After holding his silence for a month, an emotional Robin Wilber addressed the Municipality of East Hants last night on the issue of a breached development agreement between Corridor Development Limited (CDL) and the local government.

“As president of CDL, I can fully understand council being upset with a developer that intentionally did something to contravene their development agreement,” said Wilber during the July 28 public hearing in Milford. “I can assure you this is not the case.”

On June 23, a public hearing was called after CDL put forward an application to amend the agreement governing an apartment building on Kali Lane. The initial agreement called for a 32-unit building, which was the maximum capacity allowed under regulations in 2007, when the deal was struck. Early the following year, the municipality amended those regulations to allow for more units. During the June hearing, it was discovered that CDL had already changed a common room into a bachelor apartment, which was rented as a 33rd unit.

Wilber was not present at that meeting to defend CDL, as he had been told by Councillor John MacDonald that attendance was unnecessary. However, council was surprised that the unit had already been rented, and another public hearing was scheduled so that Wilber could explain the move.

“We did not come back after the fact,” insisted Wilber. “We came to you. We did not wait for the police to drag us here. We had a problem, and we knew we had to fix it. We did not do this behind your back.”

According to Wilber, CDL’s planners knew the regulations were about to change and intended for the common room to morph usage once the new rules took effect. He characterized the switch as a simple matter of removing a card table and including a mattress, as a bathroom and kitchenette were already part of the designs. Those plans, he added, cost $50,000, too much for the company to discard them.

“This space was and always has been planned as a bachelor apartment, and it is,” Wilber continued. “Yes, we made a mistake in renting this space before we asked for the change, and for that we apologize. Our only excuse is we just plain forgot to make an application for the change, and we apologize.”

See the August 4 edition of The Weekly Press for the full story.