This article was first published by BarrieToday, a Village Media publication.
The owners of a proposed medical industrial innovation park in Oro-Medonte will have a little over a month to convince the provincial government the project should move forward.
If they can’t do so by Jan. 27, the government says it may revoke the minister’s zoning order (MZO) that would have made the development possible.
The local project is one of eight MZOs being reviewed because they don’t directly impact housing projects.
“The MZO they received was very narrow and specific in scope,” Oro-Medonte Mayor Randy Greenlaw told BarrieToday. “It was specific to producing personal protection equipment and sanitizers as we were in the middle of the global pandemic.
“I don’t know if that market still exists anymore," he added.
According to Greenlaw, if the province revokes the MZO, the land would revert back to its original designation, which was rural/agriculture.
In the summer of 2020, David Yeaman, president of Oro-Medonte-based Molded Precision Components, and Geoff Campbell, managing partner of Oakleigh Developments, made a presentation to township council about a proposed medical industrial park. It is to be located at 561 Line 7 N., about halfway between Barrie and Orillia and directly across from the Lake Simcoe Regional Airport.
They were hoping to secure a letter of support as they were applying for an MZO to change the zoning of the property from rural/agricultural and environmentally protected to economic development with site-specific special provisions.
The township supported the request for the MZO, which was granted Oct. 30, 2020.
The plan was to create a 33-hectare development that would house various medical manufacturing facilities.
Harry Hughes was Oro-Medonte’s mayor when Yeaman and Campbell appeared before council in 2020 seeking their support.
Hughes said Yeaman did an “amazing” job presenting his case for supporting an MZO.
“We made the decision at the height of COVID,” Hughes said. “It was the right decision. The MZO was very specific to medical production.”
Sometime after receiving the MZO, Yeaman put the land up for sale. The asking price was $26,365,500.
In February 2022, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing issued a statement.
“Since the landowner has decided to not build the medical innovation park and has instead put the land up for sale, the minister will initiate conversations with the Township of Oro-Medonte to commence the process of revoking the MZO,” said Zoe Knowles, communications director for Steve Clark, who was minister of municipal affairs and housing at the time.
“We have been clear that MZOs are a tool to accelerate critical local projects, like housing and health care, by cutting through red tape — and it is not a tool to be leveraged for real-estate speculation."
At the time, Yeaman called the minister’s decision “disturbing.”
“We have every intention of trying to move this forward,” he said in February 2022.
He put the land up for sale because “there’s a lot of challenges associated with the development of the property.
“We don’t have the finances available for the project. We need to find somebody who has the ability and the development expertise to move it forward. We’ve got to find the right partner,” he added.
Hughes recalled when the property went on the market.
“It didn’t make any sense at all,” said the former mayor. “There’s no way that property would sell for that amount. It was impossible.”
Hughes thinks Yeaman made a mistake when he put the land up for sale.
“Sometimes folks try outlandish things to generate interest,” he said.
BarrieToday made several attempts to contact both Yeaman and Campbell for comment. Neither returned calls.
It’s been more than three years since the MZO was granted and there has been zero movement on the site.
And it doesn’t look like that will change any time soon.
“I don’t know what their plans are, but I haven’t seen any modified site plans or applications from them,” said Greenlaw. “They haven’t brought anything new forward.”
