RendezVous LeBreton Group Moves Forward in Negotiations
The Sens group was granted “Preferred Proponent” status today
The Senators and the RendezVous LeBreton Group got some good news from today’s public NCC Board of Directors meeting, in the form of officially moving on to the next stage of the process.
The agenda for the meeting called for an update on where the process currently stands. As the negotiations are dealing with a large number of confidential items the details presented today were fairly thin, though the details presented behind closed doors yesterday were enough for the negotiating staff to recommend that RendezVous LeBreton be granted “Preferred Proponent” status.
Board determined that sufficient progress has been made - grants RendezVous #LeBreton preferred proponent status. #ottnews #ottcity pic.twitter.com/a3uFRVzMeD
— NCC-CCN (@NCC_CCN) November 24, 2016
This means the beginning of formal negotiations between the NCC and RVL, not that it’s a done deal. The NCC staff that has been part of the initial negotiations described their outlook as “cautiously optimistic” - those negotiations have gone well, but there are still major issues that will need to be resolved as part of the formal negotiations. The negotiations have already covered topics such as financial terms, fair market value of lands, remediation and public realm components. Examples of the outstanding issues were conditional components of the bid and further refinement of the financial details.
None of this makes it a done deal. The NCC could still enter negotiations with DCDLS even while still negotiating with the Sens group. or still walk away from both bids. It doesn’t mean shovels in the ground could be imminent either - even if everything goes well, negotiations are expected to take at least a year before we reach the final approval phase.
RendezVous LeBreton is expected to release a statement sometime later today.
