REGINA — The Saskatchewan Building and Accessibility Standards Appeal Board has ordered Westgate Properties Ltd. to backfill a hole at the Capital Pointe construction site on Albert Street and Victoria Avenue by March 30 or the City of Regina will do so.
“Full compliance includes obtaining any required permits, backfilling, compacting and levelling of the building site to bring it to street grade in accordance with the requirements of the National Building Code and removing the encumbrances on the adjacent road rights of way,” the notice stated.
In the 14-page notice of the board’s decision, it stated “the Appeal Board has no reason to believe the options of recommencing construction or replacing the temporary shoring with permanent shoring would be acted upon now.”
It further stated “the Appeal Board considered the private interest of the owner in its property as important, that interest must be balanced against the public interest, which is paramount. There is a significant public interest in resolving the current state of affairs.”
The backfill order would remove safety concerns surrounding an open excavation, allow closed portions of the road right of way to be reopened and would restore the site to its original condition, the notice added.
The Capital Pointe project was first announced in 2009 as a mixed-use development in the heart of downtown Regina, with a 27-storey condominium tower planned as Saskatchewan’s highest residential building.
The project was scheduled for completion by 2015 but never progressed past excavation. The notice stated “the last building permit, which was for the foundation, expired in March 2018. The foundation was never started. There is no current building permit for this project and no current application for any permit.
“There is no indication that building will resume any time soon and the building site appears to be effectively abandoned. There is no longer an engineer-of-record and no apparent monitoring of the excavation. This is of obvious and serious concern,” the decision said.
The City of Regina issued an order to Westgate Properties in April 2018 to fill the hole over safety concerns, but the company appealed the order and the Appeal Board held a hearing in July and released a decision on Aug. 23 stating the site was safe and gave Westgate the options of filling the hole, constructing the tower or building shoring to protect the site from future safety concerns.
In November 2018, the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench upheld both the conclusions of the Appeal Board and the options given by the board to Westgate. The current notice reverses that decision.
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