Kelowna pays nearly $12 million to buy landfill buffer, preventing future complaints from residents

The City of Kelowna has paid a high price to protect the city's only landfill, forking over $11.9 million to buy a nearby piece of property after previously rejecting proposals to purchasethe site for a housing development.

Last March, city council overturned plans to build housing units on the 182 acre propertylocated at the south end of the Glenmore landfill, known as Diamond Mountain. The land will now be used as a buffer zone around the landfill.

In July of last year, the land was assessed atnearly six times lessorabout $2 million.

Despite a nearly $10 million difference between the assessed value and the eventual purchase price, city staff areadamant due diligence was followed.

"We paid what we felt was fair market value," said Johannes Saufferer, director of strategic investment with the City of Kelowna.

"We looked at similar large acreage parcels with development potential and looked at the other price per acre for those parcels to determine what would be supportable for this property," he said.

Concern about complaints

Originally, developer Troika Group had proposed a 1,000-unit housing project on the land.

The rezoning proposal was rejected out of concerns of the potential for nuisance complaints from people living too close to the landfill.

Even a small number of complaints can lead to high costs for the city, Saufferer said.

"For instance, we spent $5 million recently as part of the wastewater treatment plant upgrade to include some odour mitigation measures that was based on just two complaints a year," he told Chris Walker, the host of CBC's Daybreak South.

"We felt this was a very strategic decision to make in terms of the acquisition."

Moving on

Renee Wasylyk, CEO of Troika Group, disagrees aboutthe potential cost of complaints from building houses near the landfill.

"When the decision came forward in March, we really started looking atwhat is the missing link? If they're so afraid of the possibility of complaints how do we mitigate that?" she said.

"It was a really, really sustainable project."

Wasylyk denied that she had threatened legal action against the city.

"Obviously, Troika is not in the business of lawsuits," she said."That's not how we make our money and suing municipalities that's kind of a game ender for any developer and certainly that was not in our heart."