Nanaimo Leaky Condo Townsite Road

 Leaky Condos
The Saga Continues

Anyone driving down Terminal Avenue has surely had their eye drawn to the multi-storey condo on Townsite Rd. all draped in the familiar blue screen.

This is just another in the long line of poorly designed, planned, approved, built and inspected structures the home buying public fell victim to.

If you consider how long we have been in the building business you have to wonder how such a complete failing could have taken place in the construction business.

I don't think the public will ever know which part of the industry deserves to shoulder most of the blame or perhaps all are equally culpable.

Was it the architects whose only knowledge came from text books who had never held a hammer or a saw? Was it the building inspection department of the local municipality staffed by incompetents? Was it the lack of qualified tradesmen called upon to construct these buildings? Was it the utterly unqualified building inspectors working for the city who had no idea what they were looking at on their visits?

I seem to recall a former NDP leader being called upon to investigate the leaky condo scandal some years ago, I don't however seem to remember any results or recommendations resulting from his findings? Perhaps he is also incompetent in such matters. There seems to have been a lot of that going on lately.

This fiasco cost a whole lot of people a whole lot of money no one seems to care about anymore. I know of a person living in a two bedroom condo whose share of the renovation was over $80,000.00 on a condo that cost about $150,000 in the first place. Being a senior he did not have to pony up the money, however, the repair bill will certainly take a large piece of his estate when he leaves this earthly realm.

Who was responsible? Personally, the theory I like best is that is was planned and orchestrated by a corrupt contracting community who figured they could make more money building the same projects twice, instead of just doing it right the first time. They new that local inspectors were a bunch of bumpkins at best who would never see what was actually happening during construction.