Nanaimo’s old Canadian Pacific pier is on its way out.
The City of Nanaimo will put out the call for tender to remove the CP dock on the south industrial waterfront this May.
It’s part of a laundry list of work the city is doing this year to pave the way for redevelopment of its 10.8-hectare Port Drive property and will link in to the purchase of a right-of-way.
According to Bill Corsan, the city’s manager of real estate, Seaspan Ferry Corporation owns a right-of-way that extends over the city-owned water lot and is responsible to remove the pier when it leaves – a move planned for early 2017.
The city has offered to take the structure down now, with approvals in place and $400,000 budget to do the work, and have the value subracted from its bill to buy that right-of-way.
The move, once complete, would see the city have control over marine uses at that site.
“All the stuff we’ve been doing so far is about getting the site ready for redevelopment and this dock is at the end of its functional life,” Corsan said. “It needs to be removed at some point so if we remove it now it means that when Seaspan does leave and we have our master plan in place ... if that was identified as a priority area, we could get to work right away on it.
“If it’s there two, three years from now, then we have to go through all the approvals again to get it taken out. It just slows thing down a bit in terms of redevelopment.”
The city will be working with Seaspan this year on a formalized agreement. A call to tender for the dock removal is expected at the end of May.