PEIThe City of Summerside says it has signed agreements with seven out of 10 landowners where a major new roadway runs, but there are three deals yet to be finalized. The East-West Housing Corridor runs from MacEwan Road to Water Street and is set to open this fall. ‘We’re not going to build 90% of a road and not the last 100 metres’Marilee Devries · CBC News · Posted: Oct 20, 2025 7:20 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours agoSummerside’s East-West Housing Corridor runs from MacEwan Road to Water Street and is set to open this fall. (City of Summerside/Facebook)The City of Summerside says it has signed agreements with seven out of 10 landowners where its new East-West Housing Corridor runs, while the remaining three deals have yet to be finalized.The corridor runs from MacEwan Road to Water Street and is set to open this fall. A post circulated on social media over the weekend saying the city started the construction without finalizing the agreements.Summerside Mayor Dan Kutcher said that’s true. He told CBC News on Monday that the city is close to finalizing agreements with two of the three remaining landowners, but that the final owner has not had contact with city officials in months.’At the end of the day, we’re building the road, we think that is a good investment… we think it provides a solid public benefit for the community,’ says Summerside Mayor Dan Kutcher. (Nicola MacLeod/CBC)“Each one of these landowners has the same agreement that they have to enter into, and as a city I think we’ve done a pretty good job in getting most of them there. I think we’ll get the rest of the way,” Kutcher said. “At the end of the day, if not every single landowner comes on, then the city would move to the next phase.”That next phase, he said, would be for the city to expropriate the properties. “The reality is that when you build a big public infrastructure project, there is going to be disruption, there are going to be some people who don’t want it,” Kutcher said. “But we’re not going to build 90 per cent of a road and not the last 100 metres because one party isn’t agreeing to the same thing as all of the other parties.”WATCH | New major Summerside roadway to open this fall:New major Summerside roadway to open this fallSummerside’s East-West Housing Corridor will open in the next couple of weeks. The CBC’s Nicola MacLeod spoke with the city about the impact officials hope it will have on the city’s housing stock.Kutcher said the plans to build the road have been in the city’s public documents for the last 20 years, and that staff will try everything they can to reach an agreement with any holdouts before expropriating the land.CBC News reached out to the remaining landowner Monday. They declined to comment. ‘That’s how roads get built here’The city is not buying the land from the landowners, it’s building the road through landowners’ properties. It will then put liens on those properties, so each landowner will pay for their portion of the road when and if they decide to sell or develop the land. “That’s how we’ve always built roads. That’s how those projects get built, not just here but everywhere,” Kutcher said. “When you put the infrastructure in — the water, sewer, the roads, curbing in this case, the sidewalks and the electrical — you increase [the landowners’] property value significantly.”Summerside officials have previously said they hope the East-West Housing Corridor will pave the way for more housing in the city. It will create direct access to nearly 140 hectares (345 acres) of land, which officials say creates the potential for about 1,200 to 2,000 new housing units in P.E.I.’s second-largest municipality.ABOUT THE AUTHORMarilee Devries is a journalist with CBC P.E.I. She has a journalism degree from Toronto Metropolitan University. She can be reached at marilee.devries@cbc.caWith files from Nicola MacLeod
Major roadwork in Summerside went ahead without final land agreements, mayor says
