Galway developer Danny Williams doesn’t want to go to court, or go to arbitration to settle a dispute about three acres of property in Galway that he doesn’t want to give to the City of St. John’s.
Instead, Williams wants a third-party mediator to come in and put the situation to bed, once and for all.
“I want to try and get work going on that site. Right now, we’re shut down for the summer — it’s done,” Williams said Wednesday.
“The city is saying they want a conveyance and we’re saying we never, ever had any obligation to provide a conveyance. We will provide land for usage. That’s it, in a nutshell.”
The conflict is about a one- to three-acre spot of land near the water tower in Galway. The city wants DewCor, William’s company leading the development, to give it the land for use to store snow in the winter. Exactly how much land the city will need isn’t known, according to St. John’s Mayor Danny Breen, because the city doesn’t know how much it will snow in the area.
Because DewCor hasn’t given over the land, the city is withholding residential building permits, which has ground construction to a halt, Williams says.
It has forced Williams into a stare-down with Breen — a far cry from the chummy relationship enjoyed when Williams campaigned with Breen when the latter ran in the 2014 Virginia Waters-Pleasantville byelection. Breen lost that seat to Liberal Cathy Bennett.
Williams wrote a letter to St. John’s city council on Wednesday asking for mediation to resolve the matter, as long as the city gives the building permits first.
In April, Williams won a Supreme Court decision allowing him to take the city to court over disputes, instead of using mandated arbitration panels.
Those panels would consist of a number of independent members, agreed upon by either party to resolve issues — the same system was initiated to settle a disagreement between Dean MacDonald and St. John’s Edge owners Irwin Simon and Robert Sabbagh over the rights to a hockey team at Mile One Centre. The parties in that case came to an agreement before the arbitration began, giving birth to the ECHL’s Newfoundland Growlers.
Williams says he doesn’t want to go to arbitration because that route would take longer than a single mediator.
“We agree on one person — whether it’s a former judge or a former mayor — who we think is fair and impartial to go back and forth between the parties to see if they can come up with a solution,” Williams said.
“The main reason is to just break the deadlock. Right now there’s absolute deadlock.”
Breen did not respond to requests for comment by deadline. A city spokesperson said staff has to review Williams’ letter before issuing a response.
david.maher@thetelegram.com
Twitter: DavidMaherNL
