Town councillors have officially asked the province to save Glen Abbey from development.
A unanimous motion approved at a special meeting on July 6 asks the provincial government to use either a ministerial zoning order or other tool to protect the golf course lands from a redevelopment application by owner ClubLink.
The move comes after the town received letters from both Oakville MPP Stephen Crawford and Steve Clark, the province’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, urging the town put its plea in the form of a council resolution.
“A clear articulation of the local municipal desire in this regard will help ensure the most efficient and timely decision-making,” says the letter from Clark, dated June 16.
Halton Regional council was asked to second the plea at a meeting on July 7.
ClubLink, which owns Glen Abbey Golf Club, wants to build more than 3,000 homes and over 127,000 square feet of commercial and retail space on the golf course lands.
Oakville town council has denied the application and designated the golf course a cultural heritage landscape under the Ontario Heritage Act.
Barring political intervention by the province, a final decision on the redevelopment proposal will be made by the Ontario Land Tribunal (formerly known as the Land Planning Appeal Tribunal).
A virtual hearing is scheduled to begin on August 11 and is expected to last 19 weeks.
Clark’s letter offers hope that the province might be willing to intervene in the dispute prior to start of the hearing.
"Usually developers don't end up with nothing," says lawyer
Doug Ford’s government has enthusiastically embraced the MZO, issuing about four times as many in the last three years as the previous Liberal government did in 15 years, notes Leo Longo, a partner with the Toronto law firm Aird Berlis who specializes in municipal law and land use planning.
Generally, the orders have been used to facilitate development, not bar it.
But in mid-June, the province issued an MZO to protect environmentally sensitive wetlands slated for development in York Region.
“There is a very recent example of where the province has used an MZO to maintain land in its current state,” said Longo.
A “extraordinary tool” that Longo says should be “used sparingly and only when justified”, the ministerial order could effectively block development on the golf course by limiting permitted uses to the conservation of the cultural heritage landscape.
Such an order would be imposed without notice and with no right of appeal, said Longo, who added that some form of compensation for ClubLink is likely.
“Usually the developers don’t end up with nothing in these cases,” he said. “Who knows, there could be a play for the government to buy the land. It’s hard to say.”
The trade-off could come in the form of cash, development approvals for other projects or even a gift of provincial land for development.
“I would suspect a similar outcome – as they like to say a win-win – might be achieved in this case, where the community gets a win, but the developer might be compensated for allowing the community to get that win at this late stage in the process,” speculated Longo.
ClubLink is also the owner of RattleSnake Point Golf Club off Highway 25, just north of Hwy 407, in the town of Milton.
In a June 4 letter to Halton Region, a lawyer representing ClubLink urged the inclusion of the RattleSnake property in an expanded Halton urban boundary “for residential and mixed-use purposes.”
Legal action tough but possible
If the province imposes an MZO, ClubLink could seek judicial review of the order, arguing that the province has denied it natural justice or imposed the order in a way that isn’t legal.
“That’s a pretty tough case to make but it’s theoretically there,” Longo said.
It’s possible the company could even take civil action to recoup the losses related to frustrated development.
“I would hate to give an opinion just off the top of my head as to whether a lawsuit could happen,” Longo said.
“But if there’s one thing ClubLink has demonstrated, it’s not any reticence to go to court in dealing with these lands and protecting its interests and I would imagine they would continue along that same course.”
And while political intervention might be today’s saviour, an MZO could turn the valuable Glen Abbey lands into a future political football.
“The bottom line is its usually put in place until what it’s meant to achieve is achieved and then it can be revoked by the Minister, or it could just be kept on the books as a continuing control on the land,” said Longo.
“The next government can say, ‘You know, housing on that land makes more sense than maintaining it as open space.’”