home industry employs 325,000 people and makes more than $42 billion annually.

billion annually.