Barrie Curling Club officials continue to wonder how their Essa Road facility fits with a massive residential development proposed for the old fairgrounds.
Or if it will be swept away by more than 4,000 proposed residential units on these 55.4 acres along Highway 400.
“Once this development goes in — you’ve seen the proposals — we’re boxed in,” said Barrie Curling Club director Norman Speake. “I think the way it’s going, I’m concerned. We’re at risk.”
This despite the Barrie Curling Club having a long-term lease for the property on which it operates.
Officials with Greenworld Construction/Digram Developments, the landowner, the City of Barrie and the Barrie Curling Club met for nearly four hours Monday.
Speake said Greenworld/Digram will provide detailed scale drawings later this month for the actual boundaries the developer is proposing for the curling club and its approximately 150 parking spaces, which are of paramount importance to the curling club, specifically because of an access road from Essa which could go through the portion of the property it leases.
There are plans for another meeting early in the new year.
Greenworld/Digram officials could not be reached for comment.
There is a clause in the lease that allows the parking area to be modified, Speake said, if the curling club and Greenworld/Digram agree. If not it can be solved by arbitration, according to the Ontario Arbitration Act, he added.
“That clause contemplates some sort of development by the lessor, the landlord. So that’s where we are,” he said. “There is a possibility that we could get the parking we need within those boundaries, maybe.
“But we need to know exactly what they are and how they fit into the rest of the development, so we know where we are.”
The curling club has as many as 700 members and supports many city groups with their fundraising and volunteer help.
Speake said the club began dealing with Greenworld/Digram in March 2022, when the Markham company presented the curling club with a footprint for the facility, the actual boundary of the eventual curling club property, the building and parking, which Speake said changes the lease.
“We rejected that footprint, on the basis that it didn’t provide, we thought, the 150 parking spaces that we truly believe we need,” he said.
Speake said the curling club was presented the same footprint in July 2023 and again Monday.
“And coming out of that meeting, as it turns out, was the expectation on their part is that any upfront capital costs in turning the new footprint, the new parking lot as they’ve arranged it, is our responsibility,” he said. “We don’t know what the actual boundaries are going to be and exactly what we have to do.
“We’re probably talking in the million-(dollar) range,” Speake said. “This may come as a shock to you, but we don’t have $1 million, nor do we have the ability to raise that money.”
Speake was asked if Greenworld/Digram has offered to fund the curling club relocating elsewhere, and he said the answer is no.
“We did bring it up very briefly at the meeting (Monday). We reminded them we would certainly be open to that,” he said. “That was shut down by Greenworld relatively quickly.”
Speake said the curling club has a number of concerns if the project does go ahead, such as snow clearing, snow removal and landscaping maintenance.
“If this development goes forward, we’re going to be in the midst of a 10-year construction zone,” he said. “Well, we all know that with the construction zone comes mess, comes disruption.”
Barrie city council approved a process Dec. 6 which could fast-track the Greenworld/Digram development on the former fairgrounds.
Staff are initiating a community infrastructure and housing accelerator (CIHA) application there. It gives Ontario’s minister of municipal affairs and housing the power to make orders to respond to municipal requests to speed approvals of rezoning, in this case from highway industrial to residential and open space, at 175 and 199 Essa Rd., as well as 50 Wood St., in Barrie.
Greenworld/Digram asked council to support the CIHA order and initiate an application for it.
That order would support the development of 4,054 total residential units — highrises, mixed-use highrises and townhouses, along with commercial uses and a school block. That breaks down to 13 residential towers of 15 to 40 storeys, 113 townhouses and 98 three-storey townhouses.
Also proposed in the development are 196 parking spaces for the townhouses and 3,260 spots for the highrises, including those in a five-storey parking podium. There could be a public/private park almost a half-acre in size and walking trails.
Commercial uses would front Essa, and there would be no development on the Wood property, which includes Hotchkiss Creek. It would be for stormwater management and open space uses.
The development proposed includes two new city access points from Essa and Anne Street, the former being the curling club’s concern.
The motion council passed Dec. 6 starts the process for a CIHA. There will be online public consultation, its feedback will be presented to council by report, then council will decide to tell staff to prepare a CIHA order for the housing minister, or do not prepare one, in the first quarter of 2024.
