City of Regina puts price tag on Capital Pointe

The owner of the property where the Capital Pointe hotel and condominium complex was to be built is on the hook for $2.3 million.

Part of that total includes outstanding property taxes, but the majority (roughly $2 million) is for all the restoration work the city completed at the lot on the corner of Albert Street and Victoria Avenue.

The city did the work on the site after the property owner, Westgate Properties Ltd., failed to do so by the March 30 deadline.

Filling the crater, the city has noted, required 10,000 hours of work over four months and 25,568 cubic metres of dirt.

The last work done at the site involved restoring the sidewalks, covering the site with recycled asphalt millings to bring the hole to ground level and installing fencing around the site.

According to the city, the cost of the project is the responsibility of Westgate Properties — not the taxpayer.

“None of the charges associated with the project were paid for by the taxpayers; they were put on the (property’s) taxes. There are procedures that the city follows to collect outstanding taxes that will be followed,” Karen Gasmo, the city’s director of sustainable infrastructure, said at a media conference Friday.

Should the property be sold or if there’s a bankruptcy, she added, the City of Regina will be the first creditor.

Gasmo noted that because the site is private land belonging to Westgate Properties, the company is required to maintain it.

The land is currently for sale. If it sells and its property taxes still haven’t been paid, Deborah Bryden, the city’s director of assessment and tax, said all debt will be transferred to the buyer.

“Property taxes belong with the property, so if somebody chooses to buy it, the property taxes would be a debt to them,” Bryden explained.

The city is now working with the province to improve legislation that would prevent another situation, such the Capital Pointe saga, from happening again.