Staff
Mayor Roy Avis said Monday that he feels the Riverwalk Condominiums project was “a good investment” by the town that is now reaping rewards.
The mayor was responding to a letter to the editor in last week’s Times, which called the town’s involvement in the condo project a “fiasco” and warned council not to take the same path with the new Huffman subdivision.
Mayor Avis said he was surprised to see the letter from Wendell Stevens, and decided to look back 10 years to when the condos were built.
“The contribution to the project by the town at that time was approximately $350,000,” he noted, explaining some of that value included in-kind services such as building permits and utility hook-ups.
“Yes, we did have a few problems,” Mayor Avis conceded. “We bought four condos and we did sell those, and yes, we did made a few mistakes.
“But if I look back at the project, approximately $350,000 was contributed by the town,” he noted. “The tax revenue on that facility so far is $790,657.
“I calculate that it’s over $440,000 to the good. I think that’s a pretty good investment,” he stressed.
Moving forward, the mayor would like to see the same thing happen with the lots in the Huffman subdivision or any other future project the town does.
Mayor Avis noted the town sees tax revenues decreasing almost daily, and council has to “broaden our scope and look more at what we can do for the municipality that will be of benefit to us in the long run.”
“And I see that in possibly residential lots, I see it in trying to get people to retire within our community,” he said.
“It’s a future that we have to look at, and we have to look at it with a different set of eyes than we have in the past,” he reasoned.
“And I think this council has done a fairly decent job in doing that.”
Coun. Paul Ryan pointed out the $790,000 in taxes does not include revenues realized from sewer and water rates.
Fort Frances CAO Mark McCaig, who assumed his role with the town after the condos were built, recalled being on the condo board along with condo tenants and thinking the project ended up being “nothing but a real success.”
“The people who lived there absolutely loved it,” he remarked.
“The turnover on the condo units when they sold them—everybody’s made money off them when they sold them,” he added.
“Plus, when the final sales started to be completed, I started to get calls at the last moment from people who were worried they weren’t going to get a condo, and some of them didn’t get a condo because they waited too long,” McCaig recalled.
“There was that interest.”
