Tag Archives: Globe and Mail

May-16-2011 Globe and Mail – Kiwanis Club gives up operation of Casa Loma

ELIZABETH CHURCH

From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
Published Monday, May. 16, 2011 12:00AM EDT
After three-quarters of a century, the Kiwanis Club is ready to let someone else worry about polishing the armour and sweeping the stables at Toronto’s Casa Loma. It has agreed to hand over operations of the city-owned tourist attraction in return for more than $1.4-million for the paintings, furniture and other artifacts and trademarks it will leave behind. 

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The deal, to be presented next week to the city’s executive committee, would set up a new corporation and board to manage the rambling mansion and develop a long-term strategy for the five-acre site. If approved by council, the pact will be the latest twist in a years-long debate over how to make the most of the massive property that has struggled

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May-16-2011 Globe and Mail – Kiwanis Club gives up operation of Casa Loma

ELIZABETH CHURCH

From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
Published Monday, May. 16, 2011 12:00AM EDT
After three-quarters of a century, the Kiwanis Club is ready to let someone else worry about polishing the armour and sweeping the stables at Toronto’s Casa Loma. It has agreed to hand over operations of the city-owned tourist attraction in return for more than $1.4-million for the paintings, furniture and other artifacts and trademarks it will leave behind.

More related to this story

The deal, to be presented next week to the city’s executive committee, would set up a new corporation and board to manage the rambling mansion and develop a long-term strategy for the five-acre site. If approved by council, the pact will be the latest twist in a years-long debate over how to make the most of the massive property that has struggled

Read the rest
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Aug-3-2010 Globe and Mail – Kiwanis rejects city’s demand to fire Casa Loma chair

By Kelly Grant
From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail
August 3, 2010

 

Service club risks being evicted from castle as deadline passes

The Kiwanis Club is refusing to fire the chair of Casa Loma’s board, a move that could lead the city to evict the service organization from the castle.

Council set a deadline of July 31 for the Kiwanis Club – which has operated the interior of the city-owned attraction since 1937 – to replace Richard Wozenilek, a lawyer who allegedly directed $218,938 in castle legal work to himself over 18 months.

But the deadline has passed and Kiwanis has decided to back Mr. Wozenilek.

“The Kiwanis Club continues to maintain its full support behind Mr. Wozenilek as chair of the Casa Loma Board, and it understands the members of the Board also fully support him,” Joachim Gerschkow, the president of the Kiwanis Club of Casa Loma, said in a statement Tuesday.

At the beginning of July, council ordered … Read the rest

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July-8-2010 Globe and Mail – Council gives Kiwanis deadline on Casa Loma

GM_pic_july7_2010.jpg

Service club has until July 31 to remove chair alleged to have directed legal work to himself

Kelly Grant

City Hall Bureau Chief  Globe and Mail Update Published on Wednesday, Jul. 07, 2010 10:01PM EDT Last updated on Thursday, Jul. 08, 2010 1:43AM EDT

The city could move to evict the Kiwanis Club from Casa Loma if the club doesn’t remove by July 31 a board chair who allegedly directed $218,938 in legal work to himself over 18 months.Council set the deadline while voting to give the service organization, which has operated Casa Loma since 1937, another chance to meet the terms of a management deal inked with the city in 2008.

City manager Joe Pennachetti said the Kiwanians have agreed verbally to three of the four conditions council endorsed Wednesday, namely that Casa Loma�s board of trustees meet monthly; that Kiwanis develop a revised financial plan; and that a joint working group be established so the Edwardian mansion can

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July-2-2010 Globe and Mail – Feud brews over

Kelly Grant City hall bureau chief —
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Jul. 02, 2010 6:38PM

Casa Loma is the perfect setting for palace intrigue, and that’s exactly what’s unfolded beneath its Norman and Scottish towers in the last two years.

Now the intrigue is moving from castle to council.

Toronto’s elected officials will decide this week whether the Kiwanis Club, the charitable organization that has managed city-owned Casa Loma since 1937, deserves a third chance to drag the tourist trap into the 21st century or whether the city should begin severing a partnership that’s been a royal pain for both sides.

Internal e-mails and other confidential documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show conflict has plagued a new City-Kiwanis management agreement practically since the deal took effect in the summer of 2008. The mayor now admits he was wrong to support the Kiwanians in 2006 and 2007, when a public review of Casa Loma’s future

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June-10-2008 Globe and Mail – Deal or no deal – the city and Kiwanis play for CL

by JOHN BARBER  jbarber@globeandmail.com June 10, 2008

Here are the clues: broken glass in a medieval turret, a handful of vintage weapons missing, a grandfather clock on the roof and a trail of blood leading north into the teeming city. Agatha Christie couldn’t have given the local constabulary juicier evidence than what one or more idiots left behind at this weekend’s bungled break-in at Casa Loma.

But the real-world detective gravitates to Schedule “G” of the draft version of the city’s latest management agreement with Kiwanis Club of Casa Loma, the one labelled “Inventory,” to discover whom this strange swag belonged to in the first place. Finding the dossier strangely empty, he undertakes a troubling journey into the heart of a one-sided deal that appears to arrange for profits from the tourist trap at the public’s expense.

Empty Schedule “G” is the tell-tale, if only because it demonstrates how one-sided the city’s latest deal with Kiwanis really is. Two years

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Jun-3-2006 Globe and Mail – Our Casa or their Casa?

by JOHN BARBER

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 … Read the rest

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