Soil clean-up to cost city $1M

The city’s waterfront development manager says a $1.1 million soil clean-up cost may not offset the cost of selling a parcel of Marina Park to private developers, the resulting $1 million in annual tax collection will more than make up the difference.

Katherine Dugmore on Monday said the clean-up is necessary to remove heavy metals and fuel spills before the sale of 2.2 acres of public land can be finalized to make way for a $65 million hotel and condominium development, the crown jewels of the city’s waterfront redevelopment plan. The city is getting $250,000 an acre, or $550,000 for the property.

“Certainly the cost of remediation is a consideration. When the appraisal for the land was done, it did contemplate that. But it’s fairly typical to find remediation costs very high. It makes developments like this difficult,” Dugmore said.

The news did not sit well with at least one councillor, who said she was surprised to learn the city would have to spend more than a million dollars to make room for private development in a public park.

Neebing’s Linda Rydholm, a vocal opponent of the Prince Arthur’s Landing project from its earliest stages, suggested remediation was never part of the plan.

“This $1.1 million wasn’t ever seen,” Rydholm said. “It seems to have some as a surprise lately. Were tests not ever done on the land earlier?”

Dugmore, who said preliminary soil testing has been done in the area, added the city always knew site remediation would be needed, but couldn’t include the costs in the project’s original $47.5 million budget for a number of reasons.

The changing scope of the development is the biggest.

“At the time we did the budget reconciliation in February, we had yet to establish the limits of the land that would be sold. We were in the middle of the development process with the developers. As a result of that, we did not have the information we needed to delineate the amount of contamination that there was.

“We were therefore unable to provide an estimation at that time,” said Dugmore, who nevertheless says the overall project is not expect to exceed its allotted budget, despite the unexpected remediation costs.

The city received a total of five bids on the project, that ranged in price from winning bidder LTL Contracting’s $1.1 million offer, to Wilco Contractors Superior Inc.’s $2.08 million plan. The money will come from savings realized on other tenders that came under budget, Dugmore said, noting the city plans to stick to its original $47.5 million budget. Thunder Bay has about $1.13 million in unallocated funding for the project.

Dugmore said the contaminated soil will be removed and taken to the abandoned Pool 6 property, where it will be bio-farmed.

Site remediation at the future hotel and condo site is expected to last about six weeks.