The Allandale Station is driving up the city’s legal – and soon to be, other professional – costs, a City of Barrie staff report revealed.
The city has had to hire external counsel – at a cost of $79,000 in the first six months of 2016 – to assist in ongoing litigation surrounding the Allandale Station, a historic series of buildings city taxpayers spent $5 million to preserve, a city financial report reveals.
Behind a security fence, the station buildings – with their restored roofs, foundations, exteriors; and, a waterfront view – sit cordoned off from public use. Inside, the building is far from finished. The city opted to delay finishing until tenants are found.
But that, too, is on hold, while the city prepares for archeological work to continue.
As well as forecasting a legal line overage because of the “very active” legal files with the station, the city is also about to post a request for proposals (RFP) for an archeologist, Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman told BarrieToday.com.
“In the spring, there were concerns raised over whether enough archeological work has been done, particularly over near the GO station,” said Lehman, who has been meeting with First Nations leaders.
“There have been seven investigations so far and not all have agreed. We will have an RFP for an archeologist and we are working with the Huron-Wendat and the Williams Treaty First Nations (of which Rama is the nearest). We’ve met with them for months to discuss the scope of work for the archeologist.”
Lehman expects the archeological investigation will include ground-penetrating radar, which would reveal what’s hidden but be less disruptive. Bones have previously been found on the site; during work on the historic buildings in 2011, bones of an adult and a child were found in the crawl space of the office building.
“We what to do whatever is right,” Lehman added, even if that means not rushing ahead with plans to find tenants for the station buildings.
Located at the bottom of Kempenfelt Bay, the site would have been a landing site for people heading westward, whether First Nations, explorers, soldiers or settlers.
With Italianate residential accents, the Allandale Station was once the flagship of the Grand Trunk Railway as travellers headed from the south into cottage country as it offered a picturesque view of the bay and a “sumptuous restaurant”, noted ERA Architects, specialists in building conservation and adaptive reuse.
The station has been vacant for decades and it fell into disrepair, even attracting vandals who set a fire in January 2009.
For years, the city has envisioned the buildings becoming another hub of public activity and at one point, it was to be a broadcast centre, but those plans were nixed and the city reacquired the site in 2007.
In February 2008, the city issued a call for proposals to develop the station lands and in 2009, the city signed on with the CGI Group to develop the nine-acre site. Also in on the prospective project to incorporate the 1905 a series of buildings was the YMCA of Simcoe-Muskoka, which pulled out in January 2010, because of growing financial risk.
But cost and procedural matters derailed the work and steered it into the courts.
In 2010, CGI filed its first lawsuit, then $28 million. In 2011, the Brampton-based developer claimed breach of contract and bad faith and he expanded it to $40 million to include damages to its reputation, slander, negligence and false representation.
CGI also subsequently targeted city officials and staff who allegedly misrepresented the condition of the site as well as divulged confidential information and the total of the claims reached $79 million.
“We have recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs,” Lehman added. “We won three (cases). We don’t trumpet it, but we have had our costs awarded to us. It’s the taxpayers’ money.”
The city has recovered a total of $172,682 in costs.
Lehman said the city would still like to see the historic buildings – which received an Ontario Heritage Trust award – be places where people can work and play.
“Council decided there’d be a banquet facility in the middle (building), a facility like the Southshore Centre,” Lehman said.
“The small building would be a café and the office building would be an office building.
“We’re talking with the First Nations and want to make sure they’re okay with everything we’re doing with the buildings. We’ve slowed down (work) to treat the site with the absolute respect (it deserves) and make sure the archeology is done.”
Lehman said it’s important to get the site development right, especially since it could become even busier as two-day, all-day GO train service arrives. Also on the site is the final GO Transit Barrie-Toronto line stop.
“We’re really expecting that will be a big focal point for travelling to Toronto,” the mayor added.
“Allandale will be different than what was envisioned five years ago, because of the train service.”
