Audited Circulation 12,933 An Island Publishers Newspaper Wednesday April 11,1990 40¢ BEYER A8 BRENNAN Bu GRENBY BT HAMPSON A9 LANG B2. [NASH AT ee ear Ty tek gx Sind ants Te OGD F oe ee =] BUSINESS B7 CALENDAR Bll CLASSIFIEDS B16 COMMUNITY B3 GARDENING B2 LIVING B10 OPINION AG OUTDOORS AQ SPORTS B4 TOP OF THE PILE A7 The Tracker comes home to Pat Bay Bl4 Public port costs will be revealed ‘There will be an accounting by George Lee The Review Port of Sidney costs bore by the municipal taxpayer will be detai- led for public scrutiny, the mayor promised Thursday. But people should realize sel- ling land to Sidney Pier Holdings Ltd. saved the town from financial disaster, Mayor Norma Sealey told a public meeting. “Yes, there will be an account- ing,” Sealey told the 30-person crowd attending a question-and- answer meeting. Sealey said selling part of the port property bought by an earlier council was necessary to relieve the town from stifling debt pay- ments of about $500,000 a year, which were almost destroying the town’s public works program. The town recouped most of its debt by selling “a very, very small portion of the land,” she said. The rest of the port project area is leased from the town, or was or will be purchased from other land owners. Lease payments have been com- Continued on Page A4 Building goes up on proposed highway link by Glenn Werkman The Review A $2.5 million building is less than two months from completion at 2200-Keating Crossroad despite plans by the Ministry of Highways to build a road through the site, linking Keating to an interchange at Island View Road. “They came to me two months ago and asked if I would mind stopping for six months,” Old Country Rentals president Ken Mickelberry said. But Old Country’s parent com- pany, Royalta Holdings Ltd., had received building permits, includ- ing a development variance per- mit, and couldn’t sit on a half- million-dollar property invest- ment, Mickelberry said. “We're building like crazy,” he said. “I’d asked to meet with (Highways) several times but they wouldn’t make a commitment.” Mickelberry bought the two- acre industrially-zoned site in June, 1989, to build a new head office, service facility and rental space. At the time of October, 1989 public information meetings on a Central Saanich highway inter- Six-months away from call for Sidney’s loop by Glenn Werkman The Review The Highways department is planning a total buyout of the Sanscha Hall property, its project planner said last week. Highway planners are now hard at work on a detailed design draw- ing, estimated to take six months to complete. Tenders will be called for con- struction of the partial cloverleaf interchange directly after the detai- led design is completed — signal- ling the beginning of an 18-month construction period, said project _ planner Gregg Singer, Wednesday. “The detailed design has just started and it will probably take about six months,” Singer said. “Tt will have a major impact on Sanscha Hall, obviously.” It is estimated that building the partial cloverleaf interchange will eat up about nine acres (3.6 hec- tares) of land, including land required for merge lanes, Singer said. Beacon Avenue is in the most advanced planning stage of three interchanges planned for comple- tion on the Peninsula by 1994. “The partial cloverleaf was sup- ported by most people at the public information meetings,” Singer said. Continued on Page A3 change, the Highways Ministry was aware Old Country had applied for building permits to construct a 30,000 square-foot building. “We had the preliminary plans in August 1989 and indicated we were going ahead,” Mickelberry said. “We thought it would be Continued on Page A3