City preparing bid for former gas station site

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/09/2024 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the Wheat City’s biggest eyesores could soon be property of the City of Brandon.

At Monday’s Brandon City Council meeting, councillors passed a motion appointing an officer to make a reserve bid in a potential tax sale on roll number 27664.

That property is the home of the former Esso gas station at 402 Rosser Ave., which has lain dormant for more than a decade.

Last year, the city issued an ultimatum to the property owners to either demolish the gas pumps and station building or Brandon would do it for them and add the costs to their tax bill.

After the owner failed to comply, the city proceeded to demolish the above-ground structures on the property last November. The station’s fuel tanks are still in the ground.

According to a notice posted to the city’s website on Monday, the owner of the property is in tax arrears to the tune of $89,044.22.

Despite the environmental issues attached to the site of a former gas station, the city’s director of planning and buildings, Ryan Nickel, said the city has an opportunity to develop that site that other interests might not.

“Within the last couple of years, we’ve done some further research with the provincial regulator and there is somewhat of an exemption there for municipalities if they acquire impacted sites through a tax sale process, where legally we’re responsible for a little less than, say, a private property owner who’s acquiring it for development purposes,” Nickel said in a Wednesday phone interview.

“Not that that absolves us of our responsibility, but it does address some of the risk that we were concerned about.”

Under Manitoba’s Municipal Act, municipalities can put up properties for which taxes are in arrears for a designated year for sale by auction. In order to do so, the city must give the provincial Land Titles Offices 120 days’ notice, the owner 90 days’ notice and the public 30 days’ notice.

The owner has up until the auction starts to pay the amount in arrears.

A municipal employee may not bid in such a tax auction, unless they have been designated as an agent operating on the municipality’s behalf. The motion passed at Monday’s meeting appointed Nickel as Brandon’s agent in this matter.

Another piece of legislation, the Contaminated Sites Remediation Act, is what would provide Brandon relief on the remediation front.

That act states “a person is not responsible under this act for the remediation of a contaminated site if it is demonstrated that his or her only involvement with the site or its contamination is that … the person is a municipality that became an owner of the site as a result of a tax sale proceeding or under circumstances prescribed by regulation.”

Troy Tripp, Brandon’s director of finance, told the Sun on Wednesday that the city’s tax auctions are usually scheduled for the third Thursday in October. This year, the auction is scheduled for Oct. 17 at 9:30 a.m.

However, most property owners typically pay what is required of them before the auction starts. This has meant that no tax sales have occurred in Brandon since 2021, Tripp said, which is what the city generally prefers.

A third-party firm is contracted out to provide the appropriate notices, which have already started to go out.

This year, Tripp said property owners must pay their 2022 arrears to avoid a sale. In the case of 402 Rosser Avenue, that amount is $6,697.77. To his knowledge, this property has not been up for tax sale previously.

Tripp confirmed that the large 2024 balance listed on Monday’s tax arrears list, $72,082.94, is because the demolition costs from last year have been added to the property’s balance.

Since the city is owed money on the taxes, it would essentially transfer funds from one account to another if it makes a successful bid.

Then, Brandon would work with the provincial government to figure out how best to remove the fuel tanks and testing to see what the property’s environmental damage is before development.

Nickel said council’s direction to staff has been that they want to see the site used for something “that adds value for the community.”

Whether that’s an open space or another development has yet to be determined.

No further work has happened on the property since the structures were demolished last year, Nickel said.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» X: @ColinSlark