CITY COUNCIL has decided to buy 88 hectares of land from the provincial government for its planned Skeena Industrial Development Park, otherwise known as the airport lands.
The city has an option to buy lands from the province to form the park with the idea that should an industrial buyer be found, it would in turn use the purchase money to buy the land from the province.
But by buying now, a city sale to a company would be less complicated.
The $75,000 sale price, which includes legal and survey costs, also takes in an unfinished access road from Hwy37 South just past the airport on the way to Kitimat.
Council released details of the purchase at a council meeting Feb. 28, having discussed the matter in an in-camera meeting Feb. 14. The money comes from a land reserve account.
“We’ve been working with a company recently…..and this company is very interested in the section of land that we’ve allocated that we would like to purchase,” mayor Dave Pernarowski said, saying that they are working on a memorandum of understanding.
He said the company would be looking at a majority of the land the city is buying. This 88 hectare purchase area is the same area that is currently cleared; 80 hectares of land was cleared in 2009 with a grant.
“I think it’s a good step, we’re only spending $75,000 at the moment to get that fairly large section,” Pernarowski said, adding that they’re looking at selling the property for around $10,000 per acre. This would allow the city to pay for infrastructure going into the park.
The mayor said that if the deal with this particular company doesn’t go through, the city has at least already purchased some land from the province in readiness for the next potential industrial user.
“It just makes it a little bit easier for us going forward to create some marketing around that site,” Pernarowski said. “We would actually own some land to go ahead and do that.”
The airport lands project has been a priority of the city for years but so far there have been no takers despite a sales pitch of the land being close to an airport, railway lines and ports. The aim is to convert the area into a hive of industrial activity.
“It’s a really good buy for us, it’s a good deal…..we can start getting those industries to come and set up on that property, and we can start building that longer term vision we have,” Pernarowski said.
Even if the city sells the land it does buy, the new owners still need full access to the area.
The city is to receive $668,000 each from the federal and provincial governments for an intersection leading off of Hwy37 and to finish the access road leading into the land it is now buying from the province. But the city also needs to come up $668,000 on its own to fully claim the money from the senior governments.
So far, only $52,960 has been spent with the majority of that, $50,502 spent in 2009. Most of the money went toward access road right of way clearing and grubbing. The city’s portion of that was $22,082 with the senior governments picking up the rest.
The city also paid $2,458 in 2010; some of this money was for consulting work for clearing, while $1,890 went to the ministry of forests for an annual rental fee.
The remainder of the access road right of way was cleared in 2010 through a program from the Union of BC Municipalities which provided grants to rid areas of wood that could go up in flames if a fire started.
Overall, the city has been struggling to come up with enough money to fully use the federal and provincial grant.
The federal and provincial grant announcement was made in Feb. 2009 and the project was supposed to be completed by the end of this month. A two-year expansion was granted, with the work now due to be completed by March 31, 2013.
But the city does have a bit of breathing room because it has until March 31, 2016 to full take advantage of the cost sharing program.
The city’s current plan is to spend $41,667 this year, $312,000 in 2012 and $64,200 in each of 2013, 2014 and 2015. But that’s still a shortfall of $122,320 from the $668,000 it must spend if it wants to fully take advantage of the federal and provincial matching grant.
“We certainly are going to need to stay focused on it, we have a time limit to get that project done,” Pernarowski said.
Detailed design is planned this year with the majority of construction work planned next year.
