Council begins discussions to turn soon-to-be decommissioned Mountview plant into parkland

The Mountview Wastewater Treatment Plant occupies a prime location on the Muskoka River, immediately across from the Canada Summit Centre.

With District of Muskoka plans underway to decommission the plant, Huntsville Town Council has begun discussions to add the property to its waterfront parkland and trail system.

At the March 24 General Committee meeting, staff requested permission from council to discuss with the District possible public green space uses for the property.

Steve Hernen, the Town’s director of operations and protective services, noted that the District will need to keep some infrastructure underground as well as a pumping station on the property, “so the whole concept of this property being redeveloped for residential, commercial, some other use, is probably not going to happen because of the infrastructure in the ground.”

Hernen added that District staff indicated that the upper-tier municipality has “no use if you will for the green space around the project. And in fact the one picture they’ve shown shows a huge buffer zone they want to put around the plant property which could be used for passive green space, it could be used for walking trails, it could be used for pickleball courts, it could be used for frisbee golf, you know different multiple opportunities here.”

This 2014 site plan shows a buffer zone, outlined in purple, on the Mountview property that could potentially be used as public parkland (District of Muskoka)

For several decades, the Town of Huntsville has slowly been acquiring property to expand public waterfront access in and around the downtown core. In 2020, it purchased the last two pieces of privately owned property on the southern shore of Hunters Bay, an airplane hangar near Avery Beach, which has since been demolished, and the former KWH Pipe property.

If the Mountview property could be added to Huntsville’s existing parkland system, perhaps accessible via a walking bridge across the Muskoka River, and once sidewalks are updated to link downtown Huntsville to the trail system, “we would have approximately 5.5 kilometres of waterfront property that we own and control [from Hwy 11 to the Lions Lookout property],” noted Hernen.

It will be approximately three years before the District has decommissioned the plant and built a new pumping station, he added, but “there’s nothing to stop us from looking at it now and depending on what space we want now, there’s nothing stopping us from coming to an arrangement today and start to use some of that space.”

Councillor Brian Thompson noted that the plant is in a flood plain and that more recent District discussions indicate the pumping station will be moved to a different location than what’s shown on the site plan, at a higher elevation closer to the current Fairvern Nursing Home site.

Councillor Tim Withey added that “it will be interesting to see what happens to the Fairvern property in a couple years… maybe there’s another big property we could snag for our downtown.” He suggested that the Town needs to express the municipality’s interest in that property as well. Fairvern is being redeveloped on a property near the hospital, a project anticipated to start in May of this year.

During the same meeting, Hernen also requested permission for staff to engage a consultant to develop a new Waterfront Development Strategy Design Brief. The estimated $40,000 cost for the consultant would be funded from the Town’s Parkland Obligatory Reserve Fund.

“It’s important now that we take the proper steps to figure out what this vision could look like and what’s the long-range vision,” said Hernen. “(Staff have) a lot of concepts but I think it’s time to bring in somebody that’s got an open set of eyes to waterfront development and that can really engage the community in this…”

According to the staff report presented at the meeting, the last major waterfront planning strategy for the Town was developed in 1991, although subsequent strategic plans have included waterfront considerations.

Councillors were supportive of hiring a consultant.

“It’s time really give serious consideration to how we connect all of these parts… to actually have a theme, to really give ourselves a real waterfront identity is going to be absolutely key in this process,” said Councillor Jonathan Wiebe.

Mayor Karin Terziano added that she’s “not usually a fan of hiring consultants for anything but on this one I’m going to cave because I think this is really important… this pandemic has brought our community out to our natural resources, they’re all over our trails and sidewalks and all of this stuff is really important and it seems like it’s taken a pandemic to show us how important getting out is for our community.”

Councillors directed staff to both engage the District in discussions regarding the Mountview property, as well as begin the process of creating a new waterfront development strategy with the assistance of an outside consultant. Resolutions passed at General Committee must be ratified at the following Regular Council meeting.

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