Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty agreed to let city administrators negotiate selling its downtown 50/50 lot for $1 this week.
that's expressed legitimate interest in the land downtown — which the city purchased in 2014 for $1.45 million — since the city began requesting proposals for it in 2019.
This way is a bit more flexible because the other thing we're hearing is that we need more three bedrooms and currently the proposal is bachelor, one, and two bedrooms.So, perhaps they come forward with, 'hey, we'll do 18% affordable housing, but we'll increase and we'll add three bedrooms.' And that's another thing that our community needs.
They've got to put in their development permits, they've got to put in their building permits, the city approves those, so there is a number of steps still to come. This motion was granting the administration the right to negotiate below appraised value.The RFP has been out for three years now. It went out in February 2019 and it's been out since and this has been the first proposal to come in.
It's got a lot of conditions on it, so it's not a lot for everybody, but we're definitely interested in hearing if there's other proposals out there. Having 180 units come downtown, that's going to have an impact on businesses. That's minimum 200 plus customers now in the downtown. The plan that came the year after we bought it was to build a $2-million park and that was going to cost taxpayers and then the ongoing operating costs. So luckily council voted against turning it into the park.
Coun. Neils Konge had initially suggested Holloway offer a refundable deposit, something that would hold the account of the company accountable to its commitments. Why didn't that happen?