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

What do you think of this project?

  • Total voters
    61
IanO said:
$25,000,000 now becomes $31,000,000.00 for a pedway.

I cannot seem to find the file on the City site that used to share more about cost-sharing and regulations. Can someone point me in the right direction?

I wonder if they should have just provided unlimited Ubers to all building users for 5yrs for say 5,000,000 or explored adding an UG LRT station for 20,000,000? Could have saved some money... .. .
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Where did you see the cost increase?
 
IanO said:
There was a notice out today? Friday? Something like that, where is it coming back to Council.
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From a report going to council tomorrow:

The project costs have increased by $4.5 million due to inflationary increases for materials and labor costs, as well as revised cost estimates, and is proposed to be funded by local improvement financing. The total project cost would increase to $31.0 million. Recommendation 1 is to increase the project budget from $26.5 million, to $31.0 million, an increase of $4.5 million.
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Just wait till the change orders flow in upon construction commencement. This will be an easy $40m+ pedway all said and done.
 
TAS said:
Wow, downtown just got $5million from the province to help with safety and revitalization and now we have to spend basically the same amount from city revenues for nothing gained- a 17% cost increase on this pedway from April 2022.
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you do realize that the entire $4.500,000 increase will be repaid under a local improvement bylaw at an interest rate of 5.37% amortized over 25 years? this is in addition to repaying the initial crl allotment under the crl guidelines... the city might be deemed to be financing this but the city isn't paying for this. https://pub-edmonton.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=175893
 
kcantor said:
you do realize that the entire $4.500,000 increase will be repaid under a local improvement bylaw at an interest rate of 5.37% amortized over 25 years? this is in addition to repaying the initial crl allotment under the crl guidelines... the city might be deemed to be financing this but the city isn't paying for this. https://pub-edmonton.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=175893
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It's $4.5 million that the city would have spent somewhere else that's needed if it wasn't being added to the pedway cost.

It's also interesting that this information didn't come up just a few weeks ago when the city was discussing whether it should have sole sourced this contract rather than put it out to tender, which is normally the case on projects of this size.
City votes to sole source it, because they are told about efficiencies, and then a few weeks after the vote the cost is 17% higher.

Here's what Coun. Stevenson said at the time when council voted to sole source it:

“I still have some questions, just in terms of competitive pricing and implications for the trade agreements, but again I think they’ve put forward a good argument and I can follow the logic about why city staff are making this recommendation.”

If there was a bid process, would the project have been $31 million?
 
Mattyeg said:
For a quick unscientific (and probably not even that relevant) comparison to under construction Residential:

Grand in Tower II: $36M
Oliver crossing: 40.2M
The Edward: 27.4M
Hat @ Oliver: 31.6M
Jameson: 34M
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Makes one wonder... This does not look like a fair price we're paying for this. I'll bet we could do so much more with $31M of taxpayer money, even in terms of our transit/pedestrian infrastructure
 
^this. It's a long-term play to get Stationlands going again as those lands are a blight on the core, RAM and leading to tenants of EPCOR Tower to want to find new locations.

Sure much, if not all of this, is being offset by this development and future taxes, but as mentioned above, what could those dollars have done instead of a 10 minute climate controlled walk?

Maybe the better investment would have been to find a way to get another residential tower south of EPCOR on the corner of 101/104 and tie them into each other thereby only needing to walk outside for a block AND creating a much of urban corner.
 
IanO said:
$25,000,000 now becomes $31,000,000.00 for a pedway.

I cannot seem to find the file on the City site that used to share more about cost-sharing and regulations. Can someone point me in the right direction?

I wonder if they should have just provided unlimited Ubers to all building users for 5yrs for say 5,000,000 or explored adding an UG LRT station for 20,000,000? Could have saved some money... .. .
Click to expand...
 
I still think the pedway makes sense. Really we need more to connect residential buildings to the existing (or should I say remaining, struggling) downtown retail and hospitality space.

However, it does make me wonder if someone in the civic bureaucracy is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of councilors and were aware of the possibility or likelihood of the cost increase before council voted, but kept it from them.

This would be in keeping with the city administration that tried to hide/bury the information that around 200 trees will need to be cut down in Hawrelak Park for the upcoming infrastructure work. The city administration seems like an episode of the tv show Yes Minister run amok.
 
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