The founder and CEO of Calgary-based Mainstreet Equity Corp. says the company did everything possible to restore heat to residents of its Pacific Park apartments in Surrey and has already spent $300,000 in maintaining the building.
Bob Dhillon was responding to about three dozen tenants from Pacific Park Apartments who converged on the company's Surrey office in December to demand Mainstreet fix problems they claimed were plaguing the apartment complex.
"We'd like to see the $44 million profits that he gets each year put back into this building," Douglas Swan, a tenant at Pacific Park, told Business in Vancouver. "It's bare minimum maintenance that we see in any of his buildings."
In a written response to Western Investor, Dhillion said "we have done our best to take care of [Pacific Park] tenants during the period that a new boiler was installed and the electrical system was upgraded."
According to Dhillon, Mainstreet distributed portable heaters to all the tenants before work started and rented a generator to provide electricity during the repair period. "In addition, Mainstreet also compensated all our tenants for any extra heating costs incurred during this period," Dhillon said.
According to a spokesman for Acorn Canada - an advocacy group for low-income Canadians - problems with heat have been an ongoing problem with some of Mainstreet's rental properties in Surrey.
"They own 20 per cent of the rental stock in Surrey and every year at least some building goes without heat for at least a week or two in the winter," the Acorn spokesman, who did not want to be named, told Business in Vancouver.
But Dhillon contends Mainstreet keeps its buildings well maintained.
"The audited numbers tell the story," he said. "[In 2012] Mainstreet generated $17 million from operations and spent $9.2 million, 54 per cent of what we made, on the upkeep of our properties. In the Lower Mainland alone, we spent $2 million on capital improvements in 2012, of which $300,000 was spent on the Pacific Park project." This work included the new boiler and electrical system, which took seven days to install.
Mainstreet owns eight rental complexes in Surrey. It also owns rental buildings in Abbotsford and New Westminster.
In its 2012 fourth-quarter financials, the company reported double-digit growth for the eighth consecutive reporting period. In 2012, the company hit the $1 billion valuation mark.
Mainstreet noted that Western Investor was the only publication to contact them regarding the Pacific Property complaints.
