Stationlands Residential Towers | 90m | 25s | Qualico | DIALOG

What do you think of this project?

  • Total voters
    61
^ yeah I can imagine the frustrations on that for the developer. This could hold things up for months, after things have already been badly delayed (I originally heard mid November for mobilization).
 
I would welcome some rebuttal on the points of the Councillor - particularly as she has not mentioned neither the benefits of providing the funding as proposed nor the risk to losing the Station Lands Project were the developer to postpone the project including indefinitely. I think it irregular to have a Councillor take such a position prior to debate and discussion in Council Committee and full Council but have this "memorandum" sent out which is now conveniently in the pubic domain to influence the public and her fellow Councillors.

If someone would be so kind as to explain "what" the Station Lands Project is, estimated value to construct and whether there are guarantees from the developer that anything will be built in exchange for the CRL funding spend for the project.

I am a resident of this Councillors constituency and am alarmed at the lady's style of politicking.
 
EdmTrekker said:
I would welcome some rebuttal on the points of the Councillor - particularly as she has not mentioned neither the benefits of providing the funding as proposed nor the risk to losing the Station Lands Project were the developer to postpone the project including indefinitely. I think it irregular to have a Councillor take such a position prior to debate and discussion in Council Committee and full Council but have this "memorandum" sent out which is now conveniently in the pubic domain to influence the public and her fellow Councillors.

If someone would be so kind as to explain "what" the Station Lands Project is, estimated value to construct and whether there are guarantees from the developer that anything will be built in exchange for the CRL funding spend for the project.

I am a resident of this Councillors constituency and am alarmed at the lady's style of politicking.
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I am severely disappointed with Stevenson, after this.
 
Edmcowboy11 said:
So this would link to the current RAM pedway? Where is it supposed to go to? CN tower? Epcor tower? New residential building? All of the above?
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"MOU between COE and Qualico for the City to fund an underground pedway connection from Churchill LRT Station and Stationlands/RAM under 103A Avenue and also fund public realm improvements within Stationlands as well." From a previous post.
I don't know if any other info has been released, although there is some interesting speculation further below.
 
Oilers99 said:
the issue was this was already decided by the previous council and is now being re-opened up...similarly with the Michael Janz wanting to re-open the Enterprise Land item.
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Yeah, this would set a very off-putting precedent for developers, if councilors ripped up already-existing agreements made by previous councils. There should be a level of certainty that comes with funding agreements, and similar MOUs. I empathize with her concerns about our reliance on pedways, but this is not the way to address it.
 
I think she makes some good points. If the pedway to being built to a private development because of safety concerns, is this money better spent on actually dealing with those problems? It is also interesting that a nearby developer was required to pay for similar costs. I can see why it is problematic to have Council covering costs for certain developers and not others.

I'm not necessarily against the pedway, but I am against councillors not taking a critical look at how the City spends its money. With limited resources it seems eminently reasonable to evaluate whether the City should borrow for this project or if there is something else that would have a larger positive return.
 
tkoe_ said:
I think she makes some good points. If the pedway to being built to a private development because of safety concerns, is this money better spent on actually dealing with those problems? It is also interesting that a nearby developer was required to pay for similar costs. I can see why it is problematic to have Council covering costs for certain developers and not others.

I'm not necessarily against the pedway, but I am against councillors not taking a critical look at how the City spends its money. With limited resources it seems eminently reasonable to evaluate whether the City should borrow for this project or if there is something else that would have a larger positive return.
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You raise some very good points, and I agree with you overall. I just think it's better to apply this thinking to future projects, instead of a project which the city already agreed to help out.
 
Boyle street community services is moving a few blocks north. As much as it is improper to say so, their moving out of the area should be a significant boost to the feel of safety in the stationlands area. Some of the original safety concerns justifying the pedway might no longer be present.

I agree with others that this type of letter is not the way to go about this. When downtown is struggling so badly, you would hope the downtown councillor would be a bit more team oriented when there is potential of a major redevelopment / investment in the area.
 
CplKlinger said:
You raise some very good points, and I agree with you overall. I just think it's better to apply this thinking to future projects, instead of a project which the city already agreed to help out.
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I get that this is tough for the developer, but I think how Councillor Stevenson is approaching this is correct way forward. The current Council must approve a borrowing bylaw based (in part) on the amendments made to the CRL bylaw by the last Council, which incorporated the pedway into the approved list of projects. Councillor Stevenson has told everyone in advance she doesn't agree with the previous decision and does not support borrowing to pay for the pedway.

I don't want the City flip-flopping on its decisions, but I also don't want Council to be tied to bad decisions made by the past Councils. I suppose we'll soon find out just how much support Councillor Stevenson has on this file.
 
CplKlinger said:
Yeah, this would set a very off-putting precedent for developers, if councilors ripped up already-existing agreements made by previous councils. There should be a level of certainty that comes with funding agreements, and similar MOUs. I empathize with her concerns about our reliance on pedways, but this is not the way to address it.
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Since it's so recent and in the news, this made me think of how the reverse just happened - a developer, Calgary Flames, walked away from a deal with the City at literally the 11th hour after millions already spent by the city.

If city council was in the habit of ripping up agreements with developers obviously that's one thing, but if they take a change of course in rarest of circumstances because of new factors, I'm not as bothered. I still don't have a position yet on this though.

Does anyone know of another case where the city has actually done something like this (as it's one councillor proposing this at this point).
 
I expect this depends on the particular provisions of the agreements in place. As I understand, the Calgary arena deal allowed them to walk away until the end of December and they also spent money on it as well as the city.

In some ways, this is no different than private developers who spend some upfront money on projects, but later decide to halt or end them. Circumstances can change and sometimes it is just better to walk away, if allowed to do so.
 
I think her comments on the ROI make a lot of sense. If there are better ways to invest the money, we should pursue those. Maximizing the public dollars is key. I'm not well versed enough on the legal implications though of these potential changes and how that plays out with MOUs or other agreements. So I could see the risk there.

One argument I would make in support, is that this isn't a transformative project. If there's a time to get semi taken advantage of by a developer, its when its something like the arena that is transformative. This is just another few hundred residential units...not very different from all the others. This isn't the aldritt tower or motorlands or ice district phase 2. The spill over and impact of getting or not getting this tower is minimal.

Also, the parkade is built and ice district phase 2 is coming. So there's no way they leave this empty forever, even if this delays it another 5 years.
 
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