A pilot project to help get vacant properties in Saint John’s South Central Peninsula sold and redeveloped is in the works by city staff.
It’s called the property matching program and the idea is to give owners of vacant properties a way to get the word out about their properties to developers. There are 49 vacant buildings in the south end and of the 29 owners the city reached out to so far, 28 said they wanted to take part in the program.
Mayor Don Darling senses ‘pent-up demand’ in the uptown in particular, with people looking for opportunities for infill or rehabilitating buildings.
“And it’s complicated, people are asking themselves where do I go, how do I found out who owns the building…how do I find a renovator, how do I find a builder,” says Darling.
“Let’s get started, let’s do something, let’s do a version 1.0 and then as we learn over the next number of months we can make some tweaks to it and move forward. The other thing that’s really positive is that staff has reached to work with the real estate community as well, so we can get them involved.”
Under privacy legislation, the city isn’t able to disclose who owns what property in the city so a waiver needs to be created as part of this program for interested property owners so their information can be released.
City staff are looking at a launch date of late fall 2017 for the program.
