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Council gives green light to big-box project anchored by IKEA store

City council has given the green light to the Tuxedo Yards Redevelopment, the 80-hectare big-box project that will be anchored by a 350,000-square-foot IKEA store.

Council voted 14 to two to approve a complex plan to convert industrial land at Sterling Lyon Parkway and Kenaston Boulevard into mix-used commercial land that will be built out over the next nine years.

The project may eventually see up to seven additional big boxes, numerous smaller retailers, a 100-room hotel, 500-unit condo building, 150,000 square feet of office space and a 16-screen movie theatre join an IKEA anchor store between 2011 and 2018.

The plan will see developers Fairweather Properties and IKEA Canada front the $26.5-million cost of widening roads, extending bike trails and having new traffic signals at the site. The city and province would pay the developer back $22 million.

Fort Rouge Coun. Jenny Gerbasi and Daniel McIntyre Coun. Harvey Smith voted against the development. They had made a separate motion to hold off on approval, pending a full cost-benefit analysis of the project on economic and environmental grounds.

But that motion failed, as even newly elected River Heights-Fort Garry Coun. John Orlikow - a self-described progressive - and St. Boniface Coun. Dan Vandal declined to support Gerbasi and Smith.

 

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