A Fredericton building that housed the offices of New Brunswick premiers and civil servants for years after it was built as a Centennial project will be sold to a private developer for $4 million.

The downtown Centennial Building, which has a heritage designation, is being sold to Centennial Heritage Properties Inc.

"We feel the option presented by the buyer is the most beneficial to the province and to the City of Fredericton," Bill Oliver, the minister of transportation and infrastructure, who announced the deal Wednesday in the legislature.  

"We feel this is a much better deal for the taxpayers of New Brunswick." 

Oliver said the latest plan for the Centennial Building will save New Brunswick taxpayers about $60 million and create more than 450 jobs, he said.

David Coon, New Brunswick's Green Party leader, is happy something will be done with Fredericton's Centennial Building. (CBC)

In January 2017, the Liberals announced a plan to renovate two wings of the building and demolish a third to build a new courthouse. It was to cost $76 million and be finished by 2021.

The back wing of the building was demolished in 2018. After the Progressive Conservatives came to power later that year, Premier Blaine Higgs cancelled further construction.

About $13.05 million had already been spent on the building. With Higg's cancellation of the courthouse project, the property at St. John and King streets, once featured in New Brunswick tourism brochures, started to become an eyesore. 

In May, the government issued a request for proposals for private-sector redevelopment of the property. 

A government news release said Centennial Heritage Properties has a two-phase plan for the building, which includes 200,000 square feet of residential space and 40,000 square feet for hotel and restaurant space. 

Construction is expected to cost $48 million.

Many of the historical elements inside and outside the building will be kept, Oliver said. The building houses numerous pieces of original art, which will be on loan from the New Brunswick Art Bank. 

• Higgs keeps lid on infrastructure spending, despite chance of election   
• Higgs floats idea of moving courthouse into vacant Centennial Building

Stephen Horsman, Fredericton-North's MLA, asked the government what it plans to do with the city's courthouse on Queen Street. A new space for the courthouse was included in the former Liberal government's plan for refurbishing the Centennial Building. 

Higgs floated the idea of moving the aging courthouse to the Centennial Building in April, before the government asked for private-sector proposals.

"What about the necessity of a courthouse in the capital area?" Horsman asked. "We still need one." 

Horsman said 800 to 1,000 jobs were lost when the government decided to scrap the original Centennial plan.

David Coon, the Green Party leader, is glad the building will no longer continue to collect cobwebs and be an eyesore in the provincial capital, but he's also curious about the government's plans for a courthouse. 

"There needs to be a new courthouse in Fredericton … and now it's going to cost more money, I think, than it otherwise would have if it had gone ahead as planned adjacent to the Centennial building," Coon said.

Coon said he hopes the new residential space will accommodate affordable housing units.

"The last thing we need in Fredericton is more housing that no one can afford." 

Built for civil servants

People's Alliance Leader Kris Austin said he's pleased with the announcement, but he agreed the government isn't off the hook when it comes to renovating the courthouse or building a new one.  

The Centennial Building was constructed in 1967, when the provinces and territories received money from the federal government for Canada's centennial.  

It was designed as an office building for all government departments of the day.

In 2013, the province moved many offices into Chancery Place across the street, and by 2015, the Centennial Building was two-thirds empty.

The cancellation of four major Liberal infrastructure projects represents higher costs for taxpayers in the short term, according to figures released by the Blaine Higgs government.

The Finance Department says the scrapping of the projects adds $31 million in expenses to the province's budget this fiscal year.

The cost of building a major piece of infrastructure is normally spread out over the life of the project. But if a project is cancelled after work begins, accounting rules require that the costs be added to the books at that time.

"Costs are primarily associated with paying for and expensing work completed to date on these projects," spokesperson Vicky Deschenes said in an email.

The province has bought land for an 11-kilometre, two-lane bypass leading into Miramichi, but that project was cancelled in December. (Department of Transportation)

She said the cost breakdown is:

• $16 million for the cancellation of two phases of the Route 11 upgrade.

• $11 million for the aborted plan to refurbish Fredericton's Centennial Building and construct a new courthouse attached to it.

• $3 million for the scrapping of a replacement New Brunswick Museum in Saint John.

• $1 million for road work in the Perth-Andover area that is not going ahead.

Deschenes said some of the costs were offset by savings in other areas, leading to capital account spending projected to be $21.7 million over budget in 2018-19.

The savings from the cancellations will add up in future years when the spread-out costs don't appear on the books.

The $272-million Route 11 project was to twin the highway from north of Shediac to near Bouctouche and to build a bypass road near Miramichi. The province was going to spend $147 million with the rest coming from the federal government.

The new Progressive Conservative government said it will finish one part of the Shediac-Bouctouche section but will cancel the other section as well as the Miramichi bypass.

The new Fredericton courthouse was going to connect to the remaining part of the Centennial Building by a two-storey passageway, but the project was cancelled after construction started. (Joe McDonald/CBC)

Premier Blaine Higgs signalled when he was still opposition leader that he didn't think Route 11 needed the upgrades the Liberals had promised.

And he said last fall that Fredericton didn't need the new courthouse attached to the Centennial Building, a project that would have cost $76 million.

"We don't need more government buildings in this province," he said. "We do this all over the province. We build one here because there's one somewhere else."

At the legislature's public accounts committee last month, the deputy minister of justice told MLAs that a new Fredericton courthouse would address "security concerns" of people using the existing building, which dates to 1930.

Mike Comeau told MLAs that judges, lawyers and staff using the building were reluctant to describe their security concerns in detail.

"Honestly, they don't want to expose any weaknesses to anyone who might have bad ideas," he said.

"So I'm loath to catalogue in detail the specific things that make, for example, the Miramichi courthouse, or the Saint John or the Moncton law courts more desirable than the current justice building in Fredericton."

Former New Brunswick Court of Appeal Chief Justice Ernest Drapeau also complained publicly in 2016 that the court's small hearing room in the building can't accommodate simultaneous translation, despite the requirement that the court function bilingually.

"You may be surprised to know that, but that's a fact," said Drapeau, who applauded the announcement of the new building in early 2017.  

Comeau said after the PCs cancelled the project, officials were asked to assess the "functional and security limitations" of the existing building so that it can be upgraded.

The New Brunswick Museum replacement would have cost provincial taxpayers $50 million.

The cancelled road work in Perth-Andover was a $19 million project to re-engineer the village's downtown, lifting Route 105 above flood level and reconfiguring where it meets Route 109.