The New Hotel -Condo Complex Great Project On Their Dime
Friday, April 13, 2012 @ 3:46 AM
Let’s examine the new hotel and condo project. Never mind whether the project can attract people to spend up to 800 thousand to buy a condo. This is private money folks, the first such major project in downtown that doesn’t cost the taxpayers a bundle.
This project isn’t being financed in part by money from the federal or provincial government or the city, which is far more than can be said about a lot of the deals that have come down in recent memory.
Rod McLeod and Clint Dahl are leading with their chin, not the chin of the taxpayers. They weren’t given a commission to acquire the land or an interest free loan; it’s their money plain and simple.
Now let’s for a moment talk about the work of Tim McEwan, let’s see a 40 million dollar project, if you used the math of the deals that have taken place in the past we suddenly find that McEwan was indeed earning his salt at IPG. That raises a more important question, just why he was given his walking papers? The optics of first removing him from that position and then hiring a former Director from the Commonwealth Group of Companies doesn’t sit well with many people.
Furthermore given that McEwan is receiving high praise for his work on this project and a good many others that are in the final stages in this district, why in the world would you want to get rid of him?
What makes that more intriguing is the fact that the Province, both the Liberals and the NDP, were tickled pink to get McEwan on their team to work on behalf of the province.
Now let’s see, we paid a commission of $250 grand to Commonwealth in the flip of the PG hotel to the city for a two and half million dollar deal, surely Mayor Green must think the 140 grand we paid McEwan in severance turns out to be a pretty cheap buy on a 40 million dollar project.
This new project is new, being built without the kind of support we have handed out in the past and the project proponents ought to be congratulated for their hope for the future in this city.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion
Comments
I understand NDI Trust is contributing, so there is taxpayer backing, not to mention the tax abatement of course.
What’s the NDI Trust’s portion?
I agree Ben, it is great that this is private money going into this investment, regardless of condo prices.
I also found it interesting that the people who made the announcement were quick to point out Tim McEwan’s contribution to bringing this to the city.
Are they trying to make us the taxpayers feel better about the ridiculous severance package he got, or to try to make us forget the murky circumstances in which he left. I doubt we’ll ever get the whole story on that.
“I also found it interesting that the people who made the announcement were quick to point out Tim McEwan’s contribution to bringing this to the city.”
So you think they were not being truthful?
The accusation has been that this City is not open for business. I have expressed my opinion about that on several occasions on this blog.
What I have stated is that the notion that this city is not open from business generally comes from those who do not understand the process of getting projects approved as a project moves along from vision to fruition.
It is obvious that this group had some players involved who know how it is done. They told their story in front of an audience; a story they did not need to share.
They will be going to a street closure process that will be public at the next meeting of Council. They had to go public at this time so that they would lead the story rather than having all sorts of rumours going around.
Of course, now a different set of rumours will be going around becauuse this project is still very much in the planning stages until concrete begins to flow on site. Even then, a new set of detailed planning will begin for the tenant improvement parts of the hotel, and possibly even the condos depending on their approach to handling that.
I liked that they were able to say, to the group assembled, that consultants from out of town gave accolades to this community for being so helpful in the process. Remember, this all happened before the local business people assembled by Mayor Green gave quite the opposite report.
As I wrote before about that, in my experience it is more about the lack of understanding of local business people of the process, than the lack of City Hall staff to be as helpful as they can be.
So McEwan did a good job and Janine North did a good job and Ian Wells did a good job on this project.
If you are not prepared to accept it at face value, that is your problem.
“So you think they were not being truthful?”
I don’t know. I do know that Mr. McEwan got a lot of scrutiny after he left questioning his value to IPG, the City, and the taxpayers.
The fact that they felt they had to mention him (murky departure and all) is curious, at least to me.
Yes, it sounds like NDI is or will be playing a part. And yes, there will be some tax breaks. Everyone was up front on that.
So we see that the property tax relief was one of the reasons this project was able to go ahead. I think if I remember correctly that was the purpose of the program. Any problem with that?
And yes, it sounds like there will be some money coming from NDI for this project. I would assume that would be in terms of a loan. Any problem with that?
As someone once said, NDI actually gives us the opportunity to finance our own P3 project.
We do not know the deal structure of this project as this stage. In fact, it is a private project so we will likely never know all of it. But those that will involve public or quasi public money will be known eventually.
BTW, in my opinion the project will cost much more than $40million. When I look at those numbers and think that a higher end hotel will occupy 150 rooms in close to 200,000 sf. the total outfitted cost of the hotel alone will be in the $40million+ range.
I suspect the $40million is just the shell of the hotel.
The figures for construction labout also do not compute. 50,000 person hours at 2,000 (50×40) per year = 25 person years. That cannot be done for that size of building unless it is panelized, erected on site and the factory labour is not included in the MH.
50,000 person hours at $22million payroll = $400/hour. Again, something is wrong in the calculations. The danger of giving out too many figures.
I love it when gus offers a thorough analysis. Will look forward to seeing is opinion has the project progresses.
But Wait!!! City Council still has to approve the closure of that part of 10th Avenue. So there still IS time for them to skuttle yet another project – another “test” for our ?business friendly council? It’s unfortunate that Ms. Green will not communicate with Opinion 250 – she could learn how people REALLY feel and what they REALLY want!
I sure hope this goes through – it would be a wonderful perk for Prince George.
Are you sure NDI is contributing or is that another typical PG rumour?. By the way, NDI trust does not affect the tax payers so should not matter.
I was at the presentation. They thanked Tim McEwan as well as a couple of his staff at IPG, Janine North of NDI, as well as Ian Wells from the City.
There was no mention of why Janine North was involved in working on the deal. So, to date we know they contributed time.
NDI only affects those who paid taxes in BC. In other words, it goes beyond just Prince George. It will not have any effect of our future taxes that I can tell. However, it is money that came from selling BC assets and we have a fiduciary responsibility as citizens to make sure the money gets spent wisely.
In my view, lending money with a percentage return to the right type of projects in our region would be investing wisely.
What is happening on George ST. have we the taxpayers bought up more old buildings??is this why the bussiness Something new Something old is moving??
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