The developer who bought tickets to Premier Doug Ford’s daughter’s ‘stag-and-doe’ has lost his court battle to keep the planning permissions given to him by the Ontario Conservative government.
Ontario’s Divisional Court dismissed the Planning Act site plan denial appeal filed by the owners of 392-412 Wilson Street East & 15 Lorne Avenue in Ancaster.
The Court decision should end the political saga resulting from the Ontario Conservatives overturning a mid-2022 decision by Hamilton City Council to deny the application by owner/developers Sergio Manchia and Frank Spallacci to build an eight-storey condo building on the lands on the edge of Ancaster’s heritage downtown.
The 2022 Ontario Conservative Overturning of City Council
In May 2022, City Council denied the developer’s application to build an 8-storey condo with 169 residential units on the site.
Manchia and Spallacci’s Wilson St. Ancaster Inc. filed an appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal following Council’s refusal.
At the same time, the company and its agents began lobbying the Ontario Conservative government for a Minister’s intervention.
On November 4, 2022, then Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark amended the Urban Hamilton Official Plan, overruling Council’s decision to freeze Hamilton’s urban boundary.
The amendments included the equivalent of a Minister’s Zoning Order by imposing a site-special zoning amendment granting Wilson Street Ancaster Inc. the zoning approvals that Council had denied.
The site-specific amendment was word-for word what the developers had sent the Minister’s Office.
Council was forced to accept the new zoning, and on September 19, 2023, the Ontario Land Tribunal implemented the Minister’s decision.
However, days later, the Ontario Conservatives were engulfed by the Greenbelt scandal.
The Greenbelt Scandal: 2023 – Revoking All MZOs
Ontario’s Auditor General (report) and Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner (report 1, report 2) issued numerous scathing reports revealing improper and concerning actions that led to removing lands from the Greenbelt.
The Ontario Integrity Commissioners’ report on the Greenbelt scandal scrutinized Manchia’s lobbying. Manchia purchased four tickets to the infamous “stag-and-doe.”
On October 23, 2023, Premier Ford reversed the urban boundary expansion his government imposed on Hamilton, and announced a review of Minister Clark’s changes to the Urban Hamilton Official Plan.
Concurrent with the announcement they would lose their special permissions, Wilson Street Inc. rushed to the Ontario Land Tribunal to force the City to issue building permits before the new Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing could formally revoked them.
With Minister Clark’s resignation, his successor, Paul Calandra, quickly tabled legislation to reverse Clark’s actions.
Bill 150 was introduced in the Legislative Assembly on November 16, 2023. It reversed Hamilton’s urban boundary expansion and critically included a clause making the changes retroactive – as if Clark’s decisions never existed.
“Each decision under subsection 17 (34) of the Planning Act that relates to the official plan or amendment to an official plan set out in Column 1 of the Table to this section and that was made on the date set out opposite the plan or amendment in Column 2 is deemed to have never been made,” read the new law.
Litigation to Escape the Revoking of Special Permissions
The retroactive clause doomed Wilson Street Inc.’s last-ditch appeal.
In April 2024, the OLT ruled it was bound by Bill 150 to deny Wilson Street Inc’s site plan application because the September 2023 OLT decision had been retroactively revoked.
Following this, Wilson Street Inc. filed a very rare appeal to Ontario’s Divisional Court seeking for the Court to overturn the OLT’s final decision.
On December 20, Ontario’s Divisional Court denied leave to appeal.
With this decision, Wilson Street Inc.’s application is dead.
Manchia and Spallacci will need to submit a new lower-density application for the property.
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Published: December 26, 2024
Last updated: December 26, 2024
Author: Joey Coleman
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Is this not the very definition of NIMBYism?