City Pushing to Buy Hart North Industrial Land Site
Wednesday, October 23, 2013 @ 4:10 AM
EXCLUSIVE
Property outlined in red, is subject of City application to purchase from Crown.
Located about 36 kms north of the City limits, the property, bounded by highway 97 on the east and the rail line on the west, was identified as one of 7 potential sites within the Regional District of Fraser Fort George, suitable for heavy industrial development.
That study sparked by concerns for the sensitive air shed in Prince George and the need to attract more industry.
Of the seven suitable sites identified in the study, ( Hart North, Shelley, Airport South, Willow Cale, Stoner, Clear Lake, and Isle Pierre) the Isle Pierre and Clear Lake sites both had less impact on the Prince George airshed than the Hart North site, but the Hart North site has plenty of other things in its favour, including access to highways and the rail line.
In documents filed with the Provincial Government, it would appear the move to purchase the property followed a letter from the CEO of Initiatives Prince George to the City’s Director of Planning and Development, Ian Wells, in March of this year.
In the letter, Heather Oland notes that while the Hart North has been promoted for a couple of years as the preferred site for industrial development , the fact the land is still Crown Land is a negative . “The process for disposition of land parcels from the Crown can be complex and lengthy, creating a level of uncertainty regarding the ability to acquire land for a proposed development” wrote Oland. She goes on to say “This uncertainty contributed to a recent event, when, after our office worked with a prospect for close to eighteen months, the project was ultimately lost to Alberta, despite the fact that Hart North was the company’s preferred location for the project.”
Oland then outlined the plan for the City’s involvement “We believe that if the City of Prince George were to complete an arrangement with the Crown to acquire land at Hart North, subsequent to which th City would be directly involved in the final transfer of land to a private industrial developer, the competitive position of Prince George and area for attracting new investment would be improved.”
According to the Hart North Industrial Site promotional brochure available on the Northern Development Initiative Trust ‘s “Invest North Central B.C.” website, "the Crown estimates the market value of the land at $600 to $1,500 an acre". There is no indication at this point on how much the City is offering to pay the Crown for the property, but even at one third of the market value, the total amount for the 1,445 acres would be somewhere between $289,000 to $722,500. Given the tight fiscal times, it is doubtful the Crown will settle for a discounted rate so the price tag would more than likely be in the Crown’s estimated range of $867 thousand to $2,167,500.00.
The source of funds to purchase the property is not known. 250News contacted Northern Development Initiative Trust to see if perhaps an application has been submitted for funding,either through a loan, or possible grant. We were advised that, to date, there has been no such application filed.
The City’s plan to purchase the property came to light during a Regional District of Fraser Fort George Board of Directors meeting where it was referred to in a summary of Crown Land Referrals for the 3rd quarter. One Director asked that should the sale go through, would the City of Prince George be required to pay taxes on this property to the Regional District? The answer was a simple yes.
Although the Hart North site lies well outside the boundaries of the City of Prince George, the Community Charter allows a municipality to make such a purchase, as under Section 8(1):
A municipality has the capacity, rights, powers and privileges of a natural person of full capacity.
That means, if you can buy land anywhere you want, a municipality can do the same.
The application to purchase the land from the Crown is in the review process with the Provincial Government.
Comments
This is great news to me!!!
We need to get off our asses in order to attract some special heavy industry. We do not have the proper land within the city limits.
How is the Boundary road fantasy working out. Nothing yet ?
I’d be interested to know why Willow Cale/BCR would not be number 1. This Hart North is a 150km. round trip from downtown, so I could see a companies HR dept. questioning such a commute for employees from the residential areas of PG.
How is the city going to service this debt? – they have been telling us for the past few years that they have no money so presumably they will have to borrow it. Will they throw another alternative approval process down our throats?
The words city and real estate in the same sentence does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling..
How much will they charge themselves for storm water runoff? Maybe they are seeing it as a revenue source. Pretty big chuck of land being cleared at Boundry road. What about that?
If an industrial operation wants to operate in this area, why don’t they submit a Crown Land Application like any other business looking for Crown Land in the Province.
Perhaps the development Heather Oland was speaking about failed because they were talking to Initiatives Prince George for 18 months, rather than working with the Government of BC which actually owns the land.
Why on earth are they even thinking about purchasing land outside the city????
So once the city purchases the land, they would then pay taxes to the Regional District until someone comes along with a development.
Well hopefully they already have a project lined up – like at the CN Center. Or it appears we will get stuck with a pretty hefty tax bill.
From the link in the story:
“Bounded by the trans-continental CN Rail line and the north-south Provincial Highway 97, the site has easy access to the Prince George International Airport and the Ports of Prince Rupert and Vancouver.”
Easy access? Good grief, can you imagine the extra traffic rolling through the city if anyone actually develops anything up there?
I thought the whole point of the Boundary Road was to accommodate a development such as this?
I smell a fish here. We need to know who built this red herring. The city should stay out of business. they dont run businesse so well. Why in heck would anyone want to run a businrsse so far out of pg? Notice not a single lot sold so far.
1. A rumor has been floating around for years that someone wants to locate a plant in this area to burn creosoted railway ties, and make some sort of compressed fuel out of the ashes. If this is the intent then we have a possible pollution problem.
2. Why would we the taxpayers want to get into a situation where we purchase property for some industrial project, that would then pay taxes to the Regional District.
3. Where would the City get the money to purchase this property. I suggest that they already have the money in their land purchasing funds, or capital projects funds. They wouldn’t dare try and borrow the money at this time.
4. Why are we even remotely interested in developing this land, when we have sufficient land for development on Boundry Road, BC Rail Industrial Park, etc; Is it because of the pollution that they want it far from town.
5. Who is the City fronting for on this purchase???
6. One would think that before any project gets the go ahead it has to be cleared by the Regional District. What is the position of the Regional District, and the people who live in this area.
7. We need to get more information, and if this is nothing more than a pollution spewing project, then we need to stop it immediately.
8. The City, Administration, and IPG had better get to work for the people who pay their salaries, and forget about this type of BS.
No BID or Commonwealth in on the deal?
Maybe they’ve got another associate lined up to buy the parcels and sell them as a package to the city for a quick $500k profit.
Did not know that the city can buy land outside its city limits. I can see RDFFG being all over this, but the city???
Is this for the new gas plant??? that Shell was yacking about a few years ago?
I am OK, with the idea of the city or RDFFG is in it to flip the land and make a few bucks at it. But I don’t think we should be getting into servicing this plot of land for heavy industry.
Interesting to see that the Highway on the map is referred to as the **John Hart, Peace River Highway**
Maybe this subject should be broached during our next municipal election campaign and see if it flies like a lead balloon.
What I am seeing here is a massive fail on the part of IPG in admitting defeat and punting the ball back to city hall. As business development arm of the city this type of thing should fall right in their wheelhouse- working with other levels of government to remove obstacles in the way of development.
Instead they are off to Ireland, Vancouver, New York etc as a publicly funded headhunting firm looking for welders.
The area is where the steel reduction mill was supposed to be going. It is also the area that Pattison bought land some time ago.
Willow Cale/BCR is not number one because it is too close for a major development.
The Boundary Rd. is a light industrial area. There are some vertical curve problems with the road from the rumours going around. The road was scheduled to be open by spring of 2013 and they are apparently working on it to make corrections.
If that is true, then the engineers likely goofed up because they are normally the ones who are responsible for surveying the precise alignment of the road as it gets built.
I wonder if this location will be the site for the next landfill? Foothills won’t be around forever.
The better question here is why is Crown Lands so bad at making property available for development that a company looking to bring jobs to the area left and went to Alberta? What was the name of the company that the report mentioned anyway and what type of industry are they in?
Oland is saying Crown Lands is a problem and so her solution is to encourage the city to get into the land speculation business.
I gotta wonder what response our local MLA and the minister responsible for jobs and economic development has to say about what appears to be a poor reflection on the bureaucracy she is responsible for?
If it was for an asphalt plant maybe, I would even support the City owning and operating one for obvious reasons.
As land speculators looking to purchase and flip the land for a profit, NO I do not support this! Rather our city should be focusing on delivering it’s “core services”.
Why did we even go through a core review if the people in city hall can’t even reign in spending before the ink is even dry? Core review suggested selling off land owned by the city not buying more didn’t it?
How stupid is this idea???? An industrial development will require huge infrastructure,-sewer water, gas lines etc. On who’s bill? Why, way out there?
Which counselor is going to make a killing on this idea??
ntkr13 … you are obviously new to a debate which has been going on for over a decade.
It would be great if someone were to write a backgrounder to that debate. A small portion of it is in the above report by 250NEWS.
It would be nice to be able to find out which development was looking to locate here and what EXACTLY stopped them from doing so, and where they went instead. I do not know whether IPG had to sign a non-disclosure clause because it may be sensitive to the potential developer.
As far as on whose bill the infrastructure would be built. I would think that depends on the development, whether others could join in at some future time and how much the province and/or the feds would be willing to contribute to have them in BC rather than Alberta.
So tell me ntkr13, have you ever wondered why Dunkley is located “way out there?” How about Pinnacle Pellet plant south of Quesnel?
Core reviews do not only seal with expenses, they also deal with revenue. This is an investment in what has been long overdue. A City is a business. It feeds of the creation of products and services.
Remote cities such as ours deal better with large primary industry which is no longer compatible with modern urban centres and are thus located close to cities but not in cities. If a city wants to encourage such developments around it to feed the community by providing the living and lifestyle opportunities for long term jobs for one or more members of the family, then this is the sort of approach that has to be taken.
Is it in the interest of the RDFFG? Maybe. But, they will get the industry, and they may actually get some of the plant employees to locate in the regional district rather than Prince George since the commute would be closer and the housing costs cheaper.
BUT, they have not moved on acquiring this land and the City has not been working with them to do so from the looks of it. At least not fast enough. So, we may have lost an opportunity.
Sort of like the trailer manufacturer that ended up east of Kamloops a few moons ago. We were not ready to receive them then either.
What’s the difference who owns this piece of land if a developer wants to buy it and develope some kind of heavy industrial plant at the location.Whether it be the Province,the regional district or the city of PG,the only thing that is going to occur is that someone is going to benefit,probably quite a bit,and someone will get screwed over royally.Has the city not learned anything from the Prince George Hotel/Wood Inovation Center fiasco.
The City of Prince George need to quit poking its nose into other peoples business.
This project should be handled by the Regional District, the Province, and the Proponent. Prince George has no place in the deal, and will, I suspect be told so, by the people in the Regional District. They have already told the City that they did not want them involved in the Community Forest, because they have a **trust** problem with the City. Hmmmm.
Hopefully this is not a pollution spewing project. Just because we live in the hinterlands does not mean we have to take every **goofy** polluting project that is proposed.
If this is the reincarnation of the creosoted tie burning plant to make charcoal briguettes or some such, then we should keep our eye on it.
Very strong electrical power source for that area as power source for the steel mill that was not built is in place.
I think we are purchasing land for another (or the same) developer who just happens to be a friend of the city. This is theft from our pockets — no other explanation. Lyn Hall told us a week ago that the police station was a good deal at 35 mil.
That was a “half truth ” just like every other level of government–they lie. If we would have paid the 35 million cash, then that would be the price–but we didn’t pay it and now the bill is 75 million and counting just to service this debt. If the province kicks in and the feds kick in, why is the bill still 75 million over the next 20 years. I’m glad my kids went to Alberta because they will never live to see PG in the black. This is a very deviant system that we have going on under the veil of ” democracy”.
Very few of us who live in the area near the proposed re-zoning are in favour of any heavy industry being approved for this location. Air pollution in the area is a given, with the further possibility of noise and light pollution.
Those who live within the city would also be affected by additional air pollution, the area is not that far from the city, if you follow the Fraser river.
Will there be a potential for pollution in the Salmon River, which lies quite near and downhill from the Western edge of the proposed development.
metalman.
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