City should waive impact fees on townhouse project: builder

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This article was published 06/05/2018 (2328 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg city council’s property and development committee has rejected an appeal to waive hundreds of thousands of dollars in impact fees for a Waverley West townhouse project the builder says was delayed by the city for months, missing a deadline because of a street name change.

“The plans sat on a desk for six months without review,” architect Evan Hanson told the committee Monday.

The Waverley Pointe development project includes 22 townhouse buildings — four of which had the impact fee waived, while another 13 should have, but didn’t, he said.

“I think it would be fair for the impact fee to be waived on 17 of the buildings, given that we met the May 1 (2017) deadline for submission of permits, and that there was significant delays at the city’s end that prevented us from starting any construction until December,” Hanson told reporters after the appeal was rejected.

“It took them six months to even decide what the street was going to be named, so they couldn’t start the permit process for six months after that — until there was a name for the street and they could enter the permits into their system and then the permit process could begin,” said Hanson. “For six months, the drawings literally sat untouched on the permit technician’s desk.”

In 2016, Winnipeg city council approved a controversial fee on new home construction, to be applied May 1, 2017.

The impact fee is added to permits taken out for new home construction in 10 suburban fringe areas, at the rate of $5,084 for each 1,000 square feet. The fee is supposed to offset city costs associated with services required as a result of new development, including recreational and leisure facilities, transit and other infrastructure.

Hanson wasn’t sure of the dollar amount of the impact fees Waverley Pointe was asking to be waived, but said it would be in the area of “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

After telling the committee about the lengthy delays in the permit process — and how long it took the City of Winnipeg to get a cut-off section of Waverley Street renamed Shahi Street — the committee rejected the builder’s appeal.

“The bylaw is very clear: they had to have the construction started,” said committee chairman John Orlikow, who noted four of the project’s buildings that were under construction before the deadline had impact fees waived. “The others didn’t.”

“It does seem like there was delays at our end, but there were significant delays at their end as well,” said Coun. Jenny Gerbasi.

The project’s architect questioned the purpose of having an appeals process.

“It makes the appeals process seem really futile if, given all these extenuating circumstances, the councillors still aren’t free to vote or make any sort of decision that considers those circumstances,” Hanson said. “I’m very disappointed.”

Coun. Janice Lukes, who plans to run in the new Waverley West ward in the civic election in October, said the impact fee process needs a lot more “refinement.”

“When the developer wanted to make an appeal, there wasn’t even any information on how to make the appeal,” she said. “They hadn’t assigned a person to be the ‘appeal person.'”

She said she supports the concept of impact fees, but voted against the plan the city had laid out for Winnipeg.

“I didn’t support the vote because of the incomplete consultation process and what was set up to actually apply them,” Lukes said, adding she’d advise the developer to take the tossed appeal case to Court of Queen’s Bench.

“Why pay the appeal fee if they’re not even going to consider it?”

The appeal fee is $250, and refundable.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca