Yellow Quill expands urban reserve, waits on office building
Nearly five years ago, the Yellow Quill First Nation announced plans to build a five-storey office tower to replace a parking lot on a prime downtown Saskatoon location.
The project at the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue and 20th Street remains alive, but will require an anchor tenant to move forward, according to Ron Waddington, managing trustee of Yellow Quill Land Entitlement Trust (LET) and director of Yellow Quill Holdings.
The First Nation released plans for the building during the economic boom in late 2012, when the downtown office vacancy rate was a minuscule 1.84 per cent. The 75,000-square-foot building was supposed to be completed by the end of 2015, but the property remains a parking lot.
“Building on spec is completely out of the question,” Waddington said Wednesday.
The downtown office vacancy rate was estimated at 16.5 per cent at the end of 2016, making downtown office development a tougher economic choice.
Yellow Quill purchased the parking lot in 1996, one year before it negotiated the purchase of Canterbury Towers, a nine-storey office building, for $4 million.
The office tower, located at 224 Fourth Ave., just north of the parking lot, serves as the home for the First Nations Bank of Canada.
The parking lot was declared an urban reserve in 2014; city council unanimously approved urban reserve status for the nine-storey building in March.
When Canterbury Towers was first purchased in 1997, it was supposed to become the city’s second urban reserve.
Waddington said he does not know why the band never moved forward on urban reserve status for the property during those 20 years.
Urban reserve status means a property within a municipality is considered part of the reserve. The band pays the city an annual fee-for-service to cover the equivalent of municipal and library property taxes on the property and the city provides the same services it would to any other property.
The agreement approved by council also ensures the city’s bylaws still apply to the property.
“It really puts Yellow Quill in the driver’s seat in terms of leasing,” Waddington said. “It essentially allows us to collect additional revenue that can be diverted to the community.”
Yellow Quill, which is located about 300 kilometres east of Saskatoon, has also negotiated an agreement with city police for policing the urban reserve. That agreement will be considered by the board of police commissioners at its meeting today.