Wellcox Property Development Costs In Budget

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$6,920,000.00 in proposed five year financial plan

The proposed five year financial plan for years 2014 - 2018 includes nearly $7,000,000.00 for the ongoing development of the Wellcox railyard property which includes the trestle.

The largest cost centre for the property is a $6,000,000.00 expense for the replacement of the trestle in 2016 and $40,000.00 in maintenance each year until replacement. Whether that will be the actual end cost is suspect since it is not based on a tender and is projected to happen in 2016. It would be hoped that the companies which benefit from this trestle will partner with the city to shoulder the cost as it is not needed to access the city owned property with access from Front Street.

Included in the budget is a total of $800,000.00 which appears as two different line items. One amount is for $400,000.00 for waterfront remediation of the former pallet manufacturing area. Another amount is for $400,000.00 for waterfront remediation of the former Seaspan area. Why the two amounts don't simply show as one $800,000.00 line item is curious.

When the city first announced the purchase of the 27 acre waterfront property for a mere $3.5 million it sounded like quite a deal. That deal is now nearly $10,500,000.00 with the above costs and we still only have use of about 20% of the total package until Seaspan chooses to vacate their lifetime, no rent agreement they have for the use of the property. ICF has a similar agreement, which sooner or later may become moot if they can't get the needed funds to get the rail line improved.

This is a spectacular piece of property with incredible potential provided that the city will ever actually be able to make use of the property for anything other than a new bus terminal. It is debatable if this kind of development shouldn't be left in the hands of the private sector as they likely are more capable than the city.

Three recent examples of the city's ability to run projects are the conference centre which was supposed to have cost $52 million, ended up at over $75 million. Building $13 million office's without going to a public tender and finally thinking that perhaps spending as much as $30 million to replace the two little dams in Harewood was likely an acceptable cost.  If you sat on a board of directors of a company in the real world and this was the performance record of your CEO, how long do you think he would last?