By Sheri Monk

Leader’s town council is at a stalemate in a game of property chess after a proposed downtown condo project failed. Without council’s knowledge or consent, a former administrator changed a development agreement and as a result, the town may have to pay thousands to reclaim control of a property it already owns.
The large piece of property is located next to the post office at First Street West. Surrounded by a makeshift fence and overgrown with summer weeds, there is no longer a sidewalk there – it was removed as a result of initial work to prepare for the construction that never occurred.
The property has a lengthy history which included most recently a juice factory. The town eventually demolished the building (which had been repossessed because of tax arrears) to ready the land for construction.
Initially the town of Leader, the Leader Lions Club and the RM of Happyland pursued a life lease condo project, but it stalled after potential residents didn’t seem interested.
“It’s been out there and no one ever came forward to give us the money. We were stalled, so we either had to go finance it ourselves or we had to drop it,” explained Craig Tondevold, Leader’s mayor.
When the life lease idea failed, a local entrepreneur began investigating the opportunity for a condominium complex.
“Who approached me about it? The town,” said James Buscholl, a Sceptre farmer and trucker who wanted to build a condo project on the property.
“He (Buscholl) said people had been approaching him, that they were interested if he would build one,” said Tondevold.
Buscholl says he owns the property and purchased it from the town for $10,000.
“We also have a land title here for it. I could never build a condominium on it without having a clear title to it,” he said. “They sold the property to us for $10,000.”
The town says they own the land.
“It was going to be transferred to his name, but the town didn’t want to end up with a situation where he owns this property – this prime property in town – and it’s basically sitting with nothing on it, kinda like it is right now. That was the situation they were trying to keep from happening,” explained town administrator Rochelle Francis.
Tondevold says the title of the land never changed hands.
“If you do a title search, we still have title to that land. Unless he thinks he’s got something else, other than the agreement. The only thing the agreement says is that he’s got access to the property.”
Francis says the town signed an agreement with Buscholl allowing him to develop the land without owning it. To secure the agreement, Francis said the Buscholl paid the town a $10,000 deposit.
Buscholl maintains he owns the title and that he would sell the property back to the town – at a price of $10,000.
“I’m not going to lose more money on it,” said Buscholl.
Francis says the reasons for the standstill is due to a flaw in the agreement between the town and Buscholl. She says the agreement should have contained a clause mandating a timeline for the condo construction to begin, but the clause was removed before the papers were signed.
“I believe the former administrator requested our lawyer to take a clause out of it and the clause was taken out before signing. Council didn’t realize that it had been removed. We only found this out because council kept telling me about this agreement and to find out what the timeline was, so I reviewed the agreement. Well, there is no timeline so I talked to the lawyer and yes, he had requested that be removed,” Francis revealed.
Buscholl says he requested the change be made to the agreement.
“OK, so he had the clause changed, but that was not to our awares because there must have been some cahoots going on between my administrator (and Buscholl) at that time,” said Tondevold.
Had the agreement not been changed, the current standoff would never have happened.
“Failing to start anything as of a year after he was given access to that lot, we should have received the lot and we would have retained his deposit,” said Tondevold.
The mayor says the missing clause in the agreement wasn’t discovered until much later, when council suspected the project had stalled. By that time, the administrator responsible for proceeding with the change was no longer working for the town.
Buscholl says despite much apparent verbal interest expressed about new condos, buyers just never materialized.
“We just couldn’t get it going. People said they were interested, but nobody bought,” said Buscholl.
He says the town tried to help him the project move forward and personally believes one of the reasons why the condos never sold was due to widespread uncertainty regarding the future of healthcare availability at Leader.
“People don’t want to live where there’s no hospital,” said Buscholl.
He says condo units were to be priced at around the $169,000 mark.
In December, a public meeting was hosted by the town in co-operation with Buscholl to try and address any concerns about the condo plans in an attempt to propel the project forward. Francis said only five people attended and there was no resulting interest.
“He had quite a big set of blueprints drawn up and I think he had an environmental assesment done and some different stuff like that. He certainly has lost on it also. The people that were supposedly wanting to invest in this didn’t step forward,” said Francis.
According to the town, the agreement can’t be dissolved because Buscholl wants his $10,000 back and the town doesn’t want to return it.
“He’s paid us a certain sum of money so basically what he’s saying is that if we give him that money back, he’ll give us that property back. But in the meantime, we’ve torn up the sidewalk and we’ve also installed water and sewer to the property, so it’s become quite an expense for us,” Francis explained.
The administrator estimates the town will have spent as much as $70,000 on the property when all is said and done, which includes the future cost of laying a new sidewalk.
“That sidewalk, it was a big sidewalk – it wasn’t just a normal-sized sidewalk,” said Francis, adding that seniors now have to walk on the road, which can be a hazard during winter.
Meanwhile, Buscholl seems content to wait, hoping the town may make a different decision and he says he is confident something will be worked out.
Tondevold says despite the flawed agreement, the land is not tied up indefinitely.
“It’s really not frozen. If there’s any interest in it, we’d get it back. I don’t consider it to be frozen because it’s just a matter of money, of course,” said the mayor. “There’s nobody interested that I know of. Like I told you before, I’m not willing to start throwing my money away if I don’t have to right now, so we’re just kinda holding back right now. I think in the end, we’ll be able to make a deal with him.”
The town will not be building a new sidewalk until the agreement is dissolved.
Once it is, the town will require Buscholl to remove the fence and any two storage units from the property before a new sidewalk can be built.
Town council is expected to discuss the matter at a regular meeting in the near future.