The lease of 20 acres of city-owned property to Yaorun Wood Products has also put on hold, for now, an environmental assessment of the location.
To date the work has cost $74,000 – $40,000 of which came in the form of a provincial grant and the remainder from local taxpayers.
The provincial grant was provided in 2011 from a program designed to remediate and redevelop vacant, derelict, or underutilized former industrial and commercial lands, also known as “brownfields”.
Terrace applied for the grant in order to begin environmental testing on the site and determine what level of contamination, if any exists, and what might be needed to restore the property and provide it with an environmentally clean bill of health so that it could be sold or otherwise used.
The city hired Golder and Associates to conduct preliminary work but the results of its investigations were not immediately available.
“It’s not a requirement to have this done prior to selling or leasing a property, however it is useful to understand what levels of contamination (if any) exist on a property when discussing the site with prospective developers,” said Terrace mayor Dave Pernarowski of the on-hold work.