Developers’ dreams dashed: community, golf course a no-go
TRENT LAKES – The non-fiction tale of the Flynn’s Corners Golf Course and Housing Development includes an ending, but the actual story will never be much more than a prologue for film and television writer Keith Leckie.
The co-owner of the proposed development on County Road 507 just north of Flynn’s Corners in Trent Lakes is moving on with his life after pulling the plug on what was meant to be his retirement project.
Leckie and his business partner spent nearly half a million dollars planning the development for 14 years before putting the project on hold earlier this year. But that official status with Peterborough County may seem overly optimistic.
The satellite community will never be realized without a grandfather clause in what Leckie said dealt the fatal blow – Ontario’s Places to Grow: Growth Plan 2017.
“It was going to be beautiful and contribute to the community,” he said of the property he was developing with Doug Summers, a businessman with seven other golf courses in his portfolio.
“We were just two guys with a dream,” Leckie said.
Numerous land and environmental studies were done on the property – but Summers pointed out that it wasn’t any of them that ultimately sank the project.
Trent Lakes Mayor Bev Matthews agreed the development, which had the full support of council, had great potential – particularly with respect to economic development in an area that could certainly use the jobs.
“It would have been appreciated,” she said. “It was a win-win for everybody.”
The background
Leckie, a Toronto resident and Catchacoma-area cottager, and Summer, a family friend, bought the 368 acres for $250,000 in 2004.
They felt like they were carry-
ing on a tradition. Their fathers became business partners when they opened their first golf course in Pickering in 1952, a facility they eventually sold for four times the original property value.
Leckie and Summer examined the land and explored the idea of developing it.
They were told it would take about four years and about $80,000 worth of studies, tests, peer reviews and legal fees to put together an application for approval of subdivision – which was expected to happen this August.
They went all in, splitting costs 50/50. Leckie used his modest retirement savings to hire a planner and designer.
Along the way, they became accustomed to printing new blueprints – Leckie said the province changed development guidelines every few years.
Plans initially included 49 homes but changes to setback distances from water and roadways, for example, reduced that number to 46.
Nine holes of the planned 18hole golf course, the legally required resource element needed to make the subdivision happen, had to be build before the men could get approval to start building homes. That was projected to happen this spring.
But Places to Grow, which basically restricts new housing to established towns and villages, ultimately killed the development, Leckie said.
The application for the satellite community was close enough to fruition that the team was initially confident it would be grandfathered. The province was firm, however. The updated restrictions put in place on July 1, 2017 would remain.
So, they went back to the drawing board, eyeing a way to accommodate maximum 20-acre lot sizes and even bigger setbacks.
They investigated whether the development could be built with 20 homes, but found 46 were needed to cover the estimated
$3.5 million cost of building the golf course.
Leckie and Summers delivered the news to Trent Lakes council in February.
“We were quite confident this would have been a gem of a course, but you can’t build it with 20 lots. It would have been a financial failure,” Leckie said.
Three lawyers told the men the same thing – an appeal would be costly, and they would most likely lose. The language of the new legislation is written in such a way to prevent the government from being sued.
Planners told the men they had never seen a situation where the government simply said “No” to exceptions, Summers said.
“It’s a departure from the norm,” Peterborough County planning director Bryan Weir said, noting how the “clergy principle” generally states that land use planning applications must be judged on the basis of the law and policy in place on the date of the original application.
‘Absolute hypocrisy’
Places to Grow did make one exception – quarries, including one near the proposed development that Leckie said had just been purchased 18 months earlier.
At first, Summers thought that was a mistake. It wasn’t, and he said he and Leckie are among those who feel “absolutely screwed” by the new law.
“I get that things evolve … but I don’t get why you give the aggregate groups grandfathering,” he said.
The intent of the new laws, when it comes to protecting nature and biodiversity, are “fabulous,” but it is “absolute hypocrisy” to allow one group and not others – particularly when that group is arguable the one that causes the most damage to wildlife and roads.
“Be consistent. That’s my point ... I don’t think the government played fair here,” Summers said. “I just thought we were brighter than that.”
Jobs lost
Leckie, a father of three, is familiar with the area and knows how much new jobs would have meant to its residents – particularly youth who often move after high school.
“We were offering at least a dozen full time jobs, year-round,” he said.
Even a development half the size of what was proposed would have been welcomed, said Phil Gillingham, who co-owns
Flynn’s Store with wife Marg less than a kilometre south of the site at Flynn’s Turn at County Roads 507 and 36.
“Anything would be a benefit, other than a hole in the ground,” he said, explaining how the thirdgeneration entrepreneurs cannot afford to hire more than one student at the store, which was opened by Marg’s grandfather 70 years ago this summer.
Legislation costing some
No other county developments have been officially cancelled or stalled because of the new provincial legislation because files remain open on all of them, Weir said.
In fact, a development on Sandy Point in Trent Lakes has been draft-plan approved for more than three decades before just recently coming off the books. Its proponents were looking at resurrecting it, but doing so would have been costly.
A subdivision in Ida in Cavan Monaghan Township also remains as hold because the county is completing a comprehensive review of its Official Plan, which means settlement area boundaries could change.
There are several other active files, but most are in those settlement areas, Weir said.
Asked how much of an impact the updated legislation has had, he said it has meant developers have had to hire more consultants to show how they are complying to the new plan. “It’s been a cost to them.”
It also cost the county in development charges – $78.50 per unit. In the grand scheme of things, a development the size of Flynn’s is “nothing to sneeze at,” but larger projects contain as many as 500 units, Weir pointed out.
Moving on
Today, there is no evidence of the former plans for the property, other than a large steel gate near where the main entrance was going to be built. A narrow gravel road to the south leads to a modest house rented by a family.
Not far from the house sits the stone foundation of a barn that was once home to a long-bow manufacturing operation. Charred timber visible beyond the brush is evidence of the fire that destroyed the structure several years ago.
Walking across the lawn of the home, Leckie pointed to a lengthy clearing in the forest cleared more than a decade ago as part of studies. It was the furthest section of a planned arterial road extending west of 507 in shape loosely resembling a horseshoe.
The diverse property includes high pastures with towering oak and butternut trees, low cedar woods with a narrow lake and beaver pond, elevation changes with limestone cliffs and granite outcroppings and walking trails with signs of many deer.
The land had been farmed, but it was always a struggle to do so. Studies found little topsoil and plenty of rough limestone – an aggregate mined by quarries in the area, including on property directly to the west.
Leckie admits that’s what the site may eventually become. “It breaks your heart trying to imagine people farming it.”
Three environmental assessments were conducted on the property. Initial concerns subsided over time when locals saw that the plans preserved as much flora and fauna as possible in the development – including 80 acres of walking trails, he said.
Leckie remains indignant, but has moved on. Some 360 acres (145.7 hectares) are now up for sale and he admits the chances of picking up where they left off are remote.
He is out of money to spend on the project, and the many studies completed as part of the planning process at a cost of $7,000 to $35,000 each lapse with time. The men have spent a combined $428,000.
Leckie admits talking about what happened is somewhat therapeutic. It’s something his wife won’t even discuss, out of disgust.
Flynn’s Corner Golf Course was going to help Leckie stay active as he got older. “This was going to be my retirement hobby.”
Part of why Leckie was attracted to the idea was because, before his more than 40-year career as a scriptwriter and novelist, he used to work at and manage his dad’s links. “This would have been a nice little circle back to golf courses.”
‘It just doesn’t seem fair’ Matthews doesn’t agree with what happened to Leckie and Summers – she too expected the application would have been grandfathered.
“It just doesn’t seem fair,” she said, pointing out that great people with vast experience were involved, eliminating the possibility of a “shoddy” project.
What hurts most is that the province changed the rules, Matthews added. “When you start to play a game, you play it with certain rules in place … it’s just not fair at all.”
Leckie detailed his concerns in an April 22 letter to Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister
Bill Mauro and requested a meeting to address “this unfairness” and find a path to grandfather the proposed development.
An office manager told him Mauro could not speak with him, but wished him good luck in his future endeavours, he said.
Leckie said Peterborough Kawartha Liberal MPP Jeff Leal was supportive when he spoke with him about the project, which will soon be part of a new riding. He could not be reached for comment this week.
Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes Brock Progressive Conservative MPP Laurie Scott, whose riding covered Trent Lakes, could not be reached for comment.
The Examiner also contacted the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. Spokesman Conrad Spezowka indicated a response would take longer than usual because of the election.