AUDIO: New Dawn CEO questions benefits of Sydport property deal
“This was a sale of a port asset in a community that purports to want to do port development and an asset valued over a million dollars. It’s hard to imagine that that just slips through the cracks.”
CBRM council is set to discuss the controversial sale of a harbourfront property during Tuesday’s council meeting. Meanwhile, the CEO of New Dawn Enterprises, Erika Shea, says the deal only enriches one individual, not CBRM taxpayers.
The sale of the harbourfront land, which the CBRM purchased in 2015 and leased to Point Edward Marine for ten years, was brought to the public’s attention last week by Dist. 2 councillor, Earlene MacMullin. She and other councillors are concerned that the sale, which was an option in the ten-year lease agreement approved by council in 2015, went ahead last month without councillors being made aware of it.
The land was purchased by Point Edward Marine, which is now owned solely by Albert Barbusci, whose other company, SHIP, has held an exclusivity agreement with the municipality since 2015 to market and develop a container terminal at Sydney Harbour. Earlier this year, council voted to discontinue negotiations with SHIP and to pursue the establishment of a harbour authority.
Following last Tuesday’s council meeting, in which the issue of the land sale was discussed, Mayor Cecil Clarke told reporters that any questions about the Sydport land deal should be addressed to the COA, Dmitri Kachafanas, who did not attend that meeting. He is expected to be in this week’s meeting and the issue is again included in the agenda.
“There was an opportunity to be very transparent, both with the council and the community about this piece of land transitioning from a lease to a sale, and it does seem to have been a conscious decision not to do that,” said Erika Shea in conversation with CBC Radio’s Tom Ayers. “This was a sale of a port asset in a community that purports to want to do port development and an asset valued over a million dollars. It’s hard to imagine that that just slips through the cracks.”
Whether there is anything to be done about the sale of the land at this point — something Shea says is not an area of expertise for her — there are many questions to be asked and lessons to be learned.
“There seems to be a theme here when it comes to Mr. Barbusci and port development and that theme is good process, good governance, not being followed by the CBRM, whether that’s a decade of untendered contracts for port development or a lease to sale agreement that has enriched one individual significantly and failed to enrich the CBRM.”
Listen to the full conversation from CBC Radio’s Information Morning Cape Breton here.
Watch the livestream of Tuesday’s CBRM council meeting, beginning at 2 pm, here.
