Two non-profit organizations to get land to build facilities in Iqaluit

Iqaluit’s planning committee approved a recommendation Tuesday that moves two Nunavut non-profit organizations closer to accessing land in Iqaluit.

Committee members unanimously voted to send a proposal to city council that would give leases for city-owned lands to non-profit organizations Embrace Life Council and Piruqatigiit Resource Centre. Each organization intends to build on their parcels.

Embrace Life Council focuses on suicide prevention. It has requested to build a facility on the Road to Nowhere for on-the-land activities.

Embrace Life Council will pay $338 per year for the lease.

Piruqatigiit Resource Centre helps Nunavummiut with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or who are neurodivergent, which means their brains process things differently or they learn differently from most people. Piruqatigiit is looking to build a community centre along Niaqunngusiariaq Road, just past the Arctic Winter Games arena.

Piruqatigiit will pay $1,291 per year for the lease.

Embrace Life Council’s lease comes at a lower cost because it is not on serviced land, city spokesperson Kent Driscoll told Nunatsiaq News.

Iqaluit city council passed an amendment to the city’s land administration bylaw earlier this year that allows it to dispose of land to non-profit organizations without a competitive process. Both Embrace Life Council and Piruqatigiit’s applications followed the passage of this amendment.

Since Embrace Life Council’s proposed parcel of land does not have frontage by the Road To Nowhere it will stay untitled municipal land but be leased to Embrace Life Council under a commissioner’s lease.

The City of Iqaluit has not set a date for when council will consider this bylaw.