That is the hint that anyone with a home in Prince George to get ready to pay!

How is that piece of land worth $3.1 Million??? What a waste of taxpayer money.

this is what happens when the city trys playing with businesse descisions, They paid to much for that old building, now $600,000 for demolision, and no taxes collected. This makes that an awful expensive piece of land, Yup, we have a red herring here.

The real kicker it that if the City sells it to the Province and gets their money back, the taxpayer still gets put over a barrel. All in the name of downtown revitalization.

Do you really want to send Stolz to Ottawa so he can get his hand in a bigger cookie jar?

Betcha it din't cost $600 hunnert thousand bucks to build the darn thing. I don't care how much it cost to tear down as long as it doesn't come from our pothole budget. Maybe firemen and fire trucks would cost a lot less than the estimate to tear it down.

Why can't we use an industrial training center such as O'Brien Training to have their students demolish it as part of the training process?

Whoa!...seems a bit extreme?

How about putting city crews and their equipment on the demolition job? They are already on the payroll and they are used to doing physical outside work.

Or is that too complicated or too simple of an obvious solution?

Can everyone say....ASBESTOS.....


Hey Festus, what ya like Bestest.

With the 500k that Commonwealth got for flipping the property and now this 600k, there is no way that the Wood Innovation Center will be build on this site. There is way too much controversy and questionable dealings associated with it.

I am tired of hearing that all these big budget projects (Wood Innovation, PAC, RCMP, etc) are going to be the spark that will spur downtown redevelopment. Money from private developers will be the catalyst if and when Prince George starts to grow again, and not the ones that want to keep feeding at the public trough via 30 year tax holidays.

Comedy Central has a show called "Dan for Mayor", here in PG we have a much darker comedy called "Dan IS Mayor." In this version the main character, Dan sees his legacy as the savior of downtown.He will do or spend whatever it takes to accomplish this. In the end there are a bunch of underutilized white elephants and the joke is on us, left to pay for them.

When are folks gonna start realizing, "Downtown" is a much larger area now? This city has grown by leaps and bounds. The old downtown is a has been place where everything started in the dark ages, early 1900's. Downtown now comprises foothills to the Fraser River, Nechako River to Costco.
Wish the northern hardware would move, then I wouldn't have any reason to go down to the hole.

been a few months so thought i would see what b.i`s were up to.
Same old stuff, now I know why it is windy in this city.

Did the seller/real estate know that there was asbestos insulation in the building and if so was the asbestos listed as an existing condition and did the buyer agree that it would become the buyer's responsibility to live and eventually deal with it?

I can't believe that anybody would buy a building (especially an old commercial structure) without first doing due diligence as far as possible asbestos is concerned.

Well, maybe I believe it after all.

Just put up a simple two word sign on the side of the hotel. Make it read: FREE FIREWOOD. No need to thank me for this idea. :)

I like Verballel's idea. There is nothing quite like hands on training to make one proficient in the operation of heavy equipment, and what better venue than that of a 'real job' to do?
Of course, since that idea makes sense to this common person, the management gurus at City Hall will see it differently. They would rather contract it out (not that theres anything wrong with that) and pay extra later, when asbestos and lead are "discovered"
My initial reaction to this story was similar to Price Georges', have the city crews take the building down, they have the machinery and manpower, and their union makes a show of disliking the practice of contracting out, so let them have it! Of course it would cost three times more, and take four times longer, and it's a dirty job so they would not want it, but hey! it's a good idea.
metalman.

I'll rip it down for $70,000

I'll burn it down for $50,000

I wonder if anyone watched some of the demolition of Duchess Park.

Demolition of a building is a specialty in itself for many reasons - environmental health concerns of the workers as well as the disposal of that type of material, the "mining" of material which has a reasonable salvage value such as wood members that go back some 100 years to a time when structural wood typically was closer to top grade. Other than a possible tin ceiling, there is likely nothing much else of value to be found in the building that resellers would be after.

At Duchess, they sorted and piled "stuff" and then shipped it off, whether it went to scrap yards or to be put into a landfill, or needed special disposal methods.

On top of that, read the fine print in the article, something that is rare amongst the peanut gallery here.

The "guesstimate" by the good Councillor included the remediation of the parking lots to the west of the hotel which is required because the restaurant was initally the greyhound station and which took up more property and included underground gasoline storage tanks. Today we have stricter regulations in place and the soil is likely contaminated.

I really do not see why this building has to be demolished before it is sold unless the City gets a special deal for demolishing. Board the building up with some imagination to it, paint some street art on the boards as if they were windows and people looking in, and we get to do what was related to us by the fellow who came here especially frmo Seattle a few years ago ..... but I think that went in one ear and out the other of most if not all people. We have not collectively learned yet how to use our creative side of the brain.

