Maria Canton
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 07/99) - Some Yellowknife apartment buildings formerly owned by Peter Pocklington are currently in the legal process of becoming condominium units.

Tenants of Shaganappy, Ptarmigan and Raven's Court apartments received written notice last week of the plans the new Edmonton owners, numbered company 809656 Alberta, have.

"There must be 66- per-cent tenant approval of the process," said Brad Vollans, marketing manager for the buildings.

A large number of vacancies exist, however, in which the landlord will get one vote for each unit.

"No one will be forced out, but rather, they can be married up with investment units," Vollans said.

When someone invests in a unit, as an alternative to buying it, they then become the landlord for their suite and reserve the option to rent to the tenants already living there.

"I've already had 10 positive responses from tenants," Vollans said.

"And since the option of rental investment units exists for those who don't want to condominiumize or stay on in that capacity, we're anticipating they'll be interested in an agreement of that type."

Between the three buildings, there will be 158 units. In order to convert a building to condominiums, the owners want a minimum of 38 units per building to be bought, not merely invested in.

And as part of the buying contract, the owners reserve the right to assign buyers to a particular building as a means of keeping all sold units together.

The three buildings are very similar, however, with two of them having the same floor plans.

The Edmonton owners, who bought the properties through the courts, decided to turn them into condominiums after they were made aware of the $10,000 home-buyers' incentive.

"They bought the buildings at a very good price and thought if they could sell a certain percentage at a low price to people using the $10,000, they could capitalize part of their investment right away," said Vollans.

The buildings are in good repair, structurally sound and 809656 Alberta has also hired night security and imposed an aggressive evictions program for those "not living by the rules."

"The new security and cleaning up of tenants is being well-received," said Vollans.

The legal process is currently under way and is expected to take four to six weeks before it is finalized and unit sales can begin.

Pocklington, former owner of the Edmonton Oilers hockey team, bought the apartments in June of 1980.

In 1998, he went bankrupt and receiver KPMG took possession of his assets, thus selling the Yellowknife apartments through the courts.

The new owners were unavailable for comment.