Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Fred Hutton says 32 acres of Crown land recently sold to the Crosbie Group Limited is land-locked and was of no use to government.
The Opposition raised questions about the sale which showed up in a recent Order in Council. The 32 acres of Crown land in question was expropriated from Bernard Parsons in 1982 for trunk sewer work and development of the Outer Ring Road.
Bernard Parsons was the maternal grandfather of the Crosbies.
Minister Hutton says the land is of no use to government because it cannot be accessed by the Outer Ring Road, while half of the property is protected wetland.
He says of the 32 acres, 16 acres is protected wetland which cannot be developed, while the other 16 acres is land-locked. He says they will not allow access from the Outer Ring Road to the property, and it’s similarly land-locked on Logy Bay Road and Snow’s Lane.”
He says the family approached government in 2018 or 2019, in hopes of buying the land back.
“The grandson of that person is the head of the company that bought the land back,” says Hutton. A third-party assessment was done at that time which arrived at a price for the land, “which was actually lower, but we added 2 per cent for inflation for each year to bring us up to the point where we are now.”
