In an August 17, 2017 post, I commented favourably on the generous treatment of building demolitions by Atco, the gas provider.

https://sean-kollee.squarespace.com/blog/2017/8/17/construction-freebies

Basically Atco would come to your site, dig up the alley, and shut off the gas permanently. And amazingly enough they’d do it for free. In this industry, any free service is simply too good to be true, and today, I discovered, while applying for my upcoming demo, that yes, the free service is no more (as of July 2019). The new fee is to be around $1400, slightly more in winter. By my count I’ve taken full advantage of this service seven times, so that does add up to a considerable sum.

While the service was free, there was much whingeing in the past from builders about the pace of the Atco shutoff service. So, while the disconnect was free (re-connect was always billed), it was painful to wait sometimes a month or more while Atco mobilized itself. Often you’d have a condemned house sitting there as the precious summer season sped by and there was no way to tear down the building and pour the basement while the gas remained connected. So along with the new fee, I of course suggested that I’d be expecting prompt service, and Atco should be by my site on Friday to do the disconnect. Well, my dreams of faster service were crushed, Atco is saying 3-5 weeks for booking disconnects, no different than previously. Im sure as the years go by we will reminisce about the good old days of pre summer 2019, when Atco’d shut off the gas for free. Enmax remains the last provider doing truly free meter disconnects. Lets hope they don’t change that too! Seems to me that builders are the one group that does not get to add fees to their product, yet every other business can charge extra at any time.

Here is a typical list of fees you are going to get hit with to build a single house or semi detached project in Calgary

1. The dreaded off-site levy - this fee is because the city was undercharging long term residents on water/sewer bills, so rather than ask people with a lot of equity in their homes to pay a little more to upgrade the water treatment plants they’d help wear out over the years, the city prefers to stick this bill on the builders and expect them to pass it along to new home buyers often struggling to quality for a mortgage and become home owners. This cost is a great way to make housing less affordable for those least able to afford it while ensuring those with the cheapest cost base on their homes can continue to under contribute.

2. The asphalt degradation and restoration fee - this fee is to repair asphalt from cutting in new sewer and water lines, and is often double when storm water connections are needed too. This can be a huge fee, and watch out for busier roads as the fee can be astronomical. You will pay this fee even when the patch you make looks way better than the condition of the road you cut into.

3. The typical city BP/DP fees - these can cost a lot that is for sure. In exchange the city often just requests an engineer sign off on various failure prone elements on the building to make sure it isn’t liable for the inspections it does. I’ve advocated this process be privatized in the past and contracted to smaller operators. Hasn’t happened yet.

4. Surface improvements - These can be really expensive. Sometimes the city decides you should pay for a streetlight or all the sidewalks to be replaced. Not sure why this is even legal because I don’t know what legislation allows a city to make a private citizen pay for its infrastructure.

5. Water disconnect - You will pay $4250 for this but eventually you can get it back once the new service is done. Nice of the city to give it back.

6. Atco disconnect fee - You will pay $1380 to cut off the gas line for your demolition.

7. Tax re-assessment - Once your building reaches some arbitrary level of completion the city will come by and up your tax bill. This is a great money maker for the city but you will never hear of it come budget time.