Ottawa taxpayers now know how much they shelled out to buy and expropriate properties needed for Stage 1 of the city’s light rail transit system.

The city spent more than $63 million to acquire 62 properties listed in a report prepared for the Finance and Economic Development Committee and released it in advance of its meeting on Dec. 3.

The largest portion of the cost — nearly $50 million of it — was to acquire six properties on Belfast Road, now the site of the main LRT maintenance facility.

The costs include buying and expropriating private property, transactions with Crown corporations and government agencies, and the cost of six of the Confederation Line’s 13 stations that are integrated into existing privately owned buildings.

Among the highest individual payments were: $11,272,000 to the owner of 767 Belfast Rd., $7,786,000 to the owner of 747 Belfast, $7,410,000 to the owner of 725 Belfast and $6,064,000 to the owner of 731 Belfast.

The city paid $6 million to the owners of 272 Queen St. and $4 million to the owners of 156-160 Lyon Street. The smallest payment was one of $1,040 to an owner at “Highway 417-Transitway” while many tenants in affected properties were paid nothing at all.

The total also included $67,404.50 in legal fees for the transaction at 725 Belfast.

Property acquisition for Stage 1 is “now substantially complete” although a small number of claims under the Expropriation Act are still outstanding, the report says.

The city began expropriating property for the Confederation Line in March 2012. The costs weren’t released until now to protect the city’s financial interests in its negotiations with property owners and, in some cases, the owners of expropriated property who were trying to find new premises.

In calculating the payments, the Expropriation Act allows for the market value of the property, “disturbance damages” such as the cost of an owner to relocate to a new property, the cost of lost business and “injurious affectation,” which includes the negative impacts to the owner’s remaining property. In some cases, the total can include interest costs, although that was not broken down in the FEDCO report. The city is also responsible in most cases for covering the legal and appraisal costs of the owner whose property is being expropriated.

Even so, the total cost of property acquisition — $63,044,771 as of Nov. 1 — is a small portion of the total $2.1 billion cost of the Stage 1 LRT.

bcrawford@postmedia.com

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