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intra taluswood

Intrawest hopes to complete the 16 partially finished Taluswood units by Christmas and then reassess the situation, including the unpaid contractors, a company spokesman says.

Intrawest hopes to complete the 16 partially finished Taluswood units by Christmas and then reassess the situation, including the unpaid contractors, a company spokesman says. "It’s tough to make a commitment at this point," Donal O’Callaghan, vice president of Intrawest’s Resort Development Group, said last week. "The project has become a black eye. We’re all eager to clean it up. "The unfortunate part is people didn’t get paid. Nobody feels good about it. It’s tough to see any situation like that, where guys didn’t get paid." More than 70 local contractors are owed approximately $4 million for work done on Taluswood before the townhouse development was placed in receivership last year, with more than $30 million owed to creditors. Whistler Mountain Ski Corp. bought the project from the receiver for $14 million. The local contractors were at the bottom of the list of creditors. Neither Whistler Mountain nor Intrawest, which reached a joint venture agreement with Whistler to complete the project, have a legal obligation to the contractors. However, spokesmen for the contractors say the two largest employers in town have a moral obligation to come up with some sort of offer. O’Callaghan said there are a lot of reasons why the project went bankrupt and Intrawest is now trying to work through the details. "If we finish the 16 units and sell them that doesn’t prove there’s a market for them. That’s the old formula and it didn’t work. "It’s clear from our perspective if you followed through on the original plan you’d go bankrupt again," O’Callaghan said. Foundations for another 13 units have been built but O’Callaghan said it’s unclear at this stage whether they will be built as originally planned or redesigned. There are several other phases of the Taluswood to be developed, stretching up to the timing flats on the Dave Murray Downhill course. O’Callaghan estimated there is another three years of work on the project. "I expect we’ll continue speaking to (the contractors)," O’Callaghan said.