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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Two of downtown's largest private landowners say information on how much it would cost to enter into the now-shelved district energy system was never provided, as city hall blames the project's demise this week on a lack of willing customers.

Acting senior administrative officer Dennis Kefalas told council Monday that getting customers to sign on to a city contract to provide hot water to heat their buildings failed this year because property owners would not commit to a downtown district heating system.

"The biggest hurdle that we had to address was trying to develop a customer base," said Kefalas, referring to the need for the territorial government and commercial property owners to link up with the proposed city district heating system.

"None of the property owners would sign on unless the other one did and we couldn't get confirmation."

Among those was the territorial government and NPR Limited Partnership. The GNWT ended up getting a wood pellet boiler to provide heat for three adjacent buildings on 49 Street.

NPR's Kelly Hayden said he received notice from the city this week that the project was shelved.

He maintains he hasn't met with the city on the project since early summer or late spring and that there was a lot of confusion around pricing at the time.

"We were interested but it never came to a final model that you got pricing to say whether you could do it or not," said Hayden.

"There was a lot of confusion around if it was still a geothermal project and it wasn't. It was a central heating project being done by wood pellets.

"I think (the project) stalled when it got to that point because they didn't know how to put together a pricing scenario on wood pellets."

Hayden said he was in support of a central heating system because it is hard to find land downtown to set up a pellet boiler. But it could not be proven that it would provide cheaper heat, so he couldn't sign on.

Calls to the GNWT's Department of Public Works were not returned by press time.

Representatives from another property management company, Dundee, also said this week that there hadn't been enough details coming forward for them to sign on. Randy Cameron, Dundee's Western Canada senior vice-president, and local property manager Darin Benoit said they met with former senior administrative officer Bob Long last January when the idea of a municipal utility providing heat to downtown businesses was presented.

"When we met with Bob, he said, 'I realize we are going to have to convince you of the economics. All we want to know at this point is whether or not you are in theory on side with the idea," recalled Cameron. "He said (the city) realized they would have to support it with numbers and costs and so on, and that they would undertake to get that to us.

"There was never any numbers or analysis forthcoming."

Cameron, a senior manager with the company which has about 350,000 square feet of office space in five downtown buildings, including the Bellanca and Gallery buildings, said he thought Long and the city had nonetheless provided a compelling case for district heating. He said he was in support of the project and had expected to get more details within a couple months. But he never heard from the city again.

"There wasn't anything further coming from Bob," said Cameron.

Details like where wood pellets were going to come from, whether the supply of wood pellets was stable, what would be charged to heat per unit, what the heat expectancy was going to be, how long the contract would be and what kind of savings could be expected were all questions left unanswered, said Cameron. He also never got estimates on how much it would cost to dig up the streets for piping.

"That was to be delivered in future packages," said Cameron. "There would have to be a large plant constructed and obviously the streets dug up and so on and so forth."

As far as obligations and guarantees, Dundee never got that information, either.

"I don't think it was ever put, the exact dollars and cents as far as the payback and what they would charge to the landowner," said Cameron.

Kefalas confirmed the city didn't have firm numbers when meetings were held with business owners but were just trying to get a sense of how much interest there was for the project.

"We were still working on our business case but we wanted something in writing if it proved feasible and less costly to what they were getting," said Kefalas.

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