Town's Agreement with Springwood

In Riverview, I chatted with a number of people who are pleased to see the Domtar lands currently owned by Cochrane Properties being cleaned up by Springwood, the developer who is purportedly ready to purchase the lands from Cochrane Properties.

One of the common concerns people have is that the Town is picking up the tab for the costs of the Centre Street connector, and all the underground utilities through these lands that would normally be the requirement of the developer to construct at its own cost and then turn over to the Town upon completion, and the Town is using taxes, and grant monies from the province and the federal government to do so. People also ask about what kind of tax concessions the landowner is getting. There are several tax deferrals and tax concessions. People also want to know whether Domtar remains liable for the contamination in the groundwater that so far the Town and the Province do not require to be cleaned up. The "hotspot" will be "capped", but not cleaned up.

Domtar will remain liable for the contamination, even though all the subsequent purchasers also remain liable for the contamination. That is the excuse that Springwood has given why the lands could not be subdivided and why the Town could not be transferred any municipal reserve lands. Springwood offered the Town $79,000 as cash in lieu for an equivalent of almost 8 acres of developable lands they would have been required to provide for Town purposes, and the council accepted that amount of money. This seems rather odd. Municipal reserves are typically lands ready to be developed, and in the downtown core area, these lands would be worth significantly more than $79,000. Don't you think? At least if municipal reserved were required to be dedicated. Was there a market value assessment of the developable lands done?

Springwood provided, apparently, that their development plan would only work if the lands are not further subdivided. In such a case, the Town would not be entitled to any municipal reserve lands, because it is only if the lands are subdivided that municipal reserves can be taken from a landowner without paying compensation to the landowner. Something makes no sense here-I cannot imagine why the money was offered as cash in lieu for something the Town was not entitled to in this case?

I have pasted the link to the recently announced Memorandum of Understanding between the Town and Springwood below. Please note that Springwood was still not the landowner, but remains a propsective purchaser. This was clarified in section 8 of the MOU itself.

There has been a lot of chest thumping and cheerleading about what a great cooperative arrangement this is and how Cochrane citizens will all benefit so much from this deal. I do see the benefits of having the lands developed, but at what cost to you and me, the average taxpayer? Are we subsidizing this development, and why? Is this developer being treated differently than other developers, something this council said would not occur-all developers were to be treated the same? What do you think? I really would appreciate your thoughts.
http://www.cochrane.ca/municipal/toc/webcms.nsf/AllDoc/B5C80B023FE38489872577740058F99D/$File/MOU-304GriffinRoadMar2010.pdf