Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In recent weeks, there has been media reporting about the demolition of the Bellanca Building in downtown Yellowknife. This has been part of our skyline for many years, and many residents have been concerned about tearing down what seems to be a viable asset and whether or not there are options to convert it to, some of the ideas that have been brought forward, student housing, a university campus, or transitional housing or low-income housing. I would like to ask the Minister of Infrastructure if the GNWT has considered the Bellanca Building as an asset for any of its projects. Thank you.
Thank you. Minister of Infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I knew we would get questions on this one. This was raised in the newspaper with the Bellanca Building coming down. Now, we have to make one thing quite clear: it is a privately owned business. They own this asset. We are actively leasing space off the Bellanca Development Corporation in other buildings that they own in Yellowknife. They have never made anything aware to us as a government about this building. They haven't used it to bid on other projects in the Northwest Territories, or in Yellowknife, I guess.
For us as a government to look at this as an asset to use for something around the polytechnic university or other things in Yellowknife, we haven't had a viable look at this. We have to go through our processes, get money through the House to be able to move on a number of these projects in the Northwest Territories. The short answer is no, we haven't done that. If we were to do that, we would have to have a good, hard look at this because this is an older building. I suspect there are deferred maintenance issues on this building and hazardous material, depending on what type of renovation a person would have to do on this thing. At this point, we have not clearly had a look at this thing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I do share the Minister's caution. It is not all that appropriate for governments to reach in to private commercial matters, but there is some precedent when it is useful to government such as MTS. We bought those assets, and now we are using it. If there is a real need for a campus, could this be an opportunity to start fresh? I appreciate what the Minister is saying.
Now, there is some concern, as well, that the public has brought forward around demolition and all that material that as the Minister said, may or may not be hazardous going to the Yellowknife landfill and potentially being an environmental concern. Is the Minister aware of any procedures the GNWT has in place to assist in assessing those concerns if they do present a risk to the public?
We have a lot of environmental regulations in place that the developer would have to follow if they were going to dispose of this building. They are going to have to deal with the City of Yellowknife, I suspect, around municipal waste disposal bylaw requirements. There are a number of environmental issues that would have to be taken into consideration on their side as well as probably ours and the City of Yellowknife if this building was to be ripped down.
Thank you to the Minister for that clarification. The Minister hasn't looked at this. Has any analysis been done on it, not just on whether it is for a GNWT project, but just on the viability of the building as a commercial development? The GNWT rents space from this development corporation. Is there any reason why they are not renting space in this particular asset?
As I have said, they have not looked at any GNWT lease procurement opportunities with this building for office space proposals. We are not aware of any department that is looking for incremental space at this point. I don't believe there is any funding available to do that at this point. A lot of this is all speculation in the paper about what is going to happen with this building. I don't mind having a conversation with the Member if there is an opportunity to have a look at this thing for other projects that the Government of the Northwest Territories is having a look at, but that would be early days. We would have to look at a number of things, I think, to look at this thing. We would have to look at the operational needs, the technical upgrades that would have to take place on this type of building to meet those requirements, all these sorts of things. As the Member knows, the siding fell off there last year. There are code deficiencies, deferred maintenance issues. There are a lot of different things that we would have to have a look at, but I am willing to have those conservations.
Thank you. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
