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“They didn’t contact us,” said Trevor Reid, who was elected reeve of the R.M. of Dundurn in 2015, three years after Brightenview unveiled plans to build a sprawling “International Exhibition Centre” on land it bought in the municipality south of Saskatoon. The company has not done any work on the project since, leading Reid to say it is “dead in the water.”

Last month, around the time it broke ground at the GTH, Brightenview scrubbed all mention of the Dundurn complex from its website. The company’s CEO, Joe Zhou, told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix at the time that there was no firm timeline for the project, which had previously had several construction start dates, and a Dundurn-specific website was under development.

Reid, meanwhile, said that while he is ambivalent about whether the project — which Brightenview has said will house 350 shops belonging to Asian investors and create around 1,000 jobs — ever goes ahead, he has no plans to contact the provincial government to express his views about the company.

“(The government) wants to move land down there and, quite frankly, if they have a sale, they’re just looking at the dollars, right?” Reid said. “They’re not looking at the long-term problem that is potentially going to be caused.”

Photo by Gord Waldner

In 2014, Brightenview announced plans to build a $45 million “Global Development Centre” in Chatham-Kent, across Lake St. Clair from Detroit. Last year, however, Brightenview’s extended deadline to buy a 33-acre industrial park for $804,000 expired and some of the land earmarked for the company was sold to another firm.