Fundy Quay site. Image: Submitted, Develop Saint John.
Develop Saint John says the future of the Fundy Quay residential and commercial project hinges on provincial funding to begin work on the site.
Jeff Cyr, director of strategic projects for Develop Saint John, says they are still waiting to hear back from the province on if they will contribute funds to repair the seawall on the former coast guard site. Federal and municipal funding has already been secured.
“We’ve been having very positive discussions. We were hopefully expecting an answer from them sometime in the near future. But still, there’s nothing determined,” said Cyr.
David Elias, president of Fundy Quay Inc., a subsidiary of Elias Management Group, plans to develop the site into a multi-use development featuring a mix of commercial and residential spaces.
Repairing and building up the seawall is necessary for work to start on the much-anticipated project. The city is asking the province to cover 30 percent of the $8.1 million seawall refurbishment, in the form of capital contributions of $1.25 million in both 2020 and 2021.
On Monday night, Saint John City Council approved the selection of Dillon Consulting to design and engineer the seawall repairs.
“It’s really the situation that the sooner the better,” said Cyr. “The sooner we hear about the funding, the more contingency we have in terms of moving this work forward. It will be a pretty aggressive schedule and the more we lose from it the trickier it will be.”
RELATED: Local Company Plans Commercial, Residential Development On Coast Guard Site
Aside from the seawall repairs, there’s other work that needs to be done on the site before work can begin, including dealing with contaminated soils and raising the site behind the seawall.
Cyr said they have applied for separate infrastructure funding, what they call a “bilateral agreement” to fund this. That funding also heavily depends on the province.
“The way the bi-lateral agreement works between the province and the federal government is the feds confirm money that is available to the province for projects should they cost-share,” said Cyr.
“The province really has most of the discretionary approval authority in terms of what projects get funded, and the feds are more or less review for eligibility. The key decision-maker on the bilateral side is largely on the provincial side.”
Cyr said too much of a delay can put the project at risk.
“We do have a bit of contingency we can work with in terms of timing, but with these types of projects, there is always a limited window of opportunity because of the seasonal nature of the work,” he said.
“Any upfront delays in schedule pushes everything out. If things get pushed out too long sometimes you can put a construction season at risk.”
If the province doesn’t provide the funding, Cyr said it will be hard for the Fundy Quay project to go forward.
“If the province doesn’t put up the funds, we’re committed to working with the developer and they’re committed to working with us to try to find a path forward,” he said.
“I would caution that from a financial and technical standpoint, that will be very difficult to move a project like these forward without the province as a partner.”
RELATED: City, Ottawa says Coast Guard Site Needs Provincial Funding For Repairs To Seawall
A version of this story was published in Huddle, an online business news publication based in Saint John. Huddle is an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
