At a North Saskatoon Business Association event, members asked Mayor Charlie Clark what happened to the plans for a downtown grocery store at Midtown Plaza. Clark told the crowd that the developer, Arbutus wanted to have a hold symbol removed from a piece of land in Rosewood where they want to build an affordable housing apartment tower. At last week’s City Council meeting, the request was denied.

Clark explains that the hold symbol means no work can begin on the building until the lot is serviced, which in this case is $7 million worth of sewer infrastructure, which Arbutus hadn’t finished yet, and the developer owed the City about $2.6 million in outstanding fees and levies.

He says this isn’t the first time a developer has wanted to build something before the servicing is in place, so the practice is to say no, because if something goes wrong with a company and the building isn’t completed, then the half-built project is now the problem of the taxpayers and the citizens of Saskatoon.

The developer told Council members that saying no to the hold being lifted causes significant cash flow issues, so with a delay on the affordable housing project, they are not prepared to invest in the downtown Pitchfork Marketplace. Clark says Council doesn’t make decisions based on a company’s statement that “if you don’t do this, we are not going to do that”.