Utilities Not Shut Off Blamed For Demolition Not Proceeding
MORE THAN A FEW RESIDENTS HAVE CALLED IT A “DANGEROUS EYESORE”
By Robert Thomas
Fire may have destroyed the Empire Apartments - located at the corner of 4th Avenue NW and Caribou Street West - on December 21st but the site won’t be cleared of debris until mid July.
At Monday afternoon’s regular meeting of Moose Jaw City Council a question was asked when demolition of the on-site and debris removed from City property.
Councillor Doug Blanc said he had been asked by constituents when the Empire Apartment site would be cleaned up and he could not give them a definitive answer.
“People are still asking when is it going to come down and I said there is a demolition permit, but is there a time limit for that?” Councillor Blanc asked.
NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED OVER THE WEEKS AT THE FORMER EMPIRE APARTMENTS AS DEBRIS STILL LITTERS THE SIDEWALK - MJ INDEPENDENT FILE PHOTO
Director of planning Michelle Sanson said the reason why the site has not been cleaned up was due to SaskEnergy and SaskPower not turning off their services to the property.
“We have been in contact with the owner of the property. They were already to go and had their contractor on site and (then) realized SaskEnergy and SaskPower had not disconnected their services,” Sanson said, adding “we worked with SaskPower (and) SaskEnergy to get those services disconnected but in that timeline they lost their contractor.”
She went on to explain that the property owner’s contractor would not be available again until July 17th to perform the demolition and clean up.
“We have put an order on it here to that date at that point so July 17th is the date they will be back on site.”
I needs to be noted that no explanation was given as to why the two utilities were still connected to the debris for months afterwards and if there was any danger because of that.