City council rejected Carpere Canada’s latest offer to purchase property in the Southeast Industrial Park (SEIP) in June, but only recently announced — via the mayor — that it had turned down the proposal.
Carpere Canada sent a news release exclusively to the Moose Jaw Express on Aug. 24, saying it was still committed to the industrial park and had extended its offer to Dec. 31 from June 1. Its main terms included:
- purchase of 244.68 acres immediately and another 388 acres within five years for just over $6.3 million ($10,000 per acre), including a $632,680 non-refundable deposit;
- the commitment from Carpere to spend about $50 million to service the lands, including storm water management, sewer and water, and roads;
- payment of close to $20 million to the city for development levies based on $49,600 per acre, not including lands dedicated to roads, municipal reserves, residential buffers, and overhead power lines; and
- the City of Moose Jaw use a portion of the development levies paid by Carpere to build a new reservoir and lift station to service the southeast area, costing about $6 million.
Council declined Carpere’s offer in late June since the company wanted to purchase serviced land for non-serviced prices, Mayor Fraser Tolmie told the Express. There are 75 serviced acres out there that are selling for $200,000 per acre.
“They rejected the original agreement that we had (and that) we both signed,” Tolmie said. “Since then, we’ve invested $2.7 million for a water line there (as part of the SaskPower power plant agreement). When the city sells that land, we want to recoup our costs. The offer they (Carpere) gave us does not do that.”
Tolmie thought it was unfortunate that after city administration spoke with the Vancouver-based company about this, the company issued a news release instead of talking with city hall again. He pointed out the municipality is open to negotiations but thought Carpere needed to recognize why council rejected the offer and its shortcomings.
The City of Moose Jaw and Carpere Canada signed an agreement in May 2019 for Carpere to purchase 780 acres in the Agri-Food Industrial Park for $7.8 million. The company later asked for two extensions and wanted to renegotiate the terms and conditions, before eventually withdrawing from the deal this past February.
The Moose Jaw Express reached out to Terry Tian, director of business development for Carpere Canada for a comment, but did not hear back from him by press time.
