Now we know what really happened. I'd be furious too if I was Doug Casey. I hope this won't require changes to the look or setbacks of the building. Take a look:
=====================
Confusion over water main location delays condo project
City 'needs to get better handle' on its infrastructure, councillor says
Cassandra Drudi
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, August 15, 2008
Confusion about the location of a major city water main has delayed construction on a condominium project near Westboro, infuriating the developer and one of the people who'd hoped to live there.
"Frankly, the city didn't know where the water main was," said Doug Casey, president of Charlesfort Developments.
Excavation at the site of the Continental, a 15-storey, 95-unit building slated to go up at Richmond Road and Cleary Avenue, was delayed when it was discovered that the city's water main lies one metre away from the property line, Mr. Casey said. Speaking with the Citizen yesterday, Mr. Casey and Charlesfort's director of sales, Wendy Bennett, said the developer submitted plans to the city to apply for rezoning of the property and that rezoning had been approved in 2006.
But the discovery of the water main's precise location after rezoning was approved has resulted in additional planning time and means the company will have to use a construction method that will cost $1 million more than it expected to spend, Mr. Casey said.
John Moser, the city's director of planning and the person earmarked to speak on this issue, was unavailable for comment yesterday.
City councillor Christine Leadman, whose ward is home to the development, said the delays speak to a larger issue.
"The city has to get a better handle on where this infrastructure is," she said. "These are things that we need to know."
Excavation on the project had been scheduled to begin in mid-January, with a move-in date in the summer of 2009, Mr. Casey said.
Now, excavation is scheduled to begin in September, and the move-in date has been pushed to the spring of 2010.
This delay has Mae Blanchard frustrated by the unforeseen wait and she's wondering how the developer didn't known about the water main when she bought a two-bedroom condo in the project on March 3.
"I can't have my life on hold for two years at my age," said Ms. Blanchard, 73, who expected to be able to move into her condo next summer. "You are prepared for delays, but you're not expecting to be delayed a year."
She is now looking at other condos, but doesn't think she'll be able to get her $20,000 deposit back.
"The issue here is that with the condo laws, I don't know what legal action there really is," said her son, James Blanchard. "It's so far beyond buyer-beware, it's scary.
Mr. Blanchard has been speaking with the developer and the city, trying to determine what exactly is going on with the project and why his mother wasn't alerted of the issue sooner.
"Surely they must have known about (the water main)," Mr. Blanchard said. "These guys knew that they couldn't deliver at the time of signing the contract."
Charlesfort did know about the water main issue by late February, before Ms. Blanchard bought her condo, but was given no indication by the city that it would take this long to address the issue, Ms. Bennett said.
"It's all in the protection of a water main that isn't even ours," she added.
After Charlesfort had spent time and money on marketing and design and had their rezoning application approved, they didn't expect to run into an issue as large as this, Mr. Casey said.
"It's not the time for them to be coming in saying, 'Oh yeah, we forgot about the water main.'"