West LRT | 7 Stations | 8.0 KM | In Service

[MMMBeer]

Have to say I think the new interchange reallly speeds up traffic flow in the mornings EB to downtown on 17th past Sarcee. Although the approach roads to the new bridge have some crazy kinks in them (obviously temporary but a little annoying).

[5seconds]

Article about land acquisition and expropriation costs for the westLRT.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/West+land+costs+could+surpass+200M/5666894/story.html

I can't believe that the 5 block ROW along the CP tracks cost $44 million!

[Doug]

Originally Posted by 5seconds

Article about land acquisition and expropriation costs for the westLRT.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/West+land+costs+could+surpass+200M/5666894/story.html

I can't believe that the 5 block ROW along the CP tracks cost $44 million!

Yet another Bronconnier disaster. I thought the project was under budget, which allowed additional tunnelling along 17th? The original budget for this project was in the $700M range. Heads should roll at the City for this one.

[suburb]

Originally Posted by 5seconds

Article about land acquisition and expropriation costs for the westLRT.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/West+land+costs+could+surpass+200M/5666894/story.html

I can't believe that the 5 block ROW along the CP tracks cost $44 million!

WOW! They paid $6,750,000 for a one story church on 1/3 acre that was assessed at $750,000!

These realities reveal the problems with going up centre street for the NCLRT.

[Innersoul1]

Originally Posted by suburb

WOW! They paid $6,750,000 for a one story church on 1/3 acre that was assessed at $750,000!

These realities reveal the problems with going up centre street for the NCLRT.

The facts about the church have disaster written all over it!!

[Doug]

Originally Posted by suburb

WOW! They paid $6,750,000 for a one story church on 1/3 acre that was assessed at $750,000!

These realities reveal the problems with going up centre street for the NCLRT.

If the City over-paid for land, it begs the question of how much it over-paid fir labor and materials. Maybe the NE/SE ring road approach to project management is the way to go for future LRT expansion, although government would still be responsible for land acquisition.

[jeffwhit]

Originally Posted by suburb

WOW! They paid $6,750,000 for a one story church on 1/3 acre that was assessed at $750,000!

These realities reveal the problems with going up centre street for the NCLRT.

If I may play whatever the opposite of devil's advocate is, shining light on this land acquisition fiasco could reveal that going up Center Street could actually be a lot cheaper than people have predicted.

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by suburb

WOW! They paid $6,750,000 for a one story church on 1/3 acre that was assessed at $750,000!

These realities reveal the problems with going up centre street for the NCLRT.

That's the thing for some of these properties. You can't just pay them the market value for their building, especially for something like a church. With the current land use bylaw, to build the same size church would require a MUCH bigger piece of land.

To merely provide parking for the same sized building would require more space than the entire lot they were on.

I don't know what a fair number would be, but there are good reasons for some expropriations to cost more than the value of the property.

[5seconds]

Originally Posted by Doug

If the City over-paid for land, it begs the question of how much it over-paid fir labor and materials. Maybe the NE/SE ring road approach to project management is the way to go for future LRT expansion, although government would still be responsible for land acquisition.

They aren't just paying for land. The expropriation process is meant to ensure that people are no worse off (nor better off) when their land is bought.

In the case of the Church, I guess while the land and building were assessed at a certain price (often not realistic anyway), the cost of relocating, of new land and a new building etc. was part of the final compensation price.

EDIT: You Need A Thneed beat me to it!

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by Doug

Yet another Bronconnier disaster. I thought the project was under budget, which allowed additional tunnelling along 17th? The original budget for this project was in the $700M range. Heads should roll at the City for this one.

The construction part was under budget. There was always other parts in the total budget.

Note, that this article doesn't state what the land acquisition budget even is, so we don't know how much over budget that part is, or whether it is even over budget.

AFAIK, the original budget for the entirety of the project was north of $1B.

Also, the city will recover some of the land acquisition cost with the sale of surplus land.

