Riley Brandt

The city labelled the Sky Tower site at 10 Avenue and 1 Street S.E a “danger to public safety” early as last October

Abandoned and stalled construction sites throughout Calgary are putting people and property at risk — with one southwest condo site at risk of “catastrophic collapse,” according to court documents obtained by Fast Forward Weekly.

To stave off disaster, the city is fighting developers in court. “There is a developing emergency which threatens to rapidly escalate,” warned Kevin Griffiths, the city’s chief building inspector, in a February affidavit. Since then, two sinkholes have been found near downtown construction sites, including a huge hole measuring 10 x 6 x 6 metres under Fourth Street S.W.

The city is “very concerned” about these sites given the sinkholes, says Griffiths, adding there’s definitely a relationship between the two. “What that means, we still have to finalize.”

As well, since September the city has ordered owners of 10 inner-city sites to do remedial work to make them safer. The city is also monitoring at least 40 more “distressed” construction projects — large commercial and multi-unit sites — so that if construction halts the city will intervene to prevent structure deterioration.

Typically, many of these buildings’ foundations are dug below the water table, which creates silt erosion behind temporary wood and concrete shoring walls that form the holes. At the Manchester Station project at 53rd Avenue and Second Street S.W., for example, the shoring is "deteriorating" because of weather exposure, groundwater accumulation, "imposed loads" and soil erosion, the city says in court documents.

The city has gone to court to get receivers appointed over the Manchester site as well as the Sky Tower project at 10th Avenue and First Street S.E. (Typically, a receiver is involved if companies go bankrupt, but in these cases the site owners have plans for their projects.) Manchester’s nine-metre-deep excavation “threatens a catastrophic collapse,” posing “a present and continuing danger to life and property,” according to a February brief filed by the city. Three months later in an interview, Griffiths says the site is in “great distress.”

Even though a sinkhole collapsed a road near the Manchester site last June, Todd Gow, CEO of project owner Source Development Corp., disagrees with the city’s dire warning of a “catastrophic collapse” at his site. “The unfortunate reality of it is, I think the city is trying to make an example of us,” he says. “The shoring is braced. The walls are braced.” (Last fall, the city hired crews to partially backfill the shoring at the site.) Now the property is for sale, but Gow says if he can’t sell he may build a seniors complex on the site. “We are going to make it work one way or another.”

Meanwhile, the Sky Tower project was labelled “a danger to public safety and adjacent properties” by the city as early as last October, when water pooled at the bottom of the six-storey hole. The water created an urgent hazard and risked destabilizing the shoring, Griffiths said in an April affidavit. He also said some of the shoring has outlived its lifespan of 12 to 18 months. When engineers inspected the hole last month, chunks of concrete shoring broke off the east wall, crashing to the ground.

The engineers’ report says the soil under an adjacent building is saturated from spring thaw and warns that if the crumbling walls are “left unchecked,” water and soil could gush from underneath the building through the excavation walls, leaving “unacceptable,” damaging holes beneath the building.

Robert Cohen, president of Sky Tower’s Montreal-based owner Diamond-Trust Towers Corp., declined to comment, but in an April affidavit he said his company “intends to continue development” of the site and isn’t aware of information suggesting it is a public safety hazard.

Meanwhile, the city is racking up a hefty bill for work at stalled sites — in the “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says Griffiths. The developer is billed on the property’s tax roll, but the city is looking at following Vancouver’s lead by making developers pay a security deposit up-front so that remedial costs are covered if construction stalls. “We want to see a better way of doing this,” says Griffiths.

He emphasizes that property owners ultimately bear responsibility for keeping their sites safe. “It’s not our role, actually, to manage private property,” he says. “We do have the capability to react in emergency situations, but that is the extent of where our involvement should be.”

So far the city has been unsuccessful in its attempts to get receivers for the Manchester and Sky Tower projects.