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Council questions lease for affordable housing project

Town staff to take another crack at an agreement for the former LB Warner site on Main St.
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Smithers town council has sent a lease agreement for a town owned lot that will have an affordable housing apartment complex on it back to town staff to fix a few items.

At their regular meeting of council on March 14, the lease was on the agenda but before council could discuss it, Acting CAO David Schroeter advised council that there was initially an urgency to bring this forward but after speaking with the project’s proponents, that rush did not exist anymore and he recommended council not approve it.

Mayor Gladys Atrill thought it would be a good time for council to air their concerns with it.

Every councillor in attendance had an issue with it. Also, a former member of council, Lorne Benson took the opportunity at the beginning of the meeting during the public comment period to say he did not agree with the possibility of giving a property tax exemption.

The Dze L K’ant Housing Society’s affordable housing project will be funded by BC Housing and will serve families and elders from the Indigenous community. The site will be on the town-owned, 2.4 acre former LB Warner site on Main Street, near Tenth Ave. The gymnastics club will continue to have their gym on one side of the property and the apartment building will be on the other. The town has already demolished the old buildings on the site and remediated the contaminated soil that was the result of B.C. Ministry of Transportation works yard having been previously located there.

READ MORE: Affordable housing project on Main Street drawn up

The plan is currently to have at least 31 units, ranging in size from studio to four bedrooms. The intended timeline to start construction is the summer of 2023.

Councillor Frank Wray was worried that there was contradictory language in the lease that would allow for a property tax exemption or for the proponents to apply for that down the road.

“We’ve tried to make clear to BC housing that we were expecting the property taxes to be paid,” he said. “We put a lot of money into this.”

Other councillors questioned the length of the lease at 60 years and some other councillors were wondering who would own the building if the lease wasn’t renewed or the current ownership group dissolved.

Town staff will review and make changes for council to look at again.


@MariscaDekkema
marisca.bakker@interior-news.com

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Marisca Bakker

About the Author: Marisca Bakker

Marisca was born and raised in Ontario and moved to Smithers almost ten years ago on a one-year contract.
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