Forget waterfront... development is going under

It seems all this talk about waterfront development may soon become irrelevant. Brockville's real future is underwater.

Sources at city hall sent me this picture from a closed-door meeting held at 6 a.m. today, timed to fit the schedule of a Moscow developer aiming to build an underwater condominium complex in the St. Lawrence River.

According to my source, who shall remain nameless, the lengthy Skype dicsussion involved Mayor David Henderson and one of the business contacts he made while on a trip to Russia last fall, a wealthy but reclusive Moscow developer named Boris Nekulturny.

(Just as an aside, Nekulturny and his condominium development company, Duraky Kondom, have nothing to do with the good folks Henderson met in the Zabaikalsky region of Siberia. Rather, this contact was established, at Nekulturny's request, during a stopover in Moscow.)

I could extract only  the most vague details of the confidential Skype chat, but it seems most of it concerned the exact location of the underwater complex. From all indications, it seems Nekulturny was persuaded to move the complex a half-kilometre to the north, thereby locating it within Brockville's river boundary and -- you guessed it --- providing the city with more tax revenue.

The clincher was sewage. As you can see from the photo above, planner Jonathan Faurschou is pointing to Brockville's sewage intake, where a "back-door connection" exists to the city's sewage system. Our Russian friend can therefore hook up to the city sewage system instead of having to figure out an expensive sewage system of his own.

The underwater complex, from the sound of it, is elaborate, complete with a thick glass ceiling that will allow residents to look up at the splendour of underwater life in Brockville's neighbourhood, not to mention the undersides of lakers and pleasure craft.

It makes sense, really. Why would weathy young retirees settle for a condo by the river when they can have one in the river?

There is, however, a catch. In order for this complex to work, Nekulturny requires the city to build an elaborate transport tube, rather like an underwater subway, to bring residents to and from the complex.

The rest of this morning's secret meeting concerned ways the city could persuade the federal and provincial governments to provide two-thirds funding for what is bound to be a multimillion-dollar project.

Word is, there are two options being considered: approaching Simon Fuller about linking the "river tube" to the Aquatarium, or linking the tube to the railway tunnel, thus unlocking funds for the railway tunnel redevelopment.

According to my source, when the tunnel option was mentioned, Councillor David LeSueur let out an audible: "Yay!"

Calls to Duraky Kondom's head office, located somewhere under the Moskva River, went unanswered.

Calls to Leeds-Grenville MP Gord Brown's office about the possibility of three-way funding were directed to the federal government's chief infrastructure official and "transport supremo," Lirpa Loof.

Officials at Loof's office said the official would be unavailable today, adding "this is his busiest day of the year."