Carpere Canada decided not to purchase any of the property in the Southeast Industrial Park because city hall made it financially impossible under the proposed terms, an email suggests.
Using a freedom of information request, the Moose Jaw Express acquired a 61-page document from the Ministry of Central Services containing emails between Carpere Canada representatives and ministry officials about the Vancouver-based company’s desire to purchase the Valley View Centre (VVC) property. The package also included several amended proposals from Carpere for the purchase of the land and buildings.
Two particular conversations stand out in the email chain. One is the likely reason Carpere declined to purchase the 780 acres in the Southeast Industrial Park — also known as the Moose Jaw Agri-Food Industrial Park — for $7.8 million. The other is how Carpere wanted to complete the VVC purchase quickly but continually asked the province for extensions.
Deal or no deal
Carpere representative Deb Thorn sent an email on March 12 to Frank Schuurmans, director of realty and planning for the Ministry of Central Services, along with John Zhang (Carpere CEO), John Guo (Carpere official) and Terry Tian (director of business development), about the company’s proposal to purchase land.
Thorn explained the company was working diligently to present a new offer to city hall about purchasing industrial park property “very soon,” while negotiations were underway.
“Unfortunately, the city will not deal with any of Carpere’s requests related to Valley View until Carpere buys the city’s industrial land,” Thorn wrote. “Unfortunately, to purchase and develop the land under the city’s terms and conditions is not even remotely financially viable. Hence the continuation of our negotiations with the city beyond the previous February 28th closing date for the industrial park project.”
Carpere needed assurances in writing from the municipality that it would rezone the VVC property to residential, she continued, and that it would enter into an agreement for the existing infrastructure servicing that property. Based upon these demands, Carpere needed a one-month extension from the province to remove existing conditions on the proposal, which pushed the date to take those actions to April 30 from March 31.
“This extension will give Carpere the time it needs to hopefully negotiate necessary agreements related to rezoning and servicing infrastructure to the lands, and the reopening of the bridge,” Thorn added.
Fast-tracking the proposal
In an email from Feb. 18, Thorn told Schuurmans that the timetable Carpere presented in its proposal indicated the company wanted to occupy the VVC property by June 30.
“I assure you Carpere wishes to fast track this deal too. But I think it may take as long as proposed to get confirmation of rezoning. We hope not, but we are getting little co-operation,” she said. “We cannot risk buying land we are not confident the city will rezone to residential. So for us to fast track the closing schedule as you are proposing may be just too risky.
“Can we maybe deal with the deposit now … and then work on finding a solution (wording) regarding the closing/possession date and to this under separate agreement?”
Fix the bridge
Thorn wrote on Jan. 27 to Aaron Wilgosh, realty manager of the south region for the provincial government, about a meeting Carpere planned to have with city council.
“We have a city council meeting on Thursday (Jan. 30) where we are requesting that the city take over responsibility for infrastructure subject to a third-party report by AE (Associated Engineering) at our cost and agree to repair the 7th Ave. Bridge at the city’s cost,” she said. “We told the city that our information is, ‘They are in good shape.’ So Thursday night will be a big night for us!!!”
In a news release sent to the Express on Aug. 24, Carpere confirmed it is still committed to developing the industrial park and extend its offer to city administration to Dec. 31 from June 1. However, city hall rejected that offer for having too many shortcomings.
