De Novo Treatment Centre has emerged as the winning bid for the Waterloo Summit Centre for the Environment at a purchase price of $3,905,000, which includes the building as well as surrounding lands, although it is not clear how much of those lands would be sold with the building.
The municipality issued a Request for Proposal for the Waterloo building, which closed September 28, 2017. It received five bids – three offers to purchase and two offers to lease. In the end, Huntsville Council emerged from a closed session at its Monday, November 27 meeting to announce the winning bid, which went to De Novo Treatment Centre out of Sundridge. The treatment centre has been looking for a new home in order to expand its facilities.
Following the announcement, Huntsville Mayor Scott Aitchison told Doppler that
his preference for bidder Accelerate Muskoka, a business incubator, has been no secret.
“So it wasn’t my first choice and I would suspect it probably wasn’t the first choice of every member of council but at the end of the day I think that council voted in favour of the proposal they thought that was the cleanest and the easiest to measure the results. It certainly is the most money in terms of the purchase price but it was easier to define what success is. How many jobs would be created from it,” he said, adding that was tougher to do with some of the other proposals.
Patrick Dillon, Chair of the Board of Directors of De Novo, confirmed that the treatment centre is looking to expand. He said their proposal includes the purchase of the Waterloo building as well as its adjacent 17 acres, lands that he said would be partly used as walking trails. “Part of recovery is your health and having the opportunity to walk through the beautiful properties that are there certainly would be helpful,” he said.
The Sundridge operation presently contains 21 beds. “So if we increase to 30 beds I would say we would probably go to 28 or 30 staff, somewhere in there. It’s not scientific at all but that’s an approximation,” said Dillon, adding that he could not go further into details until discussions with the municipality have taken place and he understands whether the municipality is including all of the requested lands.
More details about De Novo’s proposal as well as the other four bids are expected to be released by the municipality by the end of the week via a press release, indicated Town CAO Denise Corry. There will also be an opportunity for public comment before the deal is brought back to the council table to be finalized on December 19, as part of the municipality’s disposition process.
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Keep in mind that “we” are taxpayers of Canada.
I wonder what council will waste this money on.
PS : Great work Council and Staff .
The taxpayers of Canada contributed the majority of the funds for this building as part of The G8 event….It is the ongoing costs since then that are the albatross……Council was told by many that this building would self sustain financially through rent and housing of users ( students ). Believe half of what you see and question and analyze everything that you hear in business matters!
I can’t remember, what did this building cost to build?
If we are on the topic of parks and recreational land area, here is a thought.
If you look at Huntsville from the sky the area between Home Depot/Beer/Honda and the older traditional town is currently vacant. Rock Solid consulting has a sign on it and it is probably slated for some development already but wait a moment!
Last summer the flood that washed past the A & W and took out part of the Horton’s parking lot, well guess what? It originated on this highland area. The developments around it have made runoff a more serious issue over the years. I remember Claude Doughty showing a group from the Watershed Council the measures he took in the Walmart area to better control runoff. They may not show but they are there and quite extensive. They help but if we develop the whole area near the top of this watershed area we can expect worse flooding in future, despite preventative measures.
As the town grows, wouldn’t it be nice if this area, could eventually become a sort of central park to the town. It is steep, not well suited for building and building all around it would be better if this area could be left more natural, have trails and minimally invasive improvements for use by the people in Huntsville rather than just more retail space. Just a thought. It might be called planning but I’m probably too late.
Agreed. I was ‘agreeing’ that I find sale price extremely low. We have homes here worth much more while providing much less.
Could I respectfully ask, how many professional commercial building and land value assessments were obtained before an offer was accepted?
Could those numbers be provided please before the ‘public input’.
Additionally, this probable purchaser does not need to OWN surrounding acres of land for their ‘patients’ to go for ‘walks’. I’m sure a ‘walking trail’ in this beautiful area of Huntsville could be be a good addition for ALL to share, while we retain ownership, and healthier for patients who seek to integrate back into a better life. Many communities have had groups come forward to ‘adopt’ trails’.
Please ‘land bank’ as much of our unique assets as possible. Let’s not be ‘short sighted’ if we own land, we have many future options.
does it matter? we, the taxpaying residents of Huntsville, get rid of an albatross that we paid for. If it was sold for 1.9m I would have been happy, put the money into something this town needs like the men’s shelter perhaps.
We are told details are forthcoming. However, on the surface $3.9 million appears to be a VERY low purchase price for this commercial building plus 17 acres of prime real estate. The promise of creation of a few jobs does not justify the price. One hopes that there was an extensive promotion of this real estate listing south of our town, indicating Barrie and the broad spectrum of Toronto. We, the people, need to know where and how it was advertised, how frequently and how intensely? Who was the realtor of choice? We are talking about little money for an extraordinary chunk of our prime real estate. This needs much careful analysis.