West Vancouver mayor defends condo deal involvement one week before election

With one week until West Vancouver's municipal election, Mayor Mark Sager is defending his involvement in a real estate deal that never completed, saying he did nothing wrong by helping arrange the purchase and resale of 23 waterfront condos in Horseshoe Bay.

Last fall, Sager suggested that a company owned by personal friends, Frank Aigner and Gerald Schweighofer, buy a block of unsold units in Horseshoe Bay's Sanctuary development at below-market price—$30 million for the whole block—then resell the contracts to local buyers Sager lined up at a higher price. The plan projected $3.44 million in profit. At the time, Sager was president and a director of the numbered company that would have handled the purchase. He negotiated and signed the agreements.

The deal was cancelled at the eleventh hour when Westbank's lender refused to approve it. The company owned by Sager's friends has since sued the developer for reneging on the agreement.

Sager's opponent in the mayoral race, Kirk LaPointe, a former newspaper executive and columnist, has questioned whether a sitting mayor should be involved in real estate transactions. "I don't think any elected official in a municipality should be representing a real estate transaction," LaPointe said. "It has the potential for a conflict because it can alter the market for surrounding property."

Sager said the deal was never about his personal profit. He said he heard about the bulk list of condos from his real estate agent, who was selling his home. After visiting the suites, he was impressed and contacted Aigner and Schweighofer, who are redeveloping the nearby Troll's property in Horseshoe Bay into a hotel. Sager then phoned people he thought might be interested in the condos and rounded up 17 potential buyers.

"This was a private transaction between private parties. It was not a municipal transaction, did not involve municipal funds or municipal authority," Sager said. He accused LaPointe of smearing him, noting that LaPointe had written critical columns about Sager during his time as a columnist for the North Shore News.

According to court documents, the purchase price of $30 million was "below or significantly below the price that the properties were previously marketed at." The plan was to "assign" those sale contracts to the buyers Sager had lined up at higher prices.

The municipal election is October 17.