A version of this article was first published by InnisfilToday, a Village Media publication.
The Town of Innisfil wants the Province of Ontario to know it still wants a new seniors’ development on its border with the City of Barrie.
Town staff will be making a submission to the Environmental Registry of Ontario confirming council’s support of the Tollendale Village 2 project in the coming weeks, which will include a reaffirmation from the town that the previously granted Ministerial Zoning Order (MZO) remains warranted and that it is the municipality's intention to facilitate development of the expansion proposal.
A request for council’s support came to Mayor Lynn Dollin from the Tollendale Village Innisfil campus committee on Dec. 28.
“The provincial government is currently looking at and reviewing MZOs with a kind of use or lose it lens,” Dollin said. “This one got captured in that lens because … the province has not seen enough advancement.”
The MZO for Tollendale Village is one of 14 in the province in jeopardy following a Dec. 8 announcement from Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Paul Calandra that demanded progress be made on the housing-related projects that were moved forward by his predecessor, Steve Clark.
“If we do not see the results in respect to a minister’s zoning order, our government will not hesitate to amend or revoke it,” Calandra said in December. “It sends a clear message that when we issue a zoning order to support priorities like housing, long-term care that we expect to see results.”
“Interested parties” of those 14 developments were given until Jan. 27 to give feedback.
The plans for a second campus date back more than a decade to 2012 when 32 acres of land were purchased along the Innisfil-Barrie border by Simcoe County Christian Senior Home Inc., a non-profit registered charity, that had already been operating the Tollendale Village site in Barrie on Hurst Drive.
By 2019, it was ready to seek approval to build the new facility, estimated to cost $200 million, which would include a long-term-care facility with 160 beds, an extended/memory care facility with approximately 50 beds and four retirement residences with a total of 388 one- and two-bedroom units.
But the expansion proposal faced opposition from town planners, the County of Simcoe and the Lake Simcoe Regional Conservation Authority, as even though it abutted Barrie, it was situated well outside Innisfil's settlement area.
“The group wanted to duplicate (Tollendale) Village in Innisfil, but on the edge of Barrie,” Dollin said. “Planning had a tough time approving it, because of its location… but council really wanted to make it move forward and we certainly had busloads of seniors come to the public meeting who were also very excited that the project move forward.”
Planners admitted the proposal had many merits, but it was simply “too urban” for an otherwise rural area and could set a dangerous precedent.
Council ignored staff’s advice and approved the necessary official plan and zoning bylaw amendments at the time. About six months later, Clark settled the issued by granting an MZO, however little noticeable movement has happened on the file since then.
That doesn’t mean work isn’t progressing behind the scenes, the mayor explained, as the proponents are on their third submission to the town for site plan control and are navigating their way through a “pretty complicated” servicing arrangement between the two municipalities and InnServices.
The proposed expansion is under review because of a lack of water or wastewater servicing, the ministry stated previously.
Those services are to be provided by Barrie, Deputy Mayor Kenneth Fowler told his colleagues, as he encouraged them to throw their weight behind the request.
The new complex, he said, would be a boon to the community, as it not only provides desperately needed care for the town’s aging population but would also create jobs for hundreds of residents, including many new graduates of Georgian College. He also lauded the creation of new environmentally protected lands through the development.
The expansion is a “win-win-win situation,” he said.
“The only thing it can do is help people: it helps our youth, it helps our businesses, it helps our seniors,” Fowler said. “When we support this motion, we're not supporting just one aspect of the community, we’re supporting the entire community.”
Council passed the motion unanimously.
