Wychwood BarnsWe can't find $$$ to send kids to school with a full stomach;
Charity in danger of going under but we can find money for projects like:
Masterpiece or a big mess?
Joe Mihevc thinks Toronto's newly-opened artistic community is terrific. I beg to disagree
By SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN
This is Toronto Coun. Joe Mihevc's masterpiece.
The midtown councillor is so protective of the newly-restored Artscape Wychwood Barns -- a multi-use complex dedicated to the arts and the environment that has been in the works for eight years -- that he begins our recent interview cautiously.
"You're not going to beat up on me?" he asks before leading me on a tour of the complex, reported to cost at least $21.2 million and subject to nearly as much local backlash as Mihevc's other pet project, the as yet incomplete $100-million St. Clair dedicated streetcar line.
On the surface, the transformation of what Mihevc calls the one-time "Union Station to the North" -- five derelict streetcar barns dating back to 1913 -- is brilliant.
No green detail has been spared -- from the geothermal field that heats and cools the building to the year-round temperate greenhouse, to the 24,000-gallon cistern used to flush all the building's toilets and to irrigate the greenhouse, to the deliberate lack of (car) parking on-site.
A 127,000-square-foot park -- including an off-leash dog area and an ice rink in winter -- surrounds the complex.
The concept of a community of artists living and working under one roof would make creative city guru Richard Florida proud.
The reconverted "Barn 1" houses 26 affordable units for "verified working" but nonetheless starving artists. There are also 14 studios for artists judged by an Artscape committee of peers to have "bona fides" credentials and experience.
The plan includes providing year-round space in the reconstructed "Barn 2" -- the Covered Street Barn -- for community events, exhibitions and meetings.
Alex Flores, a Mexican painter focusing on environmental issues, opened her studio doors on Nov. 1 and is thrilled to be part of a community of artists.
"Being part of the Wychwood Arts Barns is like being part of something that is alternative and good for the earth," she told me.
Tim Jones, president and CEO of Artscape, said their aim was to provide creative people "affordable space" in an environment where they can "collaborate and share resources. It was to create an environment where artists and environmentalists could rub shoulders."
Mihevc adds many arts and environmental organizations came together with the local community and found a "very creative way" to finance and build the project.
But opponents question not just the price but whether it would have ever gotten off the ground without the tremendous infusion of public money.
While Mihevc has been involved with the potential redevelopment since the TTC first declared the property surplus in 1998, he claimed not to know exactly who gave what dollars to the project.
The $21.2-million publicized as the project's cost does not include the city's expenditure of $3 million remediating and improving parkland surrounding the barns, or the partial demolition of "Barn 5."
A 2005 city report notes Mihevc arranged for $1 million for the project from a Section 37 agreement negotiated in his ward. It was in that year -- while being questioined about the 26 affordable units -- that he confirmed Artscape had been handed a 50-year lease on the land for $1-a-year and the prized parcel had never been "evaluated as to its market value."
MANY CONCESSIONS
Since then, the city has coughed up a number of concessions for the project including waiving development fees and property taxes and a $3.5-million capital loan guarantee on the project's $7.4-million mortgage.
Former Toronto city councillor Howard Levine, who lives next door to the new complex, feels the subsidy to save the Barns has been "just staggering."
He questions Mihevc's contention that the surrounding Wychwood community now supports the project -- insisting the project's opponents are just beaten down.
"This is the most manipulated, railroaded project I've ever seen in my life," said the planner. "A tremdendous amount of energy and political wheeling and dealing was expended to make this happen."
While Jones claims the complex must now stand on its own two feet financially, Levine says he doubts Artscape will ever recover even its annual operating costs.
He may have a point. I got the feeling during my tour that Artscape isn't really interested in making the project sustainable in the true sense of the word.
Take the rent paid on the artist studios. Artscape's director of properties, Bruce Rosensweet, told me the artists pay "more or less" gross market rent of $17 per sq. ft.
But when I later clarified the amount with him, I learned that was for a year, not per month -- meaning rent on a typical 250-square-foot studio is a meagre $4,250 per year.
I also asked if the Covered Barns portion -- a sizable space -- would be rented out for weddings or other private affairs.
"We're not going to do a lot of weddings and we don't care," said Rosensweet.
"There are a lot of hoops to jump through (to rent this space)," added Artscape's Ray Stedman.
Levine isn't surprised with that attitude. "This project is all based on subsidies," he said, arguing an agency unaccountable to the taxpayer has run "roughshod" over the process of local government.
"It has been a nightmare ... it is a clear indication of the dysfunctionality of the city."
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THE ARTSCAPE WYCHWOOD BARNS PRICE LIST
TOTAL REPORTED COST: $21.2 million (not including parkland)
- Overall government funding: $10.3 million
- Feds: $3.1 million
- Province: $3.3 million
- City: $3.8 million ($1 million in cash, $2.8 million in in-kind contributions)
- Private funding: $10.9 million
- Fundraising: $3.5 million
- Private financing: $7.4 million (backed with a three-year $3.5-million capital loan guarantee from the city)
- Artscape provided 50-year lease on the land for $1 a year; city waived development fees and property taxes; remediation of the land.
COST OF 26 AFFORDABLE HOUSING UNITS
TOTAL FUNDING: Approx. $2.9 million or $111,538 per unit
- Canada/Ontario affordable housing grant: $1.8 million
- City affordable housing grant: $450,000
- Waived development, planning and building permit fees: $187,000
- Rent-free land
- Annual property tax waiver: $8,357
- Annual rent supplement payment: $100,000
COST OF CITY-OPERATED 3.3-ACRE PARK
- Parkland improvements: $1.47 million
- Partial demolition of Barn 5: $425,000
- Environmental remediation of site (including parkland): $1.8 million
- Annual operating costs of park: $142,000
OTHER:
- Artscape received a $253,800 grant from the Toronto Arts Council in 2008.
Some top Liberals say Michael Ignatieff should fundraise, rebuild the party and define himself. 
