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This article was published 15/11/2014 (2137 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The week after Labour Day 2008, Winnipeg's former mayor and Manitoba's former premier stood inside an Osborne Street transit garage and announced they finally had a deal to build the Southwest Transitway.

The $138-million announcement was a bit of a shocker in that it arrived only four years after then-mayor Sam Katz cancelled a plan to build a previous version of the transitway, a bus corridor that spent decades languishing in the city's transportation plans.

But there was an inevitable aspect to the deal. In March of the same year, the Harper government offered Manitoba $17.9 million of use-it-or-lose-it transportation cash. Faced with little choice, Katz and former premier Gary Doer pledged $55 million each toward the transitway, with Ottawa kicking in the remaining millions.

The city and province financed their commitments with $20 million in cash and borrowed a further $90 million together, with the intention of paying back that debt with the help of new developments along the rapid-transit corridor.

At the time, Katz and Doer said property and education taxes from new highrise towers and retail stores within the bus-corridor zone would pay back the cash.

Phil Sheegl, the city's property director at the time, said the city hoped to see 700 new apartment or condo units eventually rise alongside each of 12 new busway stations along the entire corridor.

Based on $1,000 worth of property taxes per unit, the new corridor could eventually generate $8.4 million a year for the city, Sheegl said.

To demonstrate how that would happen, the mayor's staff pointed reporters to developer Andrew Marquess, who had acquired the former industrial site known as the Fort Rouge Yards only six months earlier -- the same month Ottawa promised Manitoba money for rapid transit.

Marquess, who was invited to the transitway announcement, was planning on building apartments and condos alongside the new corridor.

Six years later, he's still planning to build those units -- 900, to be precise. According to an area master plan endorsed by the city in 2010, what's now known as The Yards at Fort Rouge will sport a series of low-rise townhouses, four-storey mid-rise structures and two taller apartment towers.

The project, however, is three years behind the construction schedule included in the very same master plan. Marquess's firm, Gem Equities, has installed geothermal-heating systems below the ground, built roads and sidewalks above the surface and is in the process building of a Southwest Transitway station near Jubilee Avenue, as dictated by a city servicing agreement.

But the only evidence of housing above ground is a show home erected in 2013, when real estate agents began selling three-bedroom townhouse units for $290,000 to $305,000.

To date, 23 out of 40 of those units have sold, said Monica Newman of RimRock Realty. "People are anxious and excited to move in," she said.

Construction on those townhouses will begin as soon as the city provides the permits, said Marquess, promising the remaining build-out will be much more aggressive.

"I find it very interesting people on the outside have these timelines," Marquess said this week.

"Projects like this take time to plan. Once you get into a development of this size, everything is interconnected. There are multiple buildings on the site and they all have to be stitched together. You're creating a community. You're creating an infill subdivision."

To be fair, Marquess is not just building 40 townhouses. Once the former Fort Rouge Yards are fully built out, the redevelopment of the former industrial site will be the single largest infill-housing project Winnipeg has seen.

The ambitious nature of the project is what led the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to offer Marquess a $14.7-million loan, with $10 million of that sum guaranteed by the City of Winnipeg.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Fort Rouge yards

To date, none of this money has flowed to the developer. But there's more than just infill housing at stake. As a transit-oriented development, the success or failure of The Yards at Fort Rouge will have serious implications for the new mayor, who's promised to use development to finance the construction of five more rapid-transit corridors.

The day after Labour Day of this year, then-candidate Brian Bowman promised to complete six rapid-transit corridors by 2030. Commercial and residential development along these busways will help pay back the capital costs, he pledged.

As a result, the slow pace of the development alongside Winnipeg's sole existing corridor has not gone unnoticed by the new mayor.

"I would like to see developments happening much more rapidly, no pun intended," Bowman said.

He said he's asked for a detailed briefing about the Fort Rouge Yards and repeated his pledge to let developers know Winnipeg is serious about transit-oriented development.

"Unless the development industry believes council knows where it's heading, why would they follow through?" the mayor asked. "I'm confident we can accomplish this together, but it's going to take a lot of work."

The City of Winnipeg, however, has no formal role in the Fort Rouge redevelopment, which is taking place on privately owned land. Marquess has not missed any deadlines that would trigger legal consequences, city officials noted in a statement.

Furthermore, the city contradicted Katz and Sheegl's often-repeated suggestion that revenue from new developments along the first phase of the Southwest Transitway will help pay back part of the project's $138-million price tag.

"The 2008 report to council does not rely on property taxes from this development to pay for BRT," the city said in a statement, referring specifically to the Fort Rouge Yards.

Nonetheless, officials are eager to see Marquess succeed.

"Obviously, we'd all like to see the development move ahead. It's something we thought would happen a lot sooner," said Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry Coun. Jenny Gerbasi, a proponent of the project.

"I just know it's been delayed and delayed. I've been hearing the same thing: Everything's always just about to start."

Marquess, who has been rapped by the city for issues at other projects, insisted above-ground construction will commence soon.

Part of the delay in the project involved due diligence, as The Yards at Fort Rouge had to sport the right mix of rental apartments and condos to weather changes in the real estate market.

"These developments that span longer periods of time, you're going to go through different market conditions and economic cycles. Your plan has to be robust enough to survive that," he said.

He also said he understands the heightened political importance of the development, given the ambitious scope of Bowman's rapid-transit pledge.

"Everyone has an opinion in rapid transit. We're just going ahead and building units," Marquess said.

"All the naysayers will start to see the building going up. I don't know about the other five legs, but this one is going forward."

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca