Mr. Don O’Leary, Vice-President Finance & Administration
Mr. Robert Ballarin, Project Manager
Trent University
Peterborough, Ontario
Canada

Dear Messrs. O’Leary and Ballarin,

I have read the “Draft Endowment Lands Report,” as published on the University’s website. As an alumnus, I was disappointed to observe that you engaged an external consultancy firm to write the report which I understand will form the basis for a master plan for the endowment lands.

With the resources and expertise of numerous academic programs at hand – geography, environmental studies and science, and business administration, among others – surely Trent itself could decide upon the best use for its own lands. Surely Trent itself could propose a truly innovative and exemplary plan that would be genuinely attentive to the University’s academic mission and its relationship to the surrounding communities. Instead, you turned to an external firm recently rebuked in the news publication “Eye Weekly” by former Toronto mayor David Sewell for equivocation and inexperience (I refer to articles that appeared on 26 August and 7 October, 2004) in its handling of the master plan for Toronto’s Union Station. With but a superficial regard to Trent, your consultants have delivered not innovation and vision, but rather the latest snake oil.

I do not contest that “new urbanism” seems a salutary remedy to the suburban sprawl blighting the Ontarian countryside. Measured against the care with which Trent’s traditional architecture and original master plan were crafted, however, “new urbanism” can seem at best a second-tier import. Your consultants, while eager to parrot Mr. Thom, have failed to achieve his standard. They have reduced Trent’s vast natural wealth to a piggy-bank for easy raiding. They have cashiered a hard-won legacy and paved the way (almost literally) for the strangulation of Trent’s campus by a noose of unsightly commercial and residential developments of which the new DNA Cluster Building is already a most unwelcome foreshadow. Permit me then to elaborate on just a few of the many points that need to be made. I will leave others to those who can make them better.

The creation of the endowment lands in the 1989-90 academic year by the Senate and Board of Governors was ensued by a list of quite robust principles to guide the development of these lands. Alongside clear and prominent insistence that any new development must be complementary to the University’s academic mission and its existing architectural heritage, the governing bodies further provided that the land should be “potentially available for development projects which would produce revenue for the University.” This last proviso seems to fall considerably short of the draft report’s intimation that in 1989-90 the Board of Governors unilaterally established the endowment lands so as to provide revenue generation opportunities for the University (see pages 42, 47, 49, and 80, inter alia). The Board and Senate, acting together, only made the land “potentially available,” a curiously hesitant turn of phrase were the intention (as the draft report seems to suggest) to make the lands in question readily available for development, including extensive commercial development. Further, the governing bodies established a hefty burden of proof on any potential development projects: that they would produce revenue for the University. In addition to exacting a very high degree of evidence that any new development projects which proposed to generate revenue in fact would do so, the governing bodies also explicitly articulated that such revenues should be “for the University.”

The draft report, while eager to promote commercial and residential development at the University, provides no strong evidence that such developments will in fact generate positive revenues. Its list of prospective projects – hotels, residential properties, shopping facilities – rather simply presupposes that these projects will strengthen the University‘s financial position. It establishes no clear criteria by which to assure that they will do so and no mechanism to address the situation in which they do not. Is Trent University prepared to finance deficits for a shopping mall that flops? What about a hotel? I see no reason to assume that the so called “University Villages” that will crowd around the University will in fact live up to the revenue-generating fantasies which the draft report espouses as dogma.

Further, I consider the creation of a holding corporation for the endowment lands, as proposed in the draft report, to be a perilous compromise to the principle that revenue from the endowment lands (if indeed there ever will be any, which is still in question) should be “for the University.” It is not at all clear that such a corporation, reporting only to the Board of Governors, will be in any way competent to ensure either that the development of the endowment lands will be complementary to the University’s academic mission and architectural heritage or that any generated revenues will be in any real sense “for the University,” that is, for the enrichment of its academic mission rather than just nominally in its possession.

The fact that in 1989-90 the creation of the endowment lands was overshadowed by financial duress, real or imagined, did nothing to diminish the insistence of the governing bodies at that time that the principle objective of the endowment lands could never be just revenue generation. The projects contemplated in the Board’s Special Resolution II.4 include a new seniors’ college, agriculture, and reforestation. The primary objective remained in the special resolution (as it should be now) the enrichment of the academic life of the University.

The oblique comparison of Trent’s endowment lands to other North American universities, especially to the land-grant universities of the United States is misleading. To my knowledge, Trent’s land holdings were never handed to it effortlessly by a state authority as a source of revenue generation. Trent’s lands were the gifts of private donors or the objects of expropriation under Trent’s university powers. In either case, to treat these properties today as tabula rasa, as unencumbered by any prescribed use and to propose to develop them in the most banal of ways is a gross betrayal of the trust by which they came under the University’s stewardship. The application of trendy urban planning principles does nothing to alleviate this fundamental wrong.

Still further, the creation of a holding corporation for the endowment lands can serve but to circumvent the sound governance structure which the Ontario legislature invested at Trent. It is not at all clear that a new-found ability to make faster and less transparent decisions will result in better decisions. Rather, the contrary would seem inevitably to be the case. Certainly those who donated lands to Trent or those who saw their lands expropriated by Trent under its quasi-municipal powers could not have foreseen that a mere forty years later those lands would no longer be governed and managed by the balanced and bicameral governance system in which Trent was founded. Surely these lands were never meant for the turning of a quick buck. Yet, its rhetoric aside, the proposals of the draft report lack the resolve and substance to assure any other result.

Moreover, the brazen attempt to re-write history and to install the Board of Governors as the only authority overseeing the development of the endowment lands must be destined for the same misadventure. The Board of Governors, just as much as a holding company will never be competent either to establish or uphold unilaterally the University’s academic mission. The Board itself acknowledges this fact. I would call to your attention the following resolutions of the Board of Governors on 30 March, 1990

THAT the Board recognize in principle the role of Senate, and particularly of the Site Development and Space Utilization Committee of Senate, in making recommendations concerning the planning and management of THE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS and of those two small parcels of THE UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENT LANDS lying on either side of the opening of the Trent Canal, bounded by Nassau Mills Road and the Otonabee River, and identified on the master map; and

THAT the Board recognize in principle the role of Senate, and particularly the Nature Areas Committee of Senate, in making recommendations concerning the management of the UNIVERSITY NATURE AREAS.

Until such time as the Board repeals or amends these resolutions, I find it improbable that even by its own standards the Board has the jurisdiction to make unilateral decisions about the management and development of the university campus, endowment lands, and nature areas. I see nothing in the Board’s Special Resolution II.4 which invalidates these previous resolutions. I would emphasize in particular that the role of two committees of Senate is recognised explicitly by the Board in as much as those committees are committees of Senate. It is not at all clear that the vetting of the Board’s decisions by the current Nature Areas Committee (which is, so I understand, no longer a committee of Senate but rather an advisory committee to the University administration) meets the Board’s own standards of diligence, let alone those that might be reasonably expected by the public.

Finally, then, I must remark upon my deep disapproval of the modifications to boundaries of the nature areas which seem implicit in the draft report. These changes seem to me to be utterly capricious and highly destructive both to the integrity of the nature areas and their important role to the educational policy of the University, in particular to teaching, as reported to Senate most recently by Professor Apostle-Clark, on 15 March, 2005. Any claim that the areas under consideration are “non-conforming” prejudices the Senate’s determination of that matter and overlooks the importance of buffer areas for the nature areas, as attested by the draft report itself. In particular, I would draw attention to the proposed redefinition of the boundaries of the Wildlife Sanctuary at its northern-most limit (see pages 55 and 81) and the proposed location of a new hydro-electric development in proximity to the Lock 22 Nature Area (see page 59).

In conclusion, let me insist that I do not oppose development of the endowment lands. I oppose rather development that subordinates all principles and all good governance (and with it, de facto, all truly long-term planning and all the needs of the University’s academic mission) to revenue generation. I oppose a dogmatic commitment to development for the sake of development even when the claim that such development will generate revenue remains utterly undemonstrated. I oppose development without an explicit and clearly articulated guarantee that such development will be complementary to the University’s academic mission, a determination that only Senate is competent to make, and that any proceeds from such development will support the University’s academic mission directly.

