Grand Forks city council has given its final blessing to a Tesla Supercharger station, to be built at 1866 Central Avenue.
The station will have eight charging stalls for Tesla’s electric vehicles and will be accessed exclusively from 19th Street, with no direct access from Central Avenue or Highway 3, a condition imposed by the Ministry of Transportation.
The applicant has to provide a security deposit for landscaping of a little under $15,000 before a development permit is issued.
A staff report noted the idea was first presented to council more than three years ago. Council adopted a zoning bylaw amendment two years ago, but things hit a snag due to restructuring at Tesla, which city staff say “resulted in a temporary slowdown of Supercharger site planning, permitting, and construction activity across North America.”
Property owner Wayne Koch said the city’s electrical department is also responsibility for some of the delays.
“That said to me the city wasn’t making a big effort to be helpful to people who wanted to do things,” he said. “If something comes along like our proposal that’s going to be a benefit to the city, I would hope that the city staff makes every effort to support that kind of thing. Frankly, I wasn’t thrilled with the timing of all of that.
“The culture starts at the top, how things get done in the city and I think the city really has to make an effort to be accommodating and provide assistance to those of us who are spending millions of dollars. I didn’t see the city stepping up and really being supportive.”
However, city manager Duncan Redfearn defended the electrical department, and pointed to holdups with Tesla as well as project consultants over a discussion about transformers.
“I take it constructively and we’ll look internally and see if we can speed up our processes, but we won’t entirely wear the delay,” Redfearn said.
Councillor Rod Zielinski also said once the rezoning application reached the council table, “we bent over backwards, we created a new zone to get the chargers in, and we did everything we could to make the project go forward. We’ve got to learn to get better together.”
Koch said he hopes construction will start in about a month.
“I’m looking forward to it, because I bought a Tesla this year,” he said. “It’s really positive for the town and very beneficial for electric vehicles.”
He said it will take 20 to 25 minutes to fully charge a vehicle at the station. Last October, the number of charging stalls in the proposal was reduced from 12 to eight.
