City looks to purchase plaza for viewscape development

Orillia Packet and Times

Orillia council is looking to purchase a downtown property that houses the Metro grocery store and adjoining plaza.

In a 5-4 vote during Monday’s meeting, city council approved submitting an offer to buy 70 Front St. N. to extend Coldwater Street East to Centennial Drive at the Lake Couchiching waterfront. The report was discussed in closed session.

“The main purpose of that is to get the viewscape, Coldwater (Street), opened up to Centennial Drive to allow kind of a vista when you come down Coldwater,” Mayor Angelo Orsi said Tuesday. “You come straight through and you see the beautiful lake, the port and all that stuff. I think that’s going to be a very big asset to our waterfront and our Downtown Tomorrow plan.”

Orsi hopes the purchase will encourage private developers to bring retail and residential growth downtown.

“We need to get more people living in the downtown, and having the waterfront there is prime,” he said.

Orsi voted in favour of the purchase offer, along with councillors Andrew Hill, Linda Murray, Michael Fogarty and Tony Madden. Not in favour were councillors Patrick Kehoe, Paul Spears, Pete Bowen and Wayne Gardy.

Gardy said he did not vote in favour of the purchase because he felt it would put the taxpayers of the city at risk.

“If you’re driving down Coldwater Street, you can see the lake, you can see the park. So, why would you have to spend money to buy property to take the road all the way down?” Gardy said.

Kehoe said there are too many “unanswered questions” and “unknown costs.”

“And we have yet to see a viable business case that may project the long-term carrying costs associated with this,” he said.

Initiated by council in October 2012, the viewscapes project’s aim is to create roads or paths to visually connect the downtown with the waterfront.

Neywash, Coldwater, Colborne and King streets have been identified as possible access routes to Lake Couchiching.

In 2012, plaza owner Simon Weisman told The Packet & Times city council wants to pave a roadway through the former Shoppers Drug Mart.

“They would like us not to (fill the unit),” Weisman said at the time. “They would like us to give it to them. We’re not about to.”

The unit is still vacant.

Weisman could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Ian Sugden, the city’s director of planning and development, said the city’s offer encompasses the entire property “with the goal being to obtain the viewscape.”

Both the city’s official plan and the Downtown Tomorrow report speak to opening the area, by way of a road or access way, to connect downtown to the waterfront, Sugden said.

Sugden said he could not make the terms and conditions of the offer public as they were part of a closed-session report.

Photo: Metro grocery store and adjoining plaza located at 70 Front Street N.