PORT HOPE —The fate of the Centre Pier buildings appears to be sealed, according to a release issued Wednesday by Cameco Corporation.

Cameco will incorporate removal of the four buildings on the Centre Pier into the environmental assessment (EA) for the Vision 2010 project, as directed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).

Cameco currently leases the Centre Pier from the Commissioners of Port Hope Harbor (CPHH) as part of its Port Hope conversion facility, but owns the four buildings. Terms of the lease stipulate Cameco must remove the buildings prior to vacating the property at the end of the lease — provided the CPHH provides a written request to do so. The CPHH made such a request to Cameco on July 25, 2007, says Cameco senior communications specialist Doug Prendergast.

“We’re just following the direction of our landlord,” Prendergast says. “Under our lease, Cameco is required to leave the property in the way asked for in the July 2007 request.”

“The Harbor Commission, as owner of the buildings, has formally requested they be demolished to conform with plans for the redevelopment of the waterfront following the cleanup of the harbour,” Mayor Linda Thompson, who also chairs the CPHH, says. “Following the cleanup of the harbour and Centre Pier, the final use and design of the Centre Pier will be completed.”

Thompson added that both the council of the Municipality of Port Hope and the Commissioners of the Port Hope Harbor have considered numerous presentations offered in favour of preservation.

“In the end, the facts are these,” Thompson says. “The Centre Pier buildings have no heritage status, and they are in a poor state of repair, so that remedial work would be required to preserve them, even in the short term.”

If the buildings were to remain, she says, they would not be available for restoration or any reuse for seven to 10 years, until the cleanup is complete and their deterioration would continue during that time.

“Leaving them in place would result in a less thorough cleanup of historic industrial waste on the Centre Pier, and there is no guarantee that an investor can be found to preserve and adapt these buildings for a profitable or beneficial future use, leaving them as a burden on taxpayers,” Thompson says.

If Cameco does not remove these buildings at its expense as part of Vision 2010, and no future investors emerge, the expense for the ongoing maintenance and/or restoration and/or adaptation or demolition and disposal of these buildings would fall upon the taxpayers of the Municipality of Port Hope, Thompson says.

But Chris Wallace, head of the Pier Group, which formed to save the buildings, says they’re asking for time to find a developer to restore the buildings and use them for recreational or commercial uses.

Wallace says the CPHH has been encouraged by the CNSC to work with groups and stakeholders to settle the issues, but the CPHH made their decision to have the buildings removed in an unethical and possibly even illegal manner.

“We are ready to co-operate in an way we can,” Wallace says. “We’re just asking for time to find an investor. We’re asking them to put the demolition of the Centre Pier buildings at the end of their Vision 2010 demolition projects.”

Development of a preferred option for redeveloping Cameco’s Port Hope conversion facility and work on the technical studies associated with the EA are ongoing. Cameco expects to submit a draft environmental impact statement to regulators this year, Prendergast says.

Vision 2010 is Cameco’s plan to clean up, modernize and improve the appearance of its property along the Port Hope waterfront. The project is currently the subject of a comprehensive study under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.