Even though infrastructure work on the land has been ongoing without an official tenant or finalized sale, the City of Moose Jaw will wait another four months for payment of $7.9 million for 780 acres of land in the city’s South East Industrial Park by Carpere Canada Industrial Park Corp. 

A special meeting of Moose Jaw City Council was called on Oct. 23rd to discuss a request to extend the contractual closing date from Oct. 31, 2019, to February 28, 2020. That request was approved by City Council Monday night. 

Councillor Brian Swanson argued that it seems "easy to break contracts in Moose Jaw” and proposed to charge Carpere a $100,000 contractual extension fee. 

"One thing we're good at in Moose Jaw is providing extensions to contractual agreements that really have resulted in nothing, except the expenditure of City money," said Swanson, Monday. "In the real world, if you have a contractual agreement with another party, that they're to pay you money on a certain date, and you're to exchange a good or service for that, and you don't do that, there's a cost to you. I would suggest there should be a cost to Carpere if they don't want to pay the $7.9 million dollars." 

Myron Gulka-Tiechko, City Clerk/Solicitorif, said there was some advantage to the City to extend the deadline, however not all of the details could be shared during the meeting.

"There is a wish to have further discussion on this, I think we should adjourn to have this type of discussion in-camera," said Gulka-Tiechko. "Essentially just in terms of background, there was also an interest in the City to have an extension... given that both the registration of the subdivisions with ISC and getting approval of the highways department for the closure of roads was going to extend the approval, so we couldn't meet the Oct. 31 deadline. I can certainly say that there was some advantage to the City to have an extension of some time." 

Carpere Canada Industrial Park Corp. calls itself a development and investment company and was incorporated in BC in June 2018. According to the company's website, Carpere already manages more than 20,000 acres of agriculture and livestock land. Besides Moose Jaw, land sale deals have also been secured near Tisdale, Nipawin, Portage la Prairie and Brandon this year. 

At the time of the sale, Mayor Fraser Tolmie lauded it as a “landmark deal.”

The City of Moose Jaw has recently approved Carpere to build 64 acres worth of residential homes on the 780, which according to the company’s website, will include a mix of single and multi-family units.