City Picks A Waterfront Winner
By John Swartz
Friday afternoon Orillia council formalized the next step for waterfront redevelopment following up on an announcement Thursday they picked FRAM Building Group as the choice of companies to transform the 5 properties it owns into a game changing project for the waterfront and City.
The central property involved is the Metro shopping plaza at 70 Front Street North. The next largest parcels are former rail lines and then a couple of smaller pieces that came into the possession of the City over several decades.
The City picked, but did not name which of two proponents they decided to proceed with May 19 and negotiations proceeded with FRAM which has developments in the GTA, Southern Ontario, Alberta and the United States. They are the developers of Collingwood’s Shipyard project.
The choice is a surprise if aesthetics and scale are the considerations. The submission was not as detailed as the TPI proposal, and included fewer living units, 1/10th the retail space and TPI also proposed to build a hotel. Both proponents would leave the Metro store and surrounding parking as is, except TPI included a plan to rebuild that area should Metro for any reason end the lease. TPI also included substantial parking (almost doubling available downtown parking), almost all below grade and covered with public access green space.
| Housing | Retail Sq. Ft. | Parking | Hotel | |
| FRAM | 151 | 3,000 | Not Stated | No |
| TPI | 223 | 35,768 | 473 | Yes |
| TPI – including Metro | 283 | 67,877 | 665 | Yes |
FRAM’s conceptual drawings indicate the goal of the finished product would not be very different than if built anywhere else. TPI, proposed to use wood frame construction and wood and brick exterior materials in a distinctive way.
FRAM Is proposing to build in three phases, with an 8 storey residential/ground floor commercial building at the corner of Coldwater and Front Streets.
The information released to the public was scant. The sale price was not included in the documents. Previously, documentation for large scale projects for which public input was afforded also included, at the least, data regarding opinion for and against – and often the text of comments received, neither of which were part of the report council had on the agenda.
“That (sale price) will be disclosed when the deal closes. We signed this agreement of purchase and sale and once all the due diligence is completed it will close I suspect late this year / very early next year and then everything will be disclosed,” Mayor Steve Clarke told SUNonline/Orillia following the meeting.
Councillor Jay Fallis was the only vote against in a recorded tally.
“Two years ago I stood before council and made it clear I do not support 8 stories at the waterfront. While I understand the benefits of building up, I also believe a change of this nature to our downtown is going to negatively impact our community. It is going to change our city’s the narrative from that of a tightly-knit community to that of a big city, something closer to Barrie. That is something I cannot support and I think it’s the wrong move of council. I also believe we could have done a better job accommodating things like public space and public input in this proposal,” said Fallis.
The City has $9.3 million invested in the property.
“What I will say, it was one of council’s goals all the way along to recoup our original investment,” said Clarke, who would not say yes or no the sale price was at or above $9.3 million.
“More of that information will come out when the deal closes. There’s a lot in the submissions that wasn’t on the website because a lot of it is confidential – technical information, financial information – what the public generally saw was conceptual information. We had two very good quality proponents and submissions,” Clarke said.
There were two conditions listed in the report which were flagged as favouring the vendor (the City). This is the first time in many years when the City has sold real estate conditions have been noted. One was approval of the Agreement of Purchase and Sale, and the City adhere to real estate policy.
“We just have to make sure we adhere to the City’s real estate policy. That’s why we had the meeting today because we need a by-law to make everything legal,” Clarke said.
Councillor Jay Fallis was the only vote against in a recorded tally.
“Two years ago I stood before council and made it clear I do not support 8 stories at the waterfront. While I understand the benefits of building up, I also believe a change of this nature to our downtown is going to negatively impact our community. It is going to change our city’s the narrative from that of a tightly-knit community to that of a big city, something closer to Barrie. That is something I cannot support and I think it’s the wrong move of council. I also believe we could have done a better job accommodating things like public space and public input in this proposal,” said Fallis.
Both Fram’s and TPI’s proposal can be viewed here.
Waterfront Hydro Service
Also on the agenda was a staff report regarding what to do with the hydro lines along Centennial Drive. Despite the reconstruction project is underway, deciding how to proceed for the portion north of Mississaga Street was not previously been made, other than council approved $500,000 for relocation of the lines in 2017.
In June the City asked Hydro One for an estimate of the cost to bury the lines from Canice Street along Centennial to Mississaga Street and came back with a figure of $2.4 million with the range being $1.2 to 3.6 million depending on actual conditions.
The report asked council to approve spending $75,000 to have Ainley and Associates do the detailed design work, notify Hydro One to do their detail design work and cost estimates, and to authorize another report on cost recovery of a portion of the price tag from neighbouring property owners – which pending finalization of the earlier agenda item will be FRAM Building Group, since the only other property owner is the City on the East/parks side of the street. The timing of this decision is an effect of the agreement of the sale of the land to FRAM, but was not a contingency of the agreement.
“No matter which proponent was successful this would have been a consideration. We’ve been talking about the possibility of this for the last few years even before the RFP went out,”
(Images Supplied) Main: Fram 8 Storey Building at Coldwater and Front Streets
