City may buy house for The Park way

The city may buy a house on Sherbrooke St. to help with the planned extension of The Parkway.

The house at 808 Sherbrooke St. is currently for sale, and city staff is recommending that council agree to buy it – and eventually demolish it. The cost of the house is $245,000.

Part of the property would be needed to build the controversial extension of The Parkway.

Whatever portion of the property at 808 Sherbrooke St. that’s not needed for road-widening purposes could be given to the Peter borough Housing Corporation to be developed, states a staff report.

It’s been more than two years since council voted to extend the road across the city at a cost of $79-million.

But construction never got started because many citizens objected. A total of 88 objections were sent to Queen’s Park; the objectors were asking the province to force the city into doing a more-detailed environmental assessment.

A spokesman for the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change told The Examiner last week there was still no decision about whether the city will have to do that more-detailed EA.

Nonetheless, city councillors will consider whether to buy the house at 808 Sherbrooke St. on Monday evening.

Also on councillors’ committee of the whole agenda:

A plan to sell four acres of industrial land to a local manufacturing company. A city staff report recommends selling the city-owned land at 290 and 310 Jamieson Dr. to The KB Group of Companies, for $149,540.

KB manufactures components for modular homes and garages. They now employ 20 people, and plan to hire 10 or 12 more with the expansion on Jamieson Dr.;

A plan for the city to take four properties from Homegrown Homes and add them to the municipal stock of affordable apartments.

Homegrown Homes has been a local provider of safe, affordable rental homes for the last 20 years.

But a staff report says the business model isn’t working anymore, and the agency wants to divest itself of its properties and pursue other ways to help people find affordable housing.

So it wants to offer four properties to the Peterborough Housing Corporation (a social housing provider; the city is the sole shareholder).

The city would pay Homegrown Homes $49,500 (to settle property disposition costs). The city would also assume the $800,000 debt on theproperties.

The properties include 193 Park hill Rd. (a house with two apartments inside); 196 Antrim St. (house with two apartments );220 Edinburgh St .( a four-unit row house);592-594 George St .( a duplex ). Together, the properties are worth about $1.5 million;

A plan to spend $398,000 on new office furniture for the social service department buildings on Charlotte St. (in the Charlotte Mews) and on SimcoeSt.

The buildings have undergone nearly $3 million in renovations, over the last few years, to make the buildings more accessible.

But now they also need furniture that increases accessibility as well (ie: desks designed to allow staff to inter- view people who use strollers and scooters; the small interview rooms are too cramped to be accessible ).

A city staff report also says there’s also a need to replace some of the everyday furniture for staff. Some of the furniture is roughly 13 years old and needs to be replaced. Don’t forget to check The

Examiner’s website on Monday evening for livestreaming of the meeting, plus live blogging and tweets. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m.