The City of New Westminster is set to announce the long-awaited sale of Merchant Square.
Sources tell The Record the official announcement will be made during Mayor Wayne Wright’s annual address on Monday night. While sources say the deal is done, Wright wouldn’t provide any details about his speech.
“I am giving a state of the city, and where we are going for the future. I have another announcement that is going to be made – it is probably one of the most exciting things the city has done in my time here,” he told The Record. “It’s something everybody has been looking forward to.”
In May 2012, the City of New Westminster announced it would build the $33 million office tower on top of its $41.5 million civic centre, after the Uptown Property Group pulled out of the project. While some citizens called the move “scary” and speculated the city would be left with a “white elephant” or “huge cost overruns”, others deemed it to be a bold and visionary move on the part of the city.
Given the number of closed council meetings that have been taking place in recent months, speculation has mounted that the city was working on a deal for the office tower that’s now under construction at Eighth and Columbia streets.
According to the Merchant Square website, the nine-storey building will contain 137,000 square feet of Class A office space directly across from the New Westminster SkyTrain station.
The City of New Westminster retained Cushman and Wakefield to lease-up and sell the office tower.
Speculation that a sale was in the works ramped up last month, when city staff reported that this year’s draft financial plan budgeted $40 million for the sale of the office tower and $40 million for expenses related to Merchant Square construction.
Anvil Centre, which is expected to be fully operational by September, will include convention facilities, a theatre, an art gallery, the city's museum and archives, the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame, multiuse rooms and more.
When the city embarked on plans to build a new civic centre on Columbia Street, it put out expressions of interest to see if any developers were interested in partnering with the city on the development. The Uptown Property Group was the only submission for an office tower, with others proposing a residential tower atop the civic centre.
When the Uptown Property Group withdrew from the project, city officials debated whether or not to proceed with construction of the office tower, ultimately deciding to carry on with the entire $94 million civic centre and office tower project as they consider it a critical component to downtown revitalization and the city’s overall economic development efforts. More than 2,000 people signed petitions as part of an “alternate approval process” in response to the city’s plan to borrow up to $59 million to build the office tower and civic centre.
