Rhino's Ramblings - Media Negotiating

By Robert Thomas - Opinion/Commentary

For a deal that looks like a “no brainer” in the community this past week’s negotiating through the media between the City and Carpere Canada is the stuff of mystery.

How can the City turn down such a lucrative deal for the the city? What is City Hall trying to do chase away more business that wants to come here? These guys Downtown don’t know how to negotiate? Why does Carpere want to get the land for nothing? Why don’t they pay what the land is worth and give us a 100 percent non-refundable deposit? What is going on here?

Those are just some of the questions I heard while out and about the town over the past few days. It is a chorus of confusion in the community as people are trying to decipher exactly what is going on.

So what is really going on here?

I can tell you what I know - gleaned from Freedom Of Information requests, recent developments, well placed sources and of course my own gut feelings stretching back almost 30 years ago when I worked at the paper.

To get to the bottom of it you have to have some background and that is in the beginning Carpere and the City had what I would have to call a whirlwind romance. Carpere came to Moose Jaw full of big promises and stories of upcoming massive economic development. Potential development to the tune of over a billion dollars.

Where Carpere was going to get the money or rather the firms to set up in the friendly city’s new industrial park was notoriously left out of the equation but all signs pointed to China. Some of it likely potential economic immigrants as on the Chinese version of Carpere’s web-site there was a major section dedicated to Immigration and investors.

Little old Moose Jaw was set to finally become an economic giant in the province. We were going to get not only agri-food plants but research, manufacturing and even a Chinese water garden right here in the middle of the dry Canadian prairie. An economic dream come true.

The whirlwind romance even had an $1,100 fancy dinner where the parties enjoyed the finest food and beverages Moose Jaw had to offer in a private exquisite board room at the Grant Hall Hotel. All paid for with Mayor Fraser Tolmie’s City-issued credit card.

The deal was struck and the elopement was set the following day with Carpere agreeing to buy 780 acres of land at $10,000 per acre and an off-site levy just shy of $50,000 per acre. A princely sum in Moose Jaw bucks.

But then just as suddenly as the deal was struck the marriage could not be consumated as Carpere balked at the off-site levies and walked away.

I suppose in common terms it is sort of like eloping and then finding out your future husband cannot afford the gas to get to another city to marry in front of a marriage commissioner let alone afford a half decent ring.

So Carpere this Spring walked away from the deal.

And then like a love starved child Carpere reappeared with a new deal for a massive, although scaled down version of the original development offer.

The City balked at the second proposal as in reality it was nothing more than the initial deal Council had rejected as overly generous and ordinary taxpayers paying for a large firm with international connections to set up shop.

Last week the offer grew and this time Carpere had a signed promise in the form of a Memorandum of Understranding (MOU) from an unnamed agri-food processor to set up shop in Moose Jaw. The details are still sketchy but for now Carpere expects the public - who they now seek support from - to take at face value.

In the shadows Carpere was also working on a second deal involving the Province and have right now a conditional deal to purchase the lands which once housed the Valleyview Centre. But to get that deal done they also need some upgrades to the City’s infrastructure such as construction of a lift station and reservoir in the city’s southeast. Upgrades also essential to the reconstituted deal with the City.

It all seems so simple take $6 million from the off-site levies Carpere is now prepared to pay and build the required reservoir and lift station.

But there is a big catch here.

Since Carpere backed away from the initial deal, including the City paying half of the cost of the new water line to the South East Industrial Park for $3 million, the land’s value has now gone up and the City wants that reflected in the sale price. The raw undeveloped land worth $10,000 an acre is now worth $200,000 per acre as it is now developed to some extent. It is an offer Carpere has refused.

With time running out on the closure of the Valleyview property deal - now extended to September 30th - Carpere has taken their case to publicly negotiating through the media.

And in this Carpere has brought out local heavyweight Deb Thorn to help in the media campaign to in my opinion garner public support and make Council crack under the pressure with a civic election looming in November.

For me it is like a ticking time bomb.

If this deal and the subsequent Valleyview deal collapses then any politician seeking re-election is going to take the heat in November seems to be the negotiating strategy.

Lost in the mix is the City’s former contracted economic development officer Ms Deb Thorn. Thorn is a veteran to the politics of development in Moose Jaw and in my opinion an expert in using the local media to shape public opinion in a particular development’s favour.

In order to accomplish this you have got to not only control the narrative but you also at the same time must garner public support on your side.

To do this Thorn must somehow masterfully get not only Moose Jaw Today/Moose Jaw Express on board she also needs to get the radio stations/Discover Moose Jaw on board as well.

And this is where the great divide and the negotiating through the media comes into play.

Thorn’s problems with accessing her property, due to the closure of the 7th Avenue Bridge to vehicle traffic, has played out in what some might call an “epic” series in the Moose Jaw Express making her very comfortable with the newspaper.

The radio station on the other hand is in my opinion in many ways the PR arm of Mayor Tolmie’s administration. They are considered friendly media by City Hall.

For Carpere to win this media negotiation battle and get the City to offer them what they call fairer terms, but others on the other side of the equation would call overly generous terms, they have to sell this story with equally good press coverage from the radio station.

And this is where in my opinion Ms Thorn comes into play.

Thorn is not just the manager of the Grant Hotel, owned and operated by Carpere Hotels, she is also the local personal face for Carpere in their other business ventures.

Carpere has undoubtedly taken a look at Thorn’s past and the public selling she has done through the local media on other Moose Jaw projects - most notably the Temple Gardens Mineral Spa and Hotel, Tunnels of Moose Jaw and to some extent Mosaic Place.

Never mind the ill-fated River Street West project and the lawsuit filed in Regina that surrounded taking over as trustee in a bankruptcy and the hotel never being built. But I digress.

So where does this deal sit right now? Is it doable with the City saying they are open to negotiation with Carpere while at the same time massively jacking up the price of land? Could there be more in play here?

There are a couple of scenarios here I think we are going to see and that is despite the official hardball tactics deep down my gut tells me two things have or will occur in the near future.

First in my opinion I personally believe City Hall and Carpere are closer to a deal than they are publicly saying. It is just a gut feeling but in the whole Carpere affair Councillor Brian Swanson has portrayed Mayor Fraser Tolmie as too soft and giving away not only the farm but the machinery and livestock as well.

What better way then to publicly do at least some hardball negotiating in public?

A thing the City said they do not do when they made a complaint to the Moose Jaw Express for what they considered to be biased reporting on the condition of the 7th Avenue Bridge. Ironically that issue involved Ms Thorn, a Carpere Hotels management employee, as she is one of the two affected property owners on the other side of the bridge.

It really would male a great view for any developer intent on building a couple of upscale condos I thought but then I should just Chuck that idea out as frivilous because who builds in a brook or flood plain.

Secondly this is a deal the Province needs done. Not only does it need it done now as it would most definitely put more padding to an expected win to Gregg Lawrence’s re-election campaign but also with the NDP busy with the COVID - 19 and school openings as seemingly their main pre-election attack any extras added to the Valleyview deal are likley to be missed or not fit the all important newscycle.

It might just take some added cash from Uncle Province or Cousin SaskPower to make this all happen.

Am I correct on this? I suppose only time will tell but look forward to both parties agreeing to no longer speak publicly about this as a sign the deal is nearing completion. The details will come later in what I personally believe will be a political exercise and a few FOIs for good measure.

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