Sir Henry's great-grandniece wants new caretakers

But it had to dodge some missiles launched by Trelawny Howell. She told a Toronto council committee meeting packed with Kiwanians yesterday that, as a great-grandniece of the castle's builder, she'd like to see others get the chance to care for Casa Loma. 

The skirmish had councillors on the economic development committee ducking for cover: They put off a decision on who should run the castle and asked for further consultation — a decision that's likely to stall things until after November's municipal elections. 

The battle was launched by a report from an advisory committee, headed by former MPP Ron Kanter, which recommended turning management of the castle over to a new "Casa Loma Trust." 

The castle is owned by the city — which took it over from the builder, Sir Henry Pellatt, in 1924 for non-payment of taxes — but has been run since 1937 by the Kiwanis Club of Casa Loma under a licence agreement. 

While the Kiwanians run the castle and maintain the interior, the city maintains the exterior. The city is in the midst of a multi-year, $20 million project to repair the outside walls. 

Kanter said a new management structure is needed for Casa Loma because competition for visitors is stiffer than ever, and under the current set-up the castle gets no funding from corporate sponsors or senior governments. 

"We're trying to create a champion for the castle," he said. 

But Richard Wozenilek, who chairs Casa Loma's board of trustees, bristled at the suggestion that after 70 years of Kiwanis management the castle should be put up for grabs. 

"What we have in the city today is this icon we call Casa Loma that we built as our business,' he told reporters. "And now they're just going to hand it off to someone else? It's absurd." 

The advisory committee gave the Kiwanians a minimal role in their review process, he said: "We could have told them a lot of things they missed or distorted in their report." 

The advisory committee wants Casa Loma to focus on "telling the story of Edwardian Toronto" and to link with the nearby City Archives and Spadina Museum to form a heritage district. 

It also says Casa Loma could pull in much more revenue with a high-end restaurant and a swankier gift shop. 

But Casa Loma chief executive Virginia Cooper said installing an expensive restaurant on the ground floor "for the Forest Hill and Annex crowd" would eat up valuable space that now helps to generate $2 million of the castle's $5.4 million in revenue each year. The city got $948,886 in licence and other fees, Kiwanis says. 

Cooper said the gift shop is profitable and defended the restaurant: "Yes, we have a Druxy's in our basement. So does the Royal Ontario Museum." 

The committee room was packed with supporters of the Kiwanis Club, which has hired former Toronto councillor Paul Sutherland of public relations firm Hill & Knowlton to bolster their case. 

But Trelawny Howell, who said her great-grandmother's sister was Sir Henry Pellatt's wife, turned up at City Hall to call for an end to the Kiwanis Club's "monopoly control" of the castle. She said it has become too identified as a Kiwanis facility: "This is a great way to brand their charity, their international charity, which is headquartered in Michigan, Detroit," said Howell. 

"I say this is our Canadian castle. It's Torontonians'. It's Canada's castle. It's time that the City of Toronto as the owners take their rightful position to showcase it as our castle, and not to have it branded as the Kiwanis Club's." 

"I'm hoping council will open up a request for proposal and have an open, public tender process." 

What do you think? 

The City of Toronto may own the building called Casa Loma — but they don’t own the name, says the chair of the Kiwanis Club board of trustees for the famous castle.The Kiwanians mounted a vigorous attack Monday on the report of an advisory committee that says Casa Loma should be turned over to a newly created Casa Loma Trust that would manage all aspects of the building.

The city owns Casa Loma, but has allowed the Kiwanis Club of Casa Loma to operate the castle for the past 70 years. The city is still responsible for maintaining the building’s exterior.

The advisory committee says a more clear-cut arrangement should be set up, and management wouldn’t necessarily be left in the hands of the Kiwanians.

Richard Wozenilek of Kiwanis harshly criticized the report today at a meeting the city’s economic development committee, saying the report is full of “innuendo and distortion.”

Speaking to reporters afterward, Wozenilek said that the Kiwanis Club owns the trademark of the Casa Loma name, which it would retain even if the city were to hand over management to another group.

The city “would have to come and speak to us” in order to get permission to continue calling the castle Casa Loma if new managers took over the castle, he said.

Wozenilek said Kiwanis owns the trademark to several other names such as “Toronto’s famous castle” and “Canada’s famous castle.”

Rita Davies, the city’s executive director of culture, said city lawyers have looked at the issue of who owns the Casa Loma name, and they say the city maintains rights to the name of the building.