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by jeffwhit

If I may play whatever the opposite of devil's advocate is, shining light on this land acquisition fiasco could reveal that going up Center Street could actually be a lot cheaper than people have predicted.

Not sure I follow what you are saying here. Do you mean The City will learn from its mistakes on WLRT, and thus ensure they don't happen on NCLRT and we save money by not making them?

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

Not sure I follow what you are saying here. Do you mean The City will learn from its mistakes on WLRT, and thus ensure they don't happen on NCLRT and we save money by not making them?

The city paid 44 million for 5 blocks of ROW from CP rail. How much would it cost to buy up ROW from CP Rail to get from Memorial all the way up to 96th Ave? Roughly 10 kms.

I think that's what Jeffwhit was getting at.

[suburb]

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

That's the thing for some of these properties. You can't just pay them the market value for their building, especially for something like a church. With the current land use bylaw, to build the same size church would require a MUCH bigger piece of land.

To merely provide parking for the same sized building would require more space than the entire lot they were on.

I don't know what a fair number would be, but there are good reasons for some expropriations to cost more than the value of the property.

Paying 900% the market valuation is a little rich.

BTW - the church has gone from a 1/3 parcel of land that limited their growth (IE they had to consider moving anyway) to a 4.83 acre parcel of land they purchased for $2.425M. The new structure will have 20,000sf with copper-clad domes, seating for 400 (larger than their congregation), 163 parking spots and tons of room to expand. http://www.stmina.ab.ca/Dream/StMinaChurchDrawings.pdf

I'm very happy for them IE they took the opportunity to think longer term, build out, and still have half the parcel as extra. What I'm not happy about is the 900% the City gave.

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by suburb

Paying 900% the market valuation is a little rich.

BTW - the church has gone from a 1/3 parcel of land that limited their growth (IE they had to consider moving anyway) to a 4.83 acre parcel of land they purchased for $2.425M. The new structure will have 20,000sf with copper-clad domes, seating for 400 (larger than their congregation), 163 parking spots and tons of room to expand. http://www.stmina.ab.ca/Dream/StMinaChurchDrawings.pdf

I'm very happy for them IE they took the opportunity to think longer term, build out, and still have half the parcel as extra. What I'm not happy about is the 900% the City gave.

From the article, they put some of their own money into the building. I'm not going to analyze whether they were paid too much or not, but let's look at it a bit with some things in mind.

The land they were on was FAR short of current required parking for a place of worship. I wouldn't doubt that it would cost more than the assessed value of the original land just to buy a parcel of land big enough to build the required parking for the same size building.

I would guess that to simply buy land, and to build the same capacity building as they had, that they would be looking at least triple the assesment of their original land. That doesn't account for the hassle of moving, dealing with a building project, renting space in the interim (both for worship and office space), etc.

In short, giving the church 900% of the assessed value is much closer to a fair value that it may seem at first thought.

As a comparison, I worked with a church recently that wanted to do an addition and renovation. This is for a church that had been in its current location in the community for 50+ years. The last development permit that they had (1970 or so) allowed them to have 270 people inside, with ZERO legal onsite parking according to the current land use bylaw. Under the current bylaw, that church would have to have a minimum of 68 on site parking stalls to meet that capacity (1:4 ratio). As part of the addition's plans, we limited the capacity to 200 people, but we could only squeeze in 27 or so parking stalls into the portion of their lot that had been grass (200 people would require 50 stalls), which was about half of their lot. If we actually wanted to meet the land use bylaw standard, the entire lot would have to have been turned into parking, to allow for a auditorium that was allowed to hold LESS people than before (obviously you couldn't have parking and auditorium space in the same spot.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

The construction part was under budget. There was always other parts in the total budget.

Note, that this article doesn't state what the land acquisition budget even is, so we don't know how much over budget that part is, or whether it is even over budget.

AFAIK, the original budget for the entirety of the project was north of $1B.

Also, the city will recover a hell of a lotof the land acquisition cost with the sale of surplus land.

Fixed for you.

Count on this being the case. The city now as a practice expropriates more land than is necessary for actual construction, builds the infrastructure and sells it at a profit. The city will expropriate a few lots in to each block extra, and the value of these properties after the construction is massive. Heck, the city might even initiate a rezoning process for these parcels.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by 5seconds

Article about land acquisition and expropriation costs for the westLRT.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/West+land+costs+could+surpass+200M/5666894/story.html

I can't believe that the 5 block ROW along the CP tracks cost $44 million!

The the CPR ROW cost a fair amount, but was a price for serving south of the tracks far better - who knows if the older mid 80s alignment would have been cheaper.

Originally Posted by Doug

Yet another Bronconnier disaster. I thought the project was under budget, which allowed additional tunnelling along 17th? The original budget for this project was in the $700M range. Heads should roll at the City for this one.

There were lots of scope changes for sure, tunneling is just one.
Here are just the ones we know about:

• Trenching to past 45th St, building trenched station not walk up one.
• Building TOD Office building for Calgary Transit at Westbrook.
• Not folding in surplus land into the P3 agreement
• Less intrusive approach up the median of Bow Trail, new pedestrian bridge
• Sarcee & 69th St Interchange

We don't know about other scope changes, but I'm sure the quality of build and materials has increased over spec given what we see, at least for the stations.

Originally Posted by suburb

WOW! They paid $6,750,000 for a one story church on 1/3 acre that was assessed at $750,000!

These realities reveal the problems with going up centre street for the NCLRT.

Yeah, Nose Creek / Centre St gets really interesting if CPR needs to protect room for freight or HSR.

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by fusili

Fixed for you.

Count on this being the case. The city now as a practice expropriates more land than is necessary for actual construction, builds the infrastructure and sells it at a profit. The city will expropriate a few lots in to each block extra, and the value of these properties after the construction is massive. Heck, the city might even initiate a rezoning process for these parcels.

Absolutely. Land will be upzoned, and then sold off. It's a significant portion of the funding for the project.

[5seconds]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The the CPR ROW cost a fair amount, but was a price for serving south of the tracks far better - who knows if the older mid 80s alignment would have been cheaper.

Yea, in the long run it was the right move to have the route on the south side, I think.

From 1983:

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by 5seconds

Yea, in the long run it was the right move to have the route on the south side, I think.

From 1983:

I'm torn, Sunalta could possibly have still be served via a ~250 ft longer pedestrian bridge in that 1983 alightment. But maybe too long of a bridge, hard to say.

[suburb]

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

From the article, they put some of their own money into the building. I'm not going to analyze whether they were paid too much or not, but let's look at it a bit with some things in mind.

The land they were on was FAR short of current required parking for a place of worship. I wouldn't doubt that it would cost more than the assessed value of the original land just to buy a parcel of land big enough to build the required parking for the same size building.

I would guess that to simply buy land, and to build the same capacity building as they had, that they would be looking at least triple the assesment of their original land. That doesn't account for the hassle of moving, dealing with a building project, renting space in the interim (both for worship and office space), etc.

In short, giving the church 900% of the assessed value is much closer to a fair value that it may seem at first thought.

As a comparison, I worked with a church recently that wanted to do an addition and renovation. This is for a church that had been in its current location in the community for 50+ years. The last development permit that they had (1970 or so) allowed them to have 270 people inside, with ZERO legal onsite parking according to the current land use bylaw. Under the current bylaw, that church would have to have a minimum of 68 on site parking stalls to meet that capacity (1:4 ratio). As part of the addition's plans, we limited the capacity to 200 people, but we could only squeeze in 27 or so parking stalls into the portion of their lot that had been grass (200 people would require 50 stalls), which was about half of their lot. If we actually wanted to meet the land use bylaw standard, the entire lot would have to have been turned into parking, to allow for a auditorium that was allowed to hold LESS people than before (obviously you couldn't have parking and auditorium space in the same spot.

200% or maybe even 300% might be okay. 900%, made up of your and my money, needs to be justified in a transparent way. No hand-waving 'will need more parking' business.