Waterloo building and parking lot officially sold to De Novo

It’s a done deal. The Waterloo Summit Centre for the Environment and the adjacent parking lot has been sold for $3,905,000 to De Novo Trust Fund.

Council emerged from a closed session meeting Thursday to make the announcement, which was supported unanimously by councillors, following months of negotiations with the addictions treatment facility.

“Like most things around this table, the solutions are never perfect in everyone’s minds but at the end of the day I think that we’ve done a good thing to get an asset off our books that was costing the taxpayers money and wasn’t part of our core services. We sold it to a group that I think will ultimately be an exceptionally helpful partner in keeping our hospital open. This is a group that is owned by all the construction unions of Ontario and they’ve cited one of the reasons they wanted to be in Huntsville was because we have a hospital. I’ve got to think that having all the construction unions on our side to keep the hospital open will be a very valuable asset and a real valuable ally. And since we don’t seem to have an ally in the [hospital] board, it’s nice to have this ally here,” said Huntsville Mayor Scott Aitchison following the meeting.

Asked if he thought the sale of the public asset was a good deal for the people of Huntsville, Aitchison said he would have preferred a full building, which undoubtedly would have brought its value up.

“This is one of the reasons why I was hopeful we could get it filled with the Accelerate group, because then it would be full, there’d be active businesses there because there is no question that the building is worth more if it’s fully rented and generating revenue. I think in terms of the investment that was made in it, there’s no doubt that even if it was full we were never going to get back what the Federal government spent to build it. It was around $9.5 million to build, but that was done, really, really fast. It was an added expense to the way they built it, it’s tough to realize that gain,” said Aitchison, who noted that at the end of the day the proposal the Town went with was the highest monetary offer.

“I think council wisely took what they could get for it and now we need to obviously have some discussions with the community about what we do with that, almost $4 million, and to deal with a lot of the infrastructure challenges that we have.”

Aitchison said the municipality’s infrastructure requirements amount to about $40 million. In terms of his own wish list, he said he’d like to see part of the money used to leverage more private sector investment in the community. “So that might be somewhere along the lines of some more stuff downtown in our core to help stimulate investment in the core – to strengthen it, that’s the kind of thing I’ve been thinking of,” said Aitchison. Asked to expand, he referenced the Empire site on Huntsville’s main street as well as Brendale Square and the old LCBO plaza.

“Is there some way that we can use some of this money, that we can play a role in creating some new development and reinvestment in those areas that bring private sector investment so that we can stimulate new tax dollars, recoup that with new assessment, that kind of thing?” he questioned. “I don’t know exactly how that might work or what that might look like, but I’d like to start those discussions with our council and see what we might come up with.”

Aitchison said there might also be an opportunity to assist in the establishment of more attainable housing. “I’d like to see a community land trust established in Huntsville where it’s sort of a self-perpetuating and growing entity that creates more affordable opportunities for people to not just have affordable rents but actually have some ownership, as well.”

Closed session negotiations with De Novo have been taking place since the end of November. One of the key issues has been the amount of land included in the sale.

“You know the municipality invested about $3 million to bring the road up into there, and all that kind of stuff, and bring services in, and it behooves us to try to leverage those other lands as well to get as much as we possibly can out of the total investment. By just letting them [additional lands] go as part of the sale of the original building, I didn’t think we would be doing the taxpayer justice. I think we can leverage more out of those lands than just letting them go with this sale,” said Aitchison. “It gives us options to try to generate more revenue for the taxpayer.”

He said the road would remain public and there may be opportunities to create more walking trails as part of the master plan for Pioneer Village, in future.

The sale will official close on June 20, 2018. The funds will be placed in general reserves but staff will likely bring a report to council with options for those funds before that, according to Huntsville CAO Denise Corry.

The areas marked in red have been sold to De Novo Treatment Centre for $3,905,000. The Town expects to receive the funds on June 20, 2018.

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