An opinion from the legal department says the city has the right to register a name for a building that it owns, she said, and the existing Kiwanis trademarks do not restrict the city’s actions.

The city took over the castle in 1924 when the original owner Sir Henry Pellatt couldn’t pay the taxes on it. Kiwanis has run the castle since 1937 under a license agreement with the city.

Warning: Never come between a Kiwanian and his castle. Even if you tippy-toe, as the city is attempting to do with its “implementation of a new vision and governance structure for Casa Loma,” you are going to get whacked.

The report from an advisory committee recommending a gentle end to the service club’s 69 years of operating the great pile on the hill is “ludicrous,” “ill-prepared” and “ill-conceived,” according to lawyer Richard Wozenilek, head of the Kiwanis Club of Casa Loma. The club “vehemently rejects” the report’s “egregious distortions,” a press release states. The only exceptions are the parts it obtained from the club’s own report on its own vision for the city’s No. 3 tourist trap, according to Mr. Wozenilek. “We really got upset with this,” he added.

And now the club has gone to war — arming itself with professional lobbyists and spin doctors in an all-out effort to hang on to the prize. “We’ve got a successful operation,” Mr. Wozenilek says. “We’re not costing the city a penny. . . . We have a very professional team. And we’ve developed this Casa Loma site. It’s because of us it that it’s known as this tourist attraction.”

You’d think that the Kiwanis Club built the thing, brick by brick. But as it happens, city taxpayers are the ones currently doing that — contributing $25-million for a multiyear restoration of the castle’s crumbling exterior. That’s seven times more than Casa Loma cost its first vainglorious owner to build just prior to the First World War, and it goes a long way to explaining the city’s new interest in the old asset it seized in 1933 for $27,303 in back taxes.

In other words, the city wants to lever more money out of its castle, “making it less dependent on city funding over time,” according to the advisory committee’s report.

The other reasons are more difficult to express, considering the Kiwanis Club’s long stewardship and sterling reputation for community service. If any of the committee members were willing to speak as pungently as Mr. Wozenilek, they might choose such words as “tired,” “dowdy” or “lame” to describe the problem with Casa Loma. Instead, they are excruciatingly diplomatic.

“At the moment, the city owns Casa Loma and they have leased it to the Kiwanis Club,” says Annex lawyer and former MPP Ronald Kanter, chairman of the advisory committee. “It has been a sole-source contract for understandable historical reasons. It certainly made sense back in 1937. The question is, is it the very best we can do in the future?”

The answer is no, according to the committee. It has recommended that the castle’s management, currently divided between the city and the club, be put in the hands of a non-profit trust headed by deep-pocketed “stakeholders” who will raise funds from the public to maintain the castle while radically improving its programming.

Cutting out Kiwanis also means ending its current practice of directing a share of ticket revenues to charity. “We think that the bulk of the revenue raised by people visiting the castle should go to its maintenance and upkeep,” Mr. Kanter says, adding that the trust could arrange special events to help the club raise even more money for charity than it does now.

But Mr. Wozenilek isn’t impressed. “We give back to the community,” he says. “Apparently that’s not a good thing to do, according to Ron Kanter.”

Mr. Kanter thinks that the facility will be better off “financially as well as culturally” under new management. “Maybe we could have more than just a Druxy’s in the basement to provide additional revenue,” he muses.

Saying that the “status quo is not sustainable” because Casa Loma “lacks a champion,” the committee is convinced that “the appropriate governance model” will ensure its future as a flourishing cultural asset.

“The club doesn’t have the heavy hitters who can make the right noise to attract the funding,” one senior city hall source explained. The tipping point in the decision to ease out Kiwanis came when Casa Loma failed in its most recent bid to attract provincial funding. “The application was on the minister’s desk and the government was ready to fund it,” the source said. “But they didn’t get one call.”

Without an active lobby behind it, the funding application died.

The irony of the struggle is that both sides agree on the need for major improvements to Casa Loma and both make similar suggestions, including improved access and better facilities. Facing the end of its current lease, the club wants the city to give its lease a 20-year extension.

“We’re already one of the top three attractions in this city, one of the top 10 in this country, and we’re doing a very good job, plowing funds back into the community,” Mr. Wozenilek says. “And they want to tinker with it. Why?”

The answer to that is actually clear: The city owns Casa Loma and is currently spending a fortune fixing it up. A better question is whether or not its “heavy hitters” will do a better job managing and funding the place — or whether such people even exist.