January 30, 2025 · 0 Comments
Written By PAULA BROWN
LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER
Shelburne Town Council has chosen to discontinue their efforts in “cleaning up” a surplus piece of Town property slated for rezoning and future sale.
During their meeting on Monday (Jan. 27), Shelburne Council received a report from Denyse Morrissey, chief administrative officer for the Town of Shelburne, regarding the rezoning of 420 Victoria Street.
The report recommended that the zoning of the property remain as Institutional/Commercial/Industrial (ICI) and that no further costs be allocated to cleaning up the space.
“It no longer makes financial or strategic sense for the property to be rezoned by the Town to residential prior to selling,” wrote Morrissey in the report.
The Town of Shelburne purchased the property at 420 Victoria Street in 1975 from the County of Dufferin for $58,000. The property had been used for public works by the County of Dufferin in the past, and the Town of Shelburne used the space as their public works yard until 2014.
Shelburne Town Council approved the site remediation of the property as part of their 2018 budget and initiated assessments to eventually rezone the property as residential. In 2022, Council approved declaring the property as surplus and proposed the future sale of land, once it was rezoned as residential.
“Our intent with respect to the remediation of this site has always been to utilize it as an end use for residential,” said Morrissey.
According to the report, the site remediation from 2018 to 2024 has cost a total of $835,419, which has been funded from a capital reserve.
“We’ve done a little bit more work than we had originally anticipated because of the scope of remediation that needed to be done, and that we completed some secondary work to ensure that we would have a strong understanding of what our options were for the end use,” said Morrissey.
The report continued that the Town of Shelburne would be required to spend an additional $1.8 million to $1.9 million for site cleanup to allow for the use of the property to be changed from commercial to residential. The overall cost of the total site remediation would be estimated between $2.8 million and $2.9 million.
With the decision to end remediation and rezoning efforts for the site, the Town of Shelburne is now looking to sell the property under its current zoning – commercial.
Morrissey noted to Council that while the Town of Shelburne would not be continuing with the site remediation and rezoning, any future purchasers of the property would have the choice to continue the remediation at their own cost.
Shelburne Town Council unanimously supported the motion.
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