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A $500-million plan to redevelop the Saskatoon’s old police station site to include student housing, a new downtown library and a grocery store was rejected when the cost of the library was deemed too high.

City hall accepted a conditional $14-million offer last July to sell the police station and resurrect the site as an ambitious multi-use development featuring two 34-storey towers, sources say.

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The complex would have included a new downtown library more than twice the size of the current one, as well as student housing and the elusive downtown grocery store. The cost of finishing the library once it was built by the developer — estimated at more than $60 million by the city — appears to have killed the deal in October.

At $500 million, the project could have been the most expensive single private development in Saskatchewan’s history.

The offer came from Textbook Student Suites Inc., an Ontario-based developer that builds off-campus student housing, according to multiple sources.