After 18 months of negotiations, lawsuits and interim agreements, the City of St.
After 18 months of negotiations, lawsuits and interim agreements, the City of St. Albert and Landrex Developers have reached an agreement that allows the developer to start full construction of the next phases of its Erin Ridge North subdivision and resolves the lawsuit it had filed against the city.
A news release this week announced the two sides had signed a development agreement on July 31. Signing this agreement was contingent on Landrex making full off-site levy and surety payments of about $16 million, which has taken place.
“Part of the requirement of executing a development agreement is securities and full payment of the levies, so until we received those monies, we don’t consider it fully executed,” said Guy Boston, executive director of economic development for the city. “So on July 31 we received confirmation that those monies had been received.”
The signing also officially resolves the lawsuit that Landrex filed against the city last year, with no money changing hands. Landrex claimed the city had collected too much in offsite levies for the first two phases of Erin Ridge North and did not want to pay any levies for phase three. The company had been seeking compensation of approximately $20 million.
The city originally thought it had reached an agreement with Landrex in May, but the company instead asked council for permission to start doing some preliminary work such as stripping and grading, as well as deep utilities work, before it paid its levies. The developer had said that obtaining the $16 million would take more time than anticipated and it needed to start work immediately.
Council instead gave city manager Patrick Draper permission to conclude a supplemental agreement in which Landrex posted a $1.2-million letter of credit in exchange for permission to start that work. That agreement is now void because of the completion of the new development agreement.
“I am pleased that it’s behind us and we were able to pioneer proper changes for the other developers in policy and through our development agreement process,” said Landrex CEO Larry Andrews. “I think both the city and I learned something through this process so I think it’s good that it’s behind us.”
Since Landrex and the city started negotiating the development agreement in 2011, the city has started reviewing its offsite levy bylaw, in conjunction with the Urban Development Institute (UDI). It has also made some revisions to its development agreements as a result of an appeal court’s ruling about what kind of levies the city can and cannot charge.
The agreement signed by the city and Landrex also states that, should the levy bylaw be revised in a way that would have required the developer to pay less than $16 million, the city will reimburse the company.
“As a city, we’re looking forward to what the resolution of this issue will bring to the north end of St. Albert,” Boston said. “We know that people had interest in this coming to a conclusion, and now that it’s coming to an end, we are looking forward to great things.”
Mayor Nolan Crouse said he is looking forward to further development along Highway 2 north of the city.
“I’m looking forward to all that development and in particular along the highway corridor,” Crouse said. “We have an economic development priority that’s going to be important as this goes forward to realize the benefits of it, and that’s pretty important.”
Andrews has said that the high-profile companies Costco and Loblaws are expected to build in the commercial area of Erin Ridge North.
The approved plan calls for 424 low-density housing units, 529 units of medium/high-density and 120 units of medium-density housing.
The commercial component represents about 23 per cent of the area, or about 22 hectares.
