Promenade for sale
SDBA put buildings back on the market a month ago
The four small rental units that make up Promenade acadienne, a tourismrelated business development at Days Corner, could soon have a new owner.
The four small rental units that make up Promenade acadienne at Days Corner could soon have a new owner.
After several previous attempts to sell the property, La Société de développement de la Baie Acadienne (SDBA) put the property back on the market about a month ago.
SDBA president, Desmond Arsenault said a potential buyer has come forward, and he has his fingers crossed that a sale will be finalized soon.
The SDBA, with federal funding assistance, built the units 20 years ago with the hopes that they would serve as incubator space for new business startups.
Arsenault estimates at least a dozen businesses came and went over the years.
“There was quite a variety,” he said, noting everything from textiles to a nightclub and a corner-store-type enterprise, to offices rented space at different times.
Why didn’t they keep running?
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Arsenault responded. “We don’t know the answer to that.” Short-term rentals, he acknowledged, hardly cover the basics of snow removal, lawn care and general upkeep.
“This is just a deadweight for us right now, because there are costs incurred to maintain it, and we aren’t getting any revenues,” said Arsenault of the board’s latest effort to sell the property.
“It was holding us down, so this will free us up to focus on other projects that we have on the go.”
SDBA is run by a board of directors and currently has no staff of its own.
It also owns the nearby building which houses a restaurant at Day’s Corner, and the surrounding property SDBA owns there extends from the corner to the tree line and down to the river.
“It’s a beautiful piece of property,” Arsenault points out. SDBA also owns the mini mall in Wellington and is actively seeking a tenant to take over the space that the P.E.I. Liquor Control Commission will vacate when it moves into the Wellington Co-op.
The organization’s largest property is the Access P.E.I. building in Wellington, which houses several tenants including a Rural Action Centre and Collège de l’Île.