Regional government offers Beachway residents a surprising list of incentives to sell their property.

By Pepper Parr

June 2, 2015

BURLINGTON, ON

Last week Regional Council made it a go – the implementation plan that leads up to the development of a bigger, fancier public park is on.
More design work is probably part of the going forward. Which brings up the matter of public involvement in that design.

Other than one public meeting at which the public got to see a bunch of large drawings and some of the detail – the public hasn’t had a chance to say a word about what they think the park should look like.

The Waterfront Trail Burlingtonians use today will look a lot differently in 25 years – 50 years ago there were railway tracks on the walking path,

The park will be a Regional Park and I guess they feel the people in Burlington will just have to put up with whatever the Region’s designer thinks is best.

Beachway residents didn’t want to hear much about the park that was planned – they wanted to remain in their homes.

There have been problems in getting the public involved. Every time there is a meeting the property owners tend to hi-jack the meeting and ask aloud how the Region can design a park to go on land they don’t own.

The Region responds by saying they are working on that – and indeed they are working at it.

They have put together a very enticing package of financial goodies to get the property owners to sell to the Region.

Incentive Options for Willing Sellers in the Beach includes:

Lease-back Opportunities and Extended Closing Periods:
Life Estates
Relocation Services and Moving Costs:
Environmental Remediation