The price of lots in the town’s industrial park could be going up.
At its regular meeting Monday, council froze the sale of lots for two weeks until the prices are reviewed to make sure they are priced at fair market value, Mayor Glenn Witherspoon said.
But before that, council did approve the sale of three lots on Seventh Street to Tom Veert Contracting Ltd., which CAO Bill Naturkach said was based on current prices.
While the town agreed to accept $6,300 for the unserviced land, council approved recommendations from the Operations and Facilities and the Administration and Finance executive committees that the estimated cost of sewer, water, road, and utilities be added to that sale.
That brought the total cost to $75,000.
Veert also would still have to excavate the lots, which he noted would bring the cost of the 1.82-acre site up over $110,000.
Another option would be for Veert to pay the costs to service the lot as they were incurred but Mayor Witherspoon felt the bill could come in even higher.
“It won’t be lower,” he noted Monday night, saying it could be years before services are hooked up there.
“The figure we have brought forward, we are comfortable with,” Naturkach added.
But the high prices could drive the buyer away. Veert stressed there were three contractors building along the highway outside town limits in Alberton right now and said he might be joining them.
“I’m not even going to consider the offer,” he said yesterday, noting there was too big a difference between his $35,000 offer and the town’s counter-offer.
“I’m pretty much fed up with it,” Veert added, noting he’d been trying to buy the land since February.
Geoff Gillon of the Rainy River Future Development Corp., who negotiates the sale of industrial park lots, said the problem was because Seventh Street wasn’t developed yet (and the town hadn’t planned to develop it soon) so council had to figure out how much it would cost to run services to the 16 lots in the future so taxpayers weren’t left footing the bill.
“He’s triggering the discussion,” Gillon explained.
But Coun. Struchan Gilson wondered if the town was being fair. Veert had been coming to council for some three months, he said, and suddenly when he was ready to buy, the price jumped.
“I think we really didn’t explain to him what he was getting into,” he said, adding he didn’t remember another recent sale in the industrial park being that expensive.
But Naturkach replied that sale of a smaller parcel of land was done at the current rate (about $13,000 per acre), which the town was saying was under-valued, and was based on a lot that had services installed in the 1970s.
In Veert’s case, he noted none of the services–including road–were in place. They would have to be installed in the future.
“We have to recover our costs,” Tetu agreed, noting residential lots here, which are under an acre, run about $35,000.
Naturkach noted the development of Seventh Street is not being recommended at this time but the town is hoping to get some excavated fill from MTO work this summer to help fill the lots.
And he also said it is town policy to review the price of the lots every two years. The town last reviewed the prices in August, 1995.
Currently, industrial lot prices run between $3,523 to $14,810 depending on the level of services available. The subdivision was first developed in the 1970s and Naturkach felt the prices were fairly close to those rates.
“We don’t want to make them unaffordable,” he added, but stressed the serviced lots there were under-valued.
The price recommendations are expected to come before council at its next regular meeting May 25.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
