City says developers sometimes wait years for others to pay for sewer, water upgrades
Cameron MacLean CBC News · Posted: May 25, 2026
The city’s efforts to ramp up housing construction have increasingly led to bottlenecks in places where sewers and other infrastructure need upgrades and multiple developers want to build.
However, none of the developers want to move first and take on the cost of paying millions for improvements future projects will benefit from.
Now, the City of Winnipeg is proposing changes aimed at breaking these infill stalemates.
A report heading to city council this week proposes a new cost-recovery system. It would allow developers who pay upfront for sewer and water upgrades to recover part of those costs from future developments that benefit from the added capacity.
City officials and developers say the issue has become more common as Winnipeg pushes for more infill and higher-density housing in existing neighbourhoods, where aging infrastructure can lack the capacity to support additional residents.
“Everybody’s waiting for the first guy to get in,” planning, property and development committee chair Coun. Evan Duncan said.
Geoff Milnes, president of Progressive Real Estate Group, said his company has experienced the issue first-hand.
Progressive applied five years ago to build a mixed-use development, including more than 100 residential units, at 1269 St. Anne’s Rd. Two other developers were planning nearby projects on Creek Bend Road at the same time.
“We’ve just kind of been in this stalemate,” Milnes said.
‘Convoluted’ system
He said the city told developers that before any of the projects could proceed, they would need to pay for sewer capacity upgrades on a 335-metre section of pipe on John Forsyth Road, more than a kilometre away.
Whichever developer paid for the upgrade first would also be improving capacity for neighbouring developments that had not contributed to the cost.
“The certainty of payback by a future developer is really unknown,” Milnes said. “What’s most frustrating is the lack of a tracking system that actually can formally document this…. It’s all just very convoluted.”
Winnipeg currently uses a “frontage-based” system to reimburse developers for infrastructure upgrades, which charges future developers whose projects front directly onto the street where the upgrades are made. In the case of Progressive’s project, they would only be able to collect from future projects on John Forsyth Road.
Milnes says the current system offers no certainty developers will be paid back.
Under the city’s proposed changes, future developers connecting to upgraded infrastructure would be required to pay a proportional share of the upgrade costs before receiving approval to connect.
The reimbursement amount would increase by six per cent each year for the first five years after completion of the project, then continue rising at the rate of inflation after that.
Gord Chappell, the acting manager of the city’s real estate and land development division, said the problem of stalled infill developments is occurring more frequently.
“There is a lot of pressure to deliver housing in the city, and a lot of that housing ends up being in infill areas, where there is a limitation on servicing,” he said, adding the issue comes up “a handful of times” every year now.
“We’re aware of developers sitting on their properties [for] months or years, just waiting for someone to come along and provide the servicing on their behalf.”
Milnes called the proposed changes “a good first step” but said uncertainty will remain in situations where developers are waiting years for other projects to materialize.
“The more certainty you have going into a project, the more likely you are to do it, right? Which would ultimately just lead to more building and better things for our city.”
The executive policy committee endorsed the proposed changes at its meeting last week. They will go for a full vote at city council Thursday.
Comment:
Where to begin regarding this straw man argument? Firstly, Progressive RE now fully controls both the 180 Creek Bend Road AND 1269/1275 St. Anne’s Road development properties. There is no mystery as to who owes what to whom if any city infrastructure needs to be upgraded. Both pro forma spreadsheets are already resident on their computers.
A rival developer, Creek Bend Project (112/120 Creek Bend Road), already has grandfathered water and sewer rights for any future construction on its site. They do not need new city infrastructure to build on their property. They do not need the City to remind them that any 180 Creek Bend developer will owe them for their previous infrastructure capacity over-builds. Both they and the Creek Bend Hollow developers next door to them already expect to be repaid, in full, before the necessary building permits for 180 Creek Bend are granted.
While we cannot judge if this new development agreement parameter update is needed, the Creek Bend community is definitely not any best-case example to justify it.