KITCHENER — Regional officials say secret design meetings about the future King-Victoria transit hub will soon become public.

The Record reported Thursday that the Region of Waterloo had quietly selected a group of urban design experts to advise on the project out of the public eye.

Coun. Sean Strickland said the region is regrouping after failed negotiations with a master developer for the site. The design talks will become public, he said Thursday.

"We're just working out all those processes and we should be able to release everything publicly in the fall once we have our ducks in a row," he said.

The public will be welcome at design meetings, Strickland said. However, he isn't sure whether minutes of the one closed-door meeting that's been held will also be made public.

"But it will be a public process beginning in earnest in the fall," he said.

The joint design review panel was formed in 2018 to advise and influence the design of what regional officials hope will be an iconic project at the corner of King and Victoria streets in Kitchener.

Politicians have high expectations for the design of the transit hub, which will bring together light rail, buses, GO Transit and Via Rail, and likely include mixed use development.

With the exception of the committee chair, members of the review panel were invited to join and were required to sign nondisclosure agreements.

The panel's terms of reference said meeting minutes would not be made public; the meetings would be recorded but the recording destroyed once minutes were approved by members.

Staff said the secrecy was necessary to protect the developers' proprietary information and to control how information got to the public.

Panel members were to vote on design items and whether to support them, not support them or support them with conditions.

But since the deal with private partners fell apart, there's no longer a need to keep design talks behind closed doors, Strickland said.

Negotiations with King Victoria Transit Hub Partners Inc. (KVTH) were terminated in part because of a low bid for the land and design issues, according to Coun. Tom Galloway.

"It is business and we felt the land was valued at certain land values. We wanted a design that would be iconic on that corner and on some of those key issues there just wasn't agreement," he said.

Up to $19.5 million was budgeted as of 2014 to buy the 1.6-hectare site, conduct studies and commission the central transit corridor building strategy.

About $11.5 million was spent on land, according to staff.

"We just couldn't achieve a return on investment for our taxpayers," Strickland said.

Secrecy about the transit hub plans isn't new.

In 2014, The Record requested a 357-page report on the hub that contained financial projections and potential land values. About 147 pages were partially or fully blacked out. Of those, 97 were completely blacked out.

Initially, KVTH was made up of Perimeter Development Corp., EllisDon Capital and Kilmer Group. It was the only consortium to make it through the region's request for qualifications process that led to the request for proposals process.

Well-known local developer Perimeter Development withdrew from the consortium in April 2018.

"That was a concern to us as well because they were the local element that we had a lot of confidence in and we just felt that we would be better to go it alone," Galloway said.

Politicians voted in November 2018 to part way with KVTH.

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Ellen McGaghey, project manager for the hub, said officials were surprised that only one consortium made it through the request for qualifications process. That process determined whether bidders can meet various regional requirements.

According to what wasn't blacked out in the 357-page hub report prepared by Cushman Wakefield, local and Greater Toronto Area developers expressed concerns about the project during the market sounding process.

Their concerns included:

•Environmental contamination and the water table;

•That the project was only feasible as a long-term development;

•That parking costs couldn't be fully recouped from tenants;

•Whether the scale of development was beyond local demand;

•That development should be phased;

•Whether there was demand for office space considering vacancy rates at the time;

•Whether the region and local governments would financially invest in the project;

•That there could be too many restrictions and developers wouldn't have flexibility;

•That any developer would require more than a 15 per cent return to take on the work.

pdesmond@therecord.com

Twitter: @DesmondRecord

- King-Victoria transit hub secrecy continues with closed-door design panel