HQ project halted
Published Wednesday February 3rd, 2010
Development: Irving Oil's parent company scraps plan for Saint John waterfront office complex
SAINT JOHN - A proposal to revitalize an important piece of the city's waterfront is dead.
Fort Reliance, Irving Oil's parent company, announced Tuesday it's scrapping plans to build an architecturally stunning office building and cruise ship terminal on Long Wharf that were expected to attract further investment.
Company spokesman Daniel Goodwin said poor economic conditions that have battered the oil and gas sector forced Fort Reliance to reconsider investing millions of dollars in a new uptown office complex.
"Our company is in a very strong position relative to our peers and that's because we made the right choices about when to invest and when not to invest," Goodwin said. "Although today's news is disappointing for all of us, it's the right decision; it's the right decision to focus on our core business."
Goodwin said the firm has no plans to build a new headquarters, although the company will continue to operate out of Saint John.
"We're not proceeding with this project; it's a stop, not a postponement," he said.
The announcement sent waves of shock and disappointment across the province as prominent politicians and business officials reeled at the thought of losing what they viewed as a critical investment.
"Everyone will be disappointed - I am disappointed. It was going to be a beautiful building," said Energy Minister Jack Keir, the MLA for Fundy-River Valley. "I respect Irving Oil and I would have really loved to have seen that project go forward, but I appreciate that if the business case doesn't work for them, it doesn't work."
Goodwin said company officials held a number of meetings with community leaders this week and realized many would be let down.
"We recognize that many people in our community will be disappointed; we count ourselves among them," Goodwin said.
"This has been a project that our company has been working very hard at over the last number of years and many people in the community have supported us."
The Saint John Port Authority and Irving Oil had been negotiating a complex land swap that would have allowed the company to build a new headquarters on Long Wharf. In exchange, the firm would have purchased the site of the former Lantic sugar refinery from the city and transferred ownership to the port.
Company and port officials announced the deal in June 2008 with great fanfare at the Saint John Trade & Convention Centre. "Saint John is on a roll and this development will be the most significant in a generation," Stephen Campbell, chairman of the port authority, told a cheering crowd at the time.
After years of negotiations, and a final decision to kill the project, port president and CEO Al Soppitt held a hastily called press conference Tuesday in a board room of the authority's new cruise ship terminal on Water Street.
"We have lost a tremendous opportunity for the port, for the city and for the community," Soppitt said.
Quispamsis Mayor Murray Driscoll, the only political spectator at the event, said the region will suffer a great loss as a result of Fort Reliance's decision. "It's sad when the region has lost such a wonderful thing," he said.
Since the deal was first announced, the International Longshoremen's Association, Local 273, tried doggedly to quash the proposal, threatening to launch legal action on the grounds the sale contravened the Canada Marine Act, a claim the port continues to deny.
But Goodwin said the union's opposition played no role in the company's decision to pull the plug.
The deal faced a more threatening setback when the port warned it wouldn't accept ownership of the old sugar refinery property unless metals that contaminate the site were cleaned up. Fort Reliance and the city had been negotiating to figure out who was going to pay for the work.
Goodwin said he didn't feel it was appropriate to conduct "an autopsy" on the deal, adding only that there were a number of issues the company dealt with over the past number of years, but "unfortunately time ran out on this opportunity."
- with files from Chris Morris and John Chilibeck.
More Actualités
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
Comments (32)
All comments are subject to the site Terms of Use. For a full commenting tutorial click here.
Our editorial team relies on filtering technology and our visitor community to identify inappropriate comments. In the event that a site user has submitted offensive content that has evaded our filter, please select the option to Flag As Inappropriate presented within the comment. Thank you for helping to keep this site clean.
Wishful thinking but they should resign at the least.
Hopefully this will be a learning lesson for the Saint John Port Authority that it's mandate is to promote the port for shipping interests and avoid the real estate business.
By the way why was Steve Campbell always in the limelight promoting this venture and taking credit when it seemed to be happening, but a tired beaten looking Al Soppitt had to break the news on behalf of the Port Authority.
Just a little punishment being meted out by our overlords for us peasants who have voiced our displeasure over their pillaging of our power utility for their own gain.
They probably want their HQ in a nicer location, like the Bahamas so that it's close to home and they won't have to set foot in this dirty little province as often.
Most of the tonnage at SJ is liquid - oil that goes to Canaport. I wish it were different but it isn't!
This announcement is a sad one for the city of SJ. A bare few months ago, we were all hyped on an 'energy boom'. Second reactor, second oil refinery, new Irving HQ, real estate changing hands at a furious pace as speculators from the west glommed onto the next best thing. Then the refinery died, reactor reacted, NBP was put on the table, real estate soured, all those 'skilled tradesmen' who got trained based on the speculation are educated but without jobs. Now the only thing left of all the hype, the Irving HQ, is not going ahead. Sad day for SJ. I guess the energy boom, went bust before it even started.
It was a situation where ther were a dozen or more separate unions on the payroll, some with only two people and consequently there was a work stoppage about once a month as workers refused to cross picket lines, even with 2 pickets. The paper wanted the unions to consoldate into one bargaining unit to allow them to establish some continuity of work.
Long story short. The paper announced that they were shutting down for ever and a reporter asked a picketer what he thought of that. The answer was that "we showed them who was boss". Never forgot it.
Here was a guy w/o a job, dozens of families with no paycheck and the owners were probably off to Bermuda or somewhere. So who were the real losers and who had lost sight of the greater good?
You lost it Saint John.