Report identifies land for potential development

About a dozen parcels of cityowned property in or near the downtown have been identified as having potential to be developed within five years, a new report says.

The City of Saskatoon report that will be considered by city council’s finance committee Monday cites high-profile properties such as the former bus barns in Caswell Hill and mostly vacant riverfront land at River Landing.

It also includes two parking lots south of the Saskatoon police station on 25th Street and a vacant stretch of land just west of the station.

“Generally speaking, short- to midterm parcels could potentially be released to the market within five years.” the report says.

The city continues to try to find a buyer for a parking lot it owns at the corner of 25th Street and Fifth Avenue North. Saskatoon Land listed that property in January for $4.14 million.

The report is interesting in terms of what it includes as land with short-term development potential and what it does not.

The report classifies the city yards, a five-block stretch of land just north of downtown, as having mid- to long-term development potential. The same goes for the former pump house at River Landing, which the city aims to one day lease to a private company to redevelop as a riverfront restaurant/pub.

The exclusion of the city yards from the city’s short-term development list could be bad news for a group hoping to establish a professional soccer team in Saskatoon. The group behind a bid to bring a team in the embryonic Canadian Premier League to Saskatoon identified the city yards as an ideal location for a proposed $20-million stadium.

The group wanted to build the stadium in time for the 2021 season, a special city council committee meeting heard earlier this month.

The cost of moving the city yards to the new civic operations centre in the southwest had been estimated at $92 million, but the city announced in January it was seeking federal funding for a $200-million plan to establish satellite yards throughout the city.

Even though the bus barns have been vacant since January, the cost of remediating the site has made any redevelopment timeline uncertain.

The city is expected to test the market for the parcel of land west of Idylwyld Drive at River Landing later this year or early in 2018.