A condo complex in the city’s southeast is facing significant costs for upgrades and repairs to a privately-owned access road, and the condo board hopes the City of Calgary can step in and expropriate.
At issue is an access road south of 130 Avenue S.E., and who is responsible to maintain it.
The South Pointe Condos were one of the first developments in the area 20 years ago and the condo’s developer acquired the land from Shepard Development Corporation, which involved an agreement for the condo complex to assume responsibility for the maintenance of the access road.
Since then, the shopping complex around the access road has grown and other agreements were signed between Shepard and the various businesses, but the condo board said none included cost sharing for maintaining the road.
“We are less than five per cent of the actual traffic that actually uses that road,” South Pointe Condos president Barbara Miller told Global News.
Shepard Development Corporation said the condominium did not carry out any maintenance or repairs on the access road between 2003 and 2019.
According to Miller, the conflict came to a head after Shepard Development Corporation completed repairs on the road in 2019, and sent the condo board an invoice for approximately $67,000, which represents the repairs as well as the lack of maintenance over the previous 17 years.
“We were just told that our contract says that we’re responsible,” Miller said. “We continued to kick back, in turn, Shepard started litigation against us and we fought it.”
Earlier this month, a judge ruled in favour of Shepard and ordered South Pointe to pay $25,000 in damages.
Miller said 72 hours after the judge’s ruling, Shepard sent the condo board a letter outlining its expectations for maintenance and repair obligations on the road.
“We will now have to pay for all the road maintenance, the cleaning, snow removal, and insurance,” Miller said. “They are also doing a big study on (the road) now because of the amount of traffic and truck traffic that is going in there. The roads aren’t meeting the capabilities to have that volume.”
Miller said the total cost expected for the condo complex is more than $500,000.
The letter also served the condo 15 days’ notice to clear the gravel from the road or face a charge of $7,000 for the service.
Shepard declined an interview with Global News, and instead highlighted the judge’s ruling, and confirmed it sent a letter to the condo to confirm the “maintenance and repair obligations are met moving forward.”
“I trust our position respecting this matter is clear,” Shepard Development Corporation’s general counsel Shawn Belecki said to Global News in an email.
According to Miller, the costs to the condo residents will be “significant,” adding that almost half of the residents are seniors.
“Many of them won’t be able to afford a $30,000 or $40,000 special assessment to fix a road that is 90 per cent used by the rest of the city and not by us,” Miller said.
Miller has since reached out to the area councillor, in the hopes the City of Calgary can expropriate the road to shield the residents from the incoming costs.
However, Ward 12 Coun. Evan Spencer explained the situation is complex, and is bound by the 20-year-old agreement.
“I would imagine it’s going to be a longer process and take some time to unwind,” Spencer said. “There may not be a path forward that gets them off the hook of the financial obligations related to this.”
Spencer said the situation is the fallout of a decision by the condo’s developer to “keep costs low” on the condo units put the costs associated with maintaining the road in perpetuity instead of paying for it upfront in the cost of the land.
In the letter to the condo board, Shepard said it would continue carrying out snow removal duties on the road with an offer of “attractive pricing” for the condo complex.
Miller said the hope is a resolution can be found soon before the costs begin to add up for South Pointe’s residents.
“Time is of the essence,” Miller said. “If Shepard follows through with everything they’re saying, they could almost bankrupt our complex.”
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