I ask that the proposal for a holding corporation be removed from the draft report. Of paramount importance is that the University retain direct and unencumbered control of its land, within the University’s established system of governance. I ask that the Senate be included in the development of a plan for the endowment lands, as good governance, the Trent Act, and the Board of Governors’ own resolutions necessitate that it should be. I ask, finally, that the boundaries of the nature areas and university campus not be altered without the agreement of the University’s two governing bodies and not without the prior creation of a stewardship plan for Trent University’s nature areas by the Board and Senate.

Ron Thom’s Master Plan seems to me likewise no enemy of development. Thom’s plan provided richly and ambitiously for the maturation of a unique university that could enrich and support its surrounding communities. He envisioned sites for art galleries, theatres, and museums alongside a hale and lively collegiate university and no doubt aspired to bring all the amenities of a scholarly community to the surrounding region. These projects are however profoundly at odds with much of what the new draft report proposes for the endowment lands, reconfigured as mere sources of revenue generation. The drive for a “complete” community, as proffered by your external consultants, no doubt may rest well with some adherents of so-called “new urbanism.” It obliterates, however, the delightful and necessary incompletion of Trent‘s Nassau Campus, which is no suburban wasteland, but rather the complement to and an integral part of its surrounding communities, especially the City of Peterborough which has been the home of so many students, alumni, staff people, and faculty members. In the fervour for a “complete” community, your external consultants, despite their efforts, overlooked the particularity of Trent. They overlooked the opportunity for a North American university that would be no recluse, but would make its place – both physically and academically – within the broader community to which it belongs. Their proposal amounts to Trent pulling up the drawbridge and retreating from the very community that played so pivotal a role in the University’s birth. Mr. Thom brought a university to Peterborough. If implemented, the draft report would take one away.

Yours sincerely,
Derrick McIntosh

• A Piggy Bank for the Raiding?
• The Case of the Symons Campus Disappearing Nature Area
  
• Mr. McIntosh's letter is available in two pdf documents, as printed by the Arthur (Document-1 & Document-2)

In his letter Mr. McIntosh mentions the board's Special Resolution II.4 (Property and Land Use). SR II..4 was updated on April 29, 2005. The update replace SR II.4 (Sale , Transfer or Conveyance of Real Property) 1994, 2002; SR II.5 (Gifts of Real Property) 2002; and SR II.6 (Lease of Real Property) 1994. 2002.

When seen in light of the administration having demoted the Trent University Nature Areas committee from a committee of Senate to a mere advisory committee to the administration this updated resolution gives rise to a series of governance questions. Not the least of these questions is whether or not the board unilaterally assigned to itself absolute authority over Trent's lands, be that to change their designation (from Nature Area to Endowment) redefine definitions and borders, or to otherwise do with the lands as they see fit.

Mr. McIntosh points out that it is improbable that even by its own standards the Board has the jurisdiction to make unilateral decisions about the management and development of the university campus, endowment lands, and nature areas.

In an effort to provide as much information as possible to better understand the governance shifts at Trent it would be instructive to have available the earlier resolutions which replaced by SR II.4 (2006). Because information sometimes is removed from Trent's website and is therefore difficult to come by, we present the replaced resolutions below (as cached by Google on June 17, 2005). We invite any interested party to analyze the changes in governance that have resulted.

Finally, of curious interest is the Zone Map contained in the new SR II.4 defines the endowment lands. It is almost identical to the maps found in the Stewardship Plan for Trent University Nature Areas (draft) and as illustrated in the article Will the DNA Cluster deal with City impact the Trent Nature Areas? It is most interesting to compare this Zone Map with the one from the Endowment Lands Master Plan which miraculously has taken a chunk out of the nature areas to accommodate the proposes Sports Complex (see Trent Ignores Profs' Development Concerns And Recommendations).

Board Special Resolutions:

1. Special Resolution II.4 (Property and Land Use) - updated April 2005
2. Special Resolution II.4 (Sale , Transfer or Conveyance of Real Property) 1994, 2002
3. Special Resolution II.5 (Gifts of Real Property) 2002
4. Special Resolution II.6 (Lease of Real Property) 1994. 2002.

The draft Endowment Lands Master Plan documents should be available on Trent's website.

In case they are no longer available, or have been altered or ar otherwise hard to find, links to copies of the draft plan as it existed prior to the board meeting of January 27, 2006 are listed below.

1. Introduction and Part I - Background and Context
2. Part II - The Guiding Framework
3. Part III - The Parcel Plan
4. Part IV - Implementation Strategies