Jarlette Health Services, owners of Muskoka Landing Long Term Care Inc., will be heading to an Ontario Municipal Board hearing on Wednesday to try and overturn a Huntsville Council decision regarding the height of their proposed addition.
All other aspects of the planned expansion have been approved but Planning Committee, and consequently council, would not budge on a 15-metre height exemption.
Jarlette Health Services is proposing to expand its 94 long-term care bed facility by adding a retirement lodge. The lodge would include up to 120 retirement units. The new units would be housed in a two-storey addition on the south side of its existing building, while adding another four-storey to another part of the building. The proposed development would also include 14 townhouses adjacent to the Fairy Lake shoreline as well as a gazebo and a 42.5 metre-wide docking structure along the shoreline of the Rogers Cove basin that would extend up to eight metres into the bay. If approved, the height of the proposed addition would sit at about 15 metres, while the Town’s existing zoning bylaw for the property calls for 12 metres. The proposal also calls for the creation of a parking lot on Helen Street.
While Town planning staff recommended that Jarlette Health Services’ application be approved, Planning Committee did not. The recommendation not to approve the height variant (or the eight metre dock) was also endorsed by Huntsville Council, which prompted Jarlette Health Services to take its request to the Ontario Municipal Board.
Area neighbours have been up in arms over the magnitude of the proposal and many will likely be present at the OMB hearing – expected to last two days.
Because Council went against staff’s recommendation on the proposal, if it wants to defend its decision it will have to hire its own experts. Since staff recommended that the application be approved, they can only be called to the OMB as witnesses but cannot defend council’s stance.
“As Professional Planners can only act as an expert witness at a Hearing and not advocate on behalf of an employer, the defence of a planning decision requires the retention of legal expertise to represent the Town’s position. As Committee is aware, defence of a planning decision can be complicated and require an inordinate amount of preparation time as well as time at a Hearing. Accordingly, legal representation can be very costly,” Manager of Planning Services Kirstin Maxwell told Planning Committee at its June 20, 2017 meeting. Consequently, Council will not be a party at the OMB hearing and will not try to defend its decision.
“There could be a hearing where it’s only the person who appealed the decision and nobody else there and the OMB will render a decision based on all the information,” she said, adding that the OMB will get a copy of all of the municipality’s files including all comments received.
“They should consider everything and come up with their own determination,” explained Maxwell of the process. “They recognize that it’s an expensive process and that municipalities don’t have unlimited funds. Quite often, in that instance, they would ask a Town planner to go just to be a friend to the Board, they call it, and that would be to just give independent corroboration of facts… sometimes they ask for that.”
An email has been circulated to area residents asking them to make their opposition to the proposed expansion known. “The site for this project is unique, in that it has both an urban and a shoreline setting. Whether viewed from Fairy Lake or from Highway #60, the 15m high Retirement Lodge will become the dominating feature of the landscape at a major, significant intersection in the town. The excessive light-spill emanating from the numerous windows, increased external building light, parking lot lighting, and street lighting will establish a night-time beacon to be seen for miles around,” it states.
“We believe that the applicant’s position at the OMB hearing should not go unchallenged. To that end, Evan Head, a Fairy Lake property owner, will be representing all stakeholders who have expressed concern about the negative impact this massive development will have. His informal presentation at the OMB Hearing will address our original points of concern,” adds the email.
The hearing will commence Wednesday, November 29, 2017 at 10 a.m. at the Waterloo Summit Centre for the Environment in meeting room 101 at 87 Forbes Hill Drive and is open to the public.
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It is indeed ironic that Jarlette is being forced to use this route as the final arbitration. If the Town had been appropriately timely in updating the OP, it is highly likely that the maximum height would have already been increased. After all, the Town planners (who don’t have to face the electorate) are in agreement with the petitioner. This is certainly not the first time that the opinion of expert Town staff has been ignored by a Council of lay persons.
I was one of the (unfortunately very few) people who attended the hearing. It certainly was a lesson in how things really work at this level and why citizens get discouraged by government processes.
To sum up, it was a small group of concerned citizens with no financing behind them opposing a major corporation who had 2 (highly compensated) lawyers, a professional planner, a professional architect, and even our own town planner (whose support of the development was over-ruled by Town Council) to testify as to how wonderful this development would be and how it met all the requirements of zoning.
The citizen group was represented (and very well represented I might add) by a local physician who produced his own PowerPoint presentation and emphasized why the development should not proceed as proposed – in large part because it does NOT meet the requirements of the zoning bylaws.
At one point one of the lawyers even had the nerve to make a derogatory comment about the Physician’s skill at developing a presentation – a real low blow.
The OMB person appeared to be very fair and unbiased – it will be interesting to see the decision he comes up with and his rationale for that decision.
No, just NO! People come to Muskoka for trees, rocks and water or so we would like to think. More and more is being taken away by all the building. Why do we need to build above the tree line? These retirement homes are so beyond so many people’s incomes that locals will have to go elsewhere in there senior years in order to find affordable living. Let’s look after our own community first, please!
Being a retirement community is now part of our identity. People retire from their homes in the south to their cottages in the Huntsville area, then to somewhat more easy-care residences in the area, then … and so it goes. The need for these stepping stones is clear, and they can’t be built fast enough. The need to preserve our Muskoka beauty, the reason we have come here for more than 100 years is equally clear. Hopefully a compromise can be reached so that the much needed dwellings can be built and the zoning bylaws adhered to. This particular development incorporates a couple of residential stepping stones, and overlooks our beloved lakes, so hopefully the developer and town can come to a compromise that meets with the bylaws. I will attend the hearing with interest.