Photo: Google Street View – May 2021
View of Gosset Road from Elliott Road in May 2021.
A developer is suing the city of West Kelowna for nearly $300,000, the second lawsuit filed over the Gosset Road extension.
The lawsuit, filed in Vancouver this week by WestUrban Developments and Elliott Road Limited Partnership, relates to two apartment buildings that were constructed at 3641 Elliott Road.
The civil lawsuit alleges that the city imposed certain infrastructure works — road, water, sewerage, and drainage — as a condition of approving the project in 2018.
During construction, the city approached the developer and asked them to build additional infrastructure on Gosset and Elliott streets. The lawsuit alleges the developer and the city reached a settlement in 2019 and that the developer bore “the associated costs” of the additional work.
On March 31, 2021, Elliott Road LP mailed a bill to the city for $291,534, which remains unpaid to this date. The lawsuit claims the city is obligated to pay the developer “for the service rendered to it.”
“The city has been unduly enriched and deprived by the additional work and WestUrban and Elliott Road LP,” the lawsuit reads.
None of the claims in the lawsuit have been asserted in court. The City of West Kelowna has 21 to file an answer.
Neighboring developer Ironclad Developments sued the city in 2021 for $750,000 in infrastructure fees the municipality imposed on the contractor the city used to build Gosset Road between Eilliott and Brown streets.
WestUrban and Elliott Road LP were involved in this lawsuit and were added to the case as defendants in March 2022. Ironclad declined to bring the two additional parties to the lawsuit.
In the most recent court filing in Ironclad Developments’ lawsuit in September 2022, WestUrban and Elliott Road LP argued that the city’s decision to place charges against Ironclad was reasonable.
The City of West Kelowna had paid the funds raised by Ironclad to WestUrban and Elliott Road LP under a “latecomer agreement”.
Latecomer agreements are used by municipalities to fund the infrastructure needed to support development. A first-time developer pays the cost of infrastructure improvements upfront, and subsequent developers who benefit from that work within 15 years must pay for some of the work in the form of latecomer fees.
The Ironclad development and the WestUrban development are across Gosset Road.