Here is another project from Seattle which provided artists with free storefront space in buildings that had been purchased to make way for a rapid transit station. Instead of tearing them down, they created spaces which kept attracting people rather than sending them away.

We are not the first City to experience buildings sitting empty downtown waiting for new development. It happens all over the world and there are many different ways of dealing with it, some far superior to others.

http://www.worldchanging.com/local/seattle/archives/008862.html

"Sound Transit purchased these properties and others (18 buildings in all) to make room for the new light rail station, which will be built underneath Broadway Avenue (Construction is slated to start in early 2009.)

"These empty storefronts, awaiting jackhammers and demolition crews, would have been eyesores that discouraged activity a typically lively area. But in a stroke of genius they call the STart program, Sound Transit offered up these vacant storefront windows to local artists willing to create temporary installations."

On a side note. I wonder if there are neat oddities from back in the day that are in the walls of the old hotel?

600,000 is rediculous. I guess they are going to pull every nail and save every board. No other explanation of this absurd price. 500,000 of that is probably insurance (WCB)related.

Come on He spoke...finish the joke!
;-)

Just trying to figure out these twisted circumstances in my head.Say a person worked for BC Rail,and I believe the Northern Development Trust was created as a result of the 99 year lease.Lets say this person was also a homeowner in the city of Prince George,which gave Commonwealth a sweetheart of a deal for the PG Hotel and Commonwealth was partially financed by the Northern Development Trust.Finally,let us say that the city sells the lot to the province,things appear to have come full circle,and this person may feel they have been screwed more than once,this whole scenario, just leaves there head spinning,and they may wonder where was the kiss to go with it.

So, if everyone but Gus is "the peanut gallery" does that make Gus "Mr. Peanut"?
;}
metalman.

What did KGV demolition cost? There were figures of around $300,000 quoted on here 4 years ago.

I did not notice the cost of demolishing Duchess Park. Someone might have those figures.

The cost of the Columbus was around $180,000 when the building was already half taken down by the fire, which may actually have cost more to remove the waste and demolish the rest as a result.

The Columbus was not as deep as the PG Hotel and only half as wide. The volume of material in the PG Hotel is likely about 2.5 times the volume of material in the Columbus.

$180,000 X 2.5 = $450,000

That figure, for the Hotel only, without remediation of the soils of the adjacent poperties would be reasonable as an order of magnitude estimate based on previous local experience.

The property is only expensive if one uses it for a parking lot. Remember the comments by "those in the know" that the property was being purchased by the Ramada for a parking lot? .... LOL

The larger or more expensive a building one builds on it, the cheaper the property becomes in relation.

To replace the PG Hotel for a total of 40,000sf would likely cost about $12 to $15 million depending on the finish. That would make the ratio of improvements to property aquisition about 5 to 1.

Double the height to 6 storeys and the ratio will approach 10 to 1.

For comparison, a house costing say $350,000 sits on a lot costing about $80,000+. That makes it a ratio of less than 4 to 1.

The ratio also hovers around 5 to 1 if one were to buy a single lot downtown with an existing single story building on it, tear it down and build a new single storey building on it covering the whole lot.

The key to making the property an economical purchase is to make sure one is adding an appropriately sized developent.

In other words, nothing will be developed on this property until such a developer comes along or the City is willing to sell it in a fire sale and chalk it up to an investment in improving the street.

I guess so metalman .... dancing with my top hat and cane ..... :-)

jakeadoo ... you forgot the original "owners" of the property.

Just imagine what would happen if they were to build a new Carrier Sekani Tribal Council Headquarters there and get the land for $1 and some beads ...... :-)

Speaking of the fabled parking lot for the Ramada, just how deep did the subterfuge go? Management of the Ramada were telling people the parking story. It seems unlikely now that it could ever have been a true story. In any event, the Cooles must be ecstatic, having received what to me amounts to a windfall for a building that would surely be hard to sell if they were to list it on the open market, especially if what Gus suggests about the fuel tanks under the existing parking lot is a reality. Just an opinion.
metalman.

The parking lot to the west of the PG Hotel and the rest of the properties strung along George Street is a City parking lot and has been the City's property for decades. A laneway behind the hotel separates the hotel and other adjacent George St. properties from the City parking lots.

When people talk about how much property the City owns downtown, that includes all the parking lots scattered throughout the downtown north of 7th, which also includes the parkades.

Should the parking lots be part of a future development, the soil would have to be purged of any hydrocarbon residue which might be found. Not sure if there are still tanks there as well.

In re-reading your post, Gus, I see that you meant the City parking lot adjacent to the Achillion Restaurant, which was, as you said, the Greyhound Bus Station as late as the mid seventies. As I recall, the existing 'new' bus station was built in 1976. Of course, Tom Martell's business was along fourth ave. where the parking lot is now. I would surmise that any fuel tanks would have been removed long ago.
metalman.