Yellowknife's Bellanca Building sells for $1.4 million

Yellowknife's most famous vacant office tower has new owners.

The Bellanca Building and the parking lot next to it, which was previously owned by Toronto-based real estate firm KingSett Capital, has been sold to Yellowknife-based Borealis Development for $1.4 million.

Located downtown near 49 Avenue and 50 Street, the 10-storey, 55,000-square-foot building has been vacant since 2012, after a federal government department left it.

According to N.W.T. Corporate registries, Borealis Development was created in August 2021 by Yellowknife residents Afzal Khan Suri and Mansoor Ahmad Anjum.

Documents filed with the N.W.T. land titles office show a caveat in the building's sale that Borealis Development not use the building for office space.

The CBC contacted both Borealis Development and KingSett Capital for comment on the sale but no one was immediately available.

KingSett, which owns a handful of downtown Yellowknife office buildingsincluding the Northwest Tower, has come under fire in recent years for letting the building sit empty

In 2019, the building's property owner said KingSett was considering tearing it down at a cost of between $3 million and$4 million.

At the time, Darin Benoit, a property manager at McCOR Management which manages the building, said the vacant building costabout $350,000 a year to operate and maintain, including taxes.

He said that three or four floors would need to be occupied to make it "financially feasible for the fans, the power, the air conditioning, and the heating to run at full capacity."

The building's 2021 municipal property taxes were assessed at $113,000.