Valued at more than $900 million, the 20-year City of Toronto street furniture contract puts all the city’s bike racks, benches and bus shelters in the hands of a single media company.
After years of doling out contracts for each of these elements individually, Toronto gave Astral Media Outdoor the keys to 200,000 square feet of ad real estate in June.
The eight-month selection process began in September 2006, with an RFP calling for more than 21,000 new furniture elements including transit shelters, litter/recycling bins, benches, public sign posts, information pillars, newspaper boxes, bike stands and public washrooms. The city would allow illuminated ads on the larger structures (such as washrooms and transit shelters), but prohibited multiple ads at any given location. The RFP also called for ongoing maintenance for all of the furniture. Twenty companies attended the initial consultation, but in the end only Astral, CBS and Clear Channel made submissions.
At the time, Astral was a relatively small outdoor player in Toronto, says Jacques Parisien, group president of Astral Media Radio and Astral Media Outdoor. The company trailed CBS, which held the previous bus shelter contract, and Pattison Outdoor in terms of total assets. “We had to identify opportunities for growth, and the urban furniture offered definite potential,” he says.
When it came to designing the elements, Astral hired Jeremy Kramer. “He’s one of the top urban designers in North America,” says Parisien. Kramer’s company, Kramer Design Associates (KDA), designed the bus shelters currently found on Toronto streets, and some of the city’s most prominent video billboards.
Astral’s 48-page submission included illuminated transit shelters powered with photovoltaic panels (rather than city power), “hands-free” garbage/recycling bins with foot pedals that open receptacle flaps, a map-dispensing information kiosk with interactive LCD screen interface, and self-cleaning public toilets.
When it came time to pick a winner, the city went by the numbers. After a very public procurement scandal in 2001, Toronto took much of the subjective decision making out of its processes, switching to a very strict, quantitative approach. Each submission was graded by a selection committee that scored the functionality, financial value and supplier qualifications.
Judging the designs of the submissions, however, was left to a third-party jury. Michel Trocme, a partner at Urban Strategy, was one of the five jurists. He says the simplicity of the Astral design put it above the others.
“We’re all conscious of the fact that this is a 20-year bid,” Trocme says. “People’s tastes change in term of design. We wanted to pick something that had a shelf life.” Astral was able to “provide something that was simple enough to still have appeal 15 or 20 years from now.”
With all judging complete, Astral had the highest overall score. That earned it a spot before city council, which approved the submission by a vote of 33-4.
As part of its pitch, Astral also proposed restricting advertising to two elements: the shelters and the pillars. “By doing this, we’re limiting the advertising clusters and getting more value,” explains Parisien. In a city where condo development runs rampant, outdoor ad space is disappearing. “Every time a new building goes up in Toronto, five or six billboards come down.” This puts a premium on the transit and info pillar space.
And while the furniture contract gives Astral a strong foothold in Toronto-the project will be fully managed from Toronto and Astral has already doubled its staff there-it is only one part of the company’s growth plans for the city. Astral Media Outdoor’s parent company recently spent $1.08 billion to buy Standard Radio, which includes Toronto stations 99.9 Mix FM, EZ Rock 97.3 and Newstalk 1010. It plans on creating ad packages across all its Toronto holdings, and Parisien says some advertisers have already expressed an interest.
Come Sept. 1, Astral takes over managing existing street furniture, and starting next September, 26,000 new furniture pieces will start hitting the street, replacing the old models. The entire rollout will take approximately seven years.
