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Yesterday afternoon the St. Joseph’s Early Childcare Centre was served eviction notice from HRM to vacate the St. Pat’s Alexandra site by the end of the month. The daycare only has 22 days to find a new location.
Last month when council voted to sell the former St. Pat’s school site to private developer Joe Metlege of JONO Developments, I asked him about the site. Several community members had expressed worries that the community garden and daycare would be displaced.
I asked Metlege what would happen to them. Here’s what he said on Dec.14:
“Do the people like it? Let’s put it this way, and I said this maybe to you or to someone else, I believe there’s also a daycare in the school right now. I don’t want that daycare to move. OK?
So, ultimately like anything there has to be transition points. Am I saying the daycare will never have to move? No, because if we’re going to develop the site, there’s going to be an X period of time, a window, when physically you can’t occupy the space. Same with the garden, there might be X amount of time, because trucks are coming in and out, that that might have to be shut down for a bit.
But if the garden is something people like, if the daycare is something people like, I don’t see why we can’t incorporate that in the new design.”
Metlege told the Chronicle Herald it would be about two years before he starts to develop the site, so those trucks are a long way off.
Community consultation needs to happen first, according to the city’s RFP process.
The city says the daycare must vacate the building in order for the site to transfer to Metlege’s ownership. Presumably Metlege would have a say in that transfer.
Daycare Director Belinda Bignell-Leck couldn’t be reached for comment this morning, but the Herald reports that she confirmed the eviction news with the developer yesterday.
Metlege told OpenFile he wants to make space for community organizations, including the daycare, in his new development:
“They’re worried that there’s not much space, they need space. But that doesn’t mean that there can’t be space in my proposal. In my proposal I’m planning on doing a development so that if the community says we need 1,000 sq. ft. or 10,000 sq. ft or 50,000 sq. ft. of community space, well then they bring that to the table and we see what we can do in order to make that feasible.”
UPDATE (3 p.m. Jan. 10, 2011):
Halifax lawyer Christopher Berryman said the daycare would be on a commercial lease. Though the daycare has occupied the property for decades, Berryman said they wouldn’t be afforded any “special rights” enjoyed by long-term residential occupants.
Berryman said an eviction would be justified if the tenants breached the lease agreement, for example by not paying their rent, or if the lease was up. Once the lease is up, he says the landlord has the right to evict the tenant, if they give proper notice.
He couldn’t comment further since the lease is not available.
Daycare director Belinda Bignell-Leck couldn’t comment earlier today; she wanted to speak with parents first. She has agreed to speak to OpenFile at tonight’s council meeting. No one else from the daycare was willing to comment.
The city sent out a press release at 2 p.m. today explaining its position.
The city says they have repeatedly given the daycare notice that the St. Pat’s property must be vacant when it transfers to the new owner, Joe Metlege of JONO Developments. HRM and HRSB say they have given the daycare many lease extensions over the last two years.
According to the timeline given by HRM, the daycare’s original lease was up at the end of the school year in 2009. In March of that year, the previous “landlord,” the Halifax Regional School Board, voted to close St. Pat’s Alexandra School.
However, the city says the daycare requested a lease extension until July 2011, which was granted. This past summer, the city says HRSB
granted another lease extension until September 1, 2011. On that date, HRM officially took possession of the buildings on the St. Pat’s site.
After a meeting on September 8, 2011, HRM granted another lease extension to the daycare until December 1, 2011.
On November 8, HRM again extended the daycare’s lease until January 1, 2012.
On December 13, 2011, city council voted to sell the property to JONO Developments.
On December 23, 2011, HRM told the daycare they had one last extension until Jan. 31, 2012.
Today, the city contacted the daycare to emphasize that the site needed to be vacant when it is sold.
It’s not clear whether Joe Metlege, the new property owner, had any say in this decision. Metlege has not responded to interview requests from OpenFile today.
UPDATE (4:45 p.m. Jan. 10, 2011):
The documents HRM provided today to support their position on the daycare reveal the city’s motivations in selling the site.
The first letter, dated Aug. 24, 2011, calls the St. Pat’s site a “significant financial liability:”
“This property, in its current state, is a significant financial liability for HRM that we cannot sustain, however the property is a significant opportunity site within the urban core for transformational development. In order for the lease to move forward we cannot place encumbrances, such as leases, on the property that conflict with redevelopment and/or adaptive reuse strategies.”
The liabilities mentioned would be upkeep costs, plus energy, heat, water, etc.
According to Property Online, the site is worth $3,841,200. Market value for the site was $4.3 million.
City council voted to sell the property to the highest bidder, JONO Developments. It is not clear how much he offered for the property since the documents are not yet public.
The latest documents reveal that the city was behind the push to sell the property as vacant.
Mayor Peter Kelly and Councillor Dawn Sloane were copied on the letter from August 24.
Yesterday freelancer Lisa Roberts published an opinions piece on Haligonia.ca chiding both Kelly and Sloane for their part in the failed RFP process.
“I think both the mayor and councillor Dawn Sloane let down the community and handicapped them further in a process that already, by its nature was biased towards for profit developers. 20% of the final score was based, after all, on the financial offer for the property.”
The daycare’s eviction notice and the RFP process will be discussed tonight at city council. We’ll be updating this post throughout the day until the meeting is over.
UPDATE (6:50 p.m. Jan. 10, 2011):
Before council, Dawn Sloane told OpenFile that Joe Metlege was involved in the decision to evict the daycare from the St. Pat’s site. He had his reasons.
Joe Metlege didn’t respond to requests for interviews today. He didn’t return Sloane’s calls either. He did not attend council.
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| Reverend Rhonda Britton attended council Jan. 10 to see the outcome of a 607-name petition to reverse the sale of the St. Pat's site. (Photo by Adam Scotti) |
Sloane spoke to Metlege about his plans for the St. Pat’s site in December. According to Sloane, he had every intention of allowing the daycare to stay put. However, he needed to find other tenants in order to make the heating costs in the rest of the building feasible.
Also according to Sloane, he wasn’t able to find additional tenants, so he made the decision to evict the daycare.
Sloane said she successfully appealed to the city several times since last August to have the daycare’s lease extended. She said everything was going smoothly until the latest eviction notice, which was given verbally a couple days before Christmas.
She plans to present an argument based on the verbal eviction notice.
Just before 7 p.m., Sloane submitted three petitions for council’s consideration tonight. The petition to reverse council’s decision to give the St. Pat’s Alexandra site to JONO Developments held 607 signatures.
She also presented two similar petitions, with 168 and 190 signatures each.
UPDATE (8:50 p.m. Jan. 10, 2011):
Belinda Bignell-Leck will not make any statements to the media this evening after all.
She has been advised that it would be unwise to do so from a legal perspective.
Bignell-Leck will be taking interviews after a staff meeting at the daycare tomorrow at 5:30 p.m.
We’ll be updating this post until the council meeting is over.
