Just found it...City sells part of seized property
By: Bartley Kives
12/07/2010 1:00 AM Winnipeg is about to recoup $1 million from the sale of a sprawling industrial property it seized in what was believed to be the biggest tax sale in the city's history.
In 2008, the city took control of the former Dominion Bridge site, a 30.5-acre property on the south side of Dublin Avenue. Winnipeg's Shelter Canadian Properties had owned the site since 1999, but fell behind on the property taxes by 2001 and eventually lost the property.
When the city seized the lands, Shelter owed $2.7 million. The following year, it reached a deal to sell the site for $3.2 million to a firm called PBX Properties.
But the sale was never closed, leading city real-estate managers to carve up the site and offer the southern portion to Capitol Steel and its partner the ADF Group for $1 million, city documents say.
City council's property and development committee voted last week to approve the sale. The city must also subdivide the parcel of land in question.
The high-profile industrial site, which sits adjacent to Omand's Creek, was first developed as a steel fabricating plant in 1910. Dominion Bridge operated the plant until 1998, when the Quebec-based company went into receivership, throwing 220 Winnipeggers out of work.
More recently, the main brick building on the site was used as a movie set. Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin shot much of
The Saddest Music In The World inside the structure in 2003, while a gallows scene from the Oscar-winning
Capote was filmed in the building in 2004.
bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 12, 2010 B5