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Demolition eyed for downtown eyesore |
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Written by Gerald Gauthier, Lethbridge Herald
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Monday, 08 February 2010 |
City council is convinced it has the legal hammer to force the demolition of the Atrium Building — a perennial downtown eyesore — unless the B.C. owner decides to do something with it soon.
Council members unanimously approved a resolution Monday which directs City Solicitor Doug Hudson to take the necessary steps to have the aging eyesore in the 300 block of 7 Street South demolished at the owner’s expense. Armed with that mandate, Hudson is to contact officials with the numbered company in Abbotsford, B.C. that owns the property and deliver what amounts to an ultimatum: develop it or demolish it.
“This is my enough-is-enough resolution,” Ald. Rajko Dodic, a lawyer by profession, told his fellow council members while introducing the resolution he prepared after examining provisions in Alberta’s Municipal Government Act.
“The purpose of this is to do something.”
The concrete structure has sat in a state of partial construction for about 28 years. Hudson is to determine the owner’s intentions for the building and report back to council April 6.
Dodic said his first hope is that the owner will commit to moving ahead with redeveloping the property within a reasonable period of time. If that doesn’t happen, he said, the city could then order the structure demolished, ideally within three to six months.
“I’m really hoping that the present owner finds a way to develop it,” he said. “A lot is going to depend upon the response from the present owner.”
If the owner were to refuse to comply with a demolition order, the City of Lethbridge could seek a court order to conduct the demolition itself and bill the owner for the expense. If the demolition bill was to go unpaid, the city could eventually seize the property in lieu of payment.
What could still cause a hang-up in such a scenario, however, is if the demolition would cost more than the land is worth. That possibility is a concern for both Dodic and Mayor Bob Tarleck.
“If the cost of demolition exceeded the value of the land, then we would have to look at it very closely,” Dodic said.
A plan to develop the structure into apartments for low-income tenants went awry in 2004 when the developer went bankrupt and left the country without returning $1.25 million in provincial grants he had received for the project. The project also faced opposition from surrounding landowners.
“I have been thinking about this for quite awhile,” said Dodic, whose legal experience includes representing municipalities dealing with land-use issues.“I finally decided I wanted to see what mechanisms we had within the land-use bylaw, having regard to the Municipal Government Act, in terms of moving this project along.”
Aside from the land, the structure itself adds less than $20 a year to the city’s tax base, he said.
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