The city could give a large industrial developer a break on its development charges (DCs), deferring them to a later date and with interest.
Barrie’s finance and responsible governance committee OK'd a motion to that effect Wednesday evening for Bayview Point Commercial Centre at 80 Big Bay Point Rd., although it still requires general committee and city council approval.
“We’re trying to be fair and incentivize people to build, but we’ve also got to look at our own house,” said Deputy Mayor Robert Thomson.
“We have a developer who’s coming to build on spec(ulation) and I think that that deserves a reward, for them to be able to take that risk, and we can do something small … I’m good with it,” said Mayor Alex Nuttall.
Development charges are designed to recover the capital costs, from developers, associated with residential and non-residential (commercial, industrial, institutional) growth within a municipality, so that existing residents don’t have to foot the bill.
The approved committee motion is that the city enter into an agreement with the Rinomato Group of Companies, under Ontario’s Development Charges Act, to defer payment of development charges to the time of building occupancy, instead of when the building permit is issued, with the standard interest charged for properties at 80 Big Bay Point Rd., near Bayview Drive in the city's south end.
The agreement is for five years and interest kicks in after three years.
Isabel Bercasio, speaking for Rinomato, told committee members that Bayview Point has 25 parcels of land, ranging from just less than an acre to more than two acres. Buildings that can be constructed range in size from 10,000 square feet to larger than 100,000 sq. ft., if parcels are combined in the latter size.
“The reason we ask for this consideration is that we feel that it will help promote investment, help small business owners with some of those upfront costs related to developing these parcels and their businesses, and will save some operations costs," she said.
Bercasio said Rinomato has four structures needing building permits in the coming months, each at slightly more than 10,000 sq. ft.
How much this DC break could cost the city is unknown, although staff expect to have answers by the Sept. 25 general committee meeting, when the motion could be on the agenda.
Michael Prowse, Barrie's chief administrative officer, said money in the city’s DC reserve gets invested, as do the funds in all city reserves.
“It isn’t like a sock drawer that we stick (the DC money) in and it’s stagnant,” he said. “We do, through our treasury team, invest that money and then it gets reallocated back to those accounts.”
Marc Villeneuve, the city’s supervisor of development charges, said the timeframe of this deal could be significant.
“This is a rather large site and it may take many, many years or decades to develop it,” he said, “so … you want to be careful whatever agreement you’re coming to or terms that you’re going to set may not be something you want to see for 25 years.
“Maybe you have a shorter timeframe where you’d like to see these occupancies, these buildings actually be built,” Villeneuve added.
“This isn’t something that’s going to get built overnight, this is going to be a multi-year project,” said Coun. Gary Harvey, chairman of the finance and responsible governance committee. “This is such a large project.”
A city event in May 2023, at 80 Big Bay Point Rd., made much of this proposed development. It said as many as 500 jobs could be created by early 2024 at the Bayview Point Commercial Centre, 39 acres of general industrial space and 25 industrial lots.
Jobs created could include light manufacturing, construction-related positions, specialty tech and possibly automotive.
