The owners of an Ancaster property given special planning permissions, word for word, by the Doug Ford government have filed a rare Site Plan development appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal.
The owners of 392-412 Wilson Street East & 15 Lorne Avenue in Ancaster want the OLT to force the City to issue permits to enable them to begin work on the site.
The land is owned by developers Sergio Manchia and Frank Spallacci. Their planner is Matt Johnson, co-principal of Urban Solutions. Manchia is also a co-principal of Urban Solutions.
Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner found Manchia purchased four tickets to the “stag-and-doe” party for Premier Doug Ford’s daughter. He gave the tickets to Johnson, who reported only giving a quick hello to the Premier.
Manchia and Premier Doug Ford met in September 2021 to discuss. Manchia is a central figure in the Ontario Integrity Commissioners’ report regarding the Greenbelt lands removal.
With this background, Hamilton City Council will discuss a request from the Ancaster Village Heritage Community to endorse a letter the AVHC sent to Premier Ford calling for reversing the planning changes granted to Manchia and Spallacci.
Following the planning changes, their corporation, Wilson St. Ancaster Inc., gained an OLT settlement ruling enforcing the new rules to allow them to construct an eight-storey mixed-use development containing 118 residential units.
The ruling was released on September 19.
On October 23, Premier Ford reserved the urban boundary expansion his government imposed on Hamilton and announced a new review of provincial changes to Urban Hamilton Official Plan.
The review includes the changes made to allow the Wilson Street development.
TPR has requested the OLT appeal file.
Production Details v. 1.0.0 Published: November 7, 2023 Last edited: November 7, 2023 Author: Joey Coleman Edit Record v. 1.0.0 original version
Thank you for all your hard work on this….clearly, Manchia, Spallaci and Johnston are attempting to forestall and render irrelevant the investigations that are going on into the undue influence of developers such as themselves in the Ford government.
Yes, thank you TPR, for keeping this situation in the news. Given, that the Ancaster news is no longer around, your reporting is even more important to our community. Not that I blame our Premier, however, the best leader in the world can be taken advantage of by so called friends.
Klaas Detmar,
Ancaster.
To build an 8 story building in the historic village of Ancaster would be a travesty.
The granting of the approval should be thoroughly investigated.
Why is it that Canada can have a non confidence for the Prime Minister but a Premiere as sleazy as Ford can carry on being a sleaze until the next election. Ontario should be able to dump this self serving —.
8 storey building in the village core is excessive. I hope this is overturned and a lower density project approved. I look forward to development in the core. Too many vacant or boarded up buildings. The city should substantially hike taxes on the boarded up buildings to promote a healthy downtown core.
Nevermind the invasion of the beautiful village of Ancaster, the traffic will be impossible to get in or out of people’s homes, as well as the over use of the sewer and storm sewers which will be a nightmare.
To all above. Not one of you would have the tolerance, patience or skin to endure what development takes, let alone the financials. Your argument with development is that you can’t go out and you can’t go up so I ask you where can things be built? For those of you talking about hiking taxes and sewer capacity, you have no clue what you’re talking about regarding the economics of a city or about infrastructure. As for traffic, study reports are a requirement for all development submissions and are well thought out and agreed to in advance of a build permit. And by the way, development charges are one of the biggest gross factors of a city’s revenue. So carry on with your evening spewing negativity and half empty glass objectives to yourselves and your families cause nobody else wants to hear it.
The municipality should should be looking into this with an open mind as we go throw a housing crisis. Maximizing land use is a way of making housing more affordable.