UPDATE: An open house is being held by Deerhurst Resort (Freed Developments) to discuss their new development plans. The Open House is scheduled to occur between 6 and 7:30 pm on Thursday, February 23, 2023, at Deerhurst Resort.
Huntsville’s planning committee will be presented with new plans for Deerhurst Resort which will require an Official Plan and zoning amendment in order to proceed.
At the height of the pandemic in September 2021, Skyline Investments Inc. sold the roughly 760-acre Deerhurst Resort, and various other resort properties, to Toronto developer Peter Freed, owner and operator of Freed Developments.
The $330 million deal comprised Deerhurst Resort, Horseshoe Resort, and the remaining development lands at Blue Mountain Resort, according to a statement issued by the company in 2021.
“The acquisition of these iconic resort properties will allow us to execute our strategy of modernizing the traditional resort community market to the highest and best use through design-driven development and world-class amenities with all season access. The acquisition of these resorts further stimulates the growth in the hotel and resort sectors for Freed,” added Peter Freed.
According to planning documents, Freed Developments is proposing a revised development concept on Deerhurst lands designated in Huntsville’s Official Plan as the ‘Deerhurst Village Centre – Plateau.’ That plan consists of two buildings connected via a shared entranceway as well as a restaurant and other retail amenities. Both buildings combined would contain 447 units. One building would be 6.5 storeys in height and the other 5.5 storeys, both of which will also require planning exemptions.
The proponent is expected to host an open house before a public meeting is held by the Town’s planning department and the application is heard.
You can find more information here.
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Unless you’re planning on building these new structures in a depression , the proposed heights are unacceptable . A previous Council made the mistake of allowing a 5 story structure on height of land…Result an overlap Eyesore !
Don’t pander to developers !
I remember when Deerhurst was just a small little resort with cabins and a nice restaurant. Bill Waterhouse , myself and a few avid tennis players played on the outside courts in the summer until they expanded and put in the indoor sports facility. We lived across the lake from Deerhurst and, as you know, noise travels far over water. You could almost hear people talking, laughing and splashing around at the waterfront. Boat noise was also an issue with water skiers and other boating activities. Sometimes there would be outside music event, not so bad as long as liked the music. I guess what I’m saying is, I am glad we don’t live on Penn Lake anymore. Not the Muskoka dream it once was.
MPAC and municipal governments love that phrase, “highest and best use”. Mostly because the denser the development, the more tax dollars are collected.
Although this might be “best” for them, I would dispute the use of this word in the definition and goals of development. It may indeed be the highest use, although someone in India might dispute this too, but it is not necessarily the best use.
Why do people come to places like Deerhurst? Believe it or not, it is, or used to be at least, to “get away from the city” where things are already at the “highest and best”. Where trucks, transit, and a host of “other” people are forever moving about and making noise and pollution in the process.
Funny that we mortals seem to feel that we can decide what is the “best use” when we have only been around this area for a few hundred years but nature has had millions of years to work out the real “best use” based on mostly evolution. It is a bit presumptuous of us, even more so for out planners, straight from some school and reading the already out of date planning guide documents the last planners left them.
Huntsville is no longer a “town” as it is fast transitioning to a small “city” and soon enough it’s residents too will need to find a place “out of town” for their holidays.
A few more developments like Deerhurst and they will have to go further away to find peace, quiet, animals and all that good stuff.
We seem to be importing the “city” into our neighborhoods as fast as we can figure out how to do it, all driven by that great goal of “highest and best” and left out of the statement “most profitable”.
If you ask some older native people (Indigenous if you like) they may tell you things that you might want to listen to. Their system was far from perfect too, but they have had a bit longer to observe their native surroundings than many of us.
It would be a good goal to aim for some balance, based on more than just some theoretical “highest and best” that some clerk at MPAC wrote out as an assignment some years back.
Are they increasing the infrastructure to match
Hospitals, sewer, water, garbage dump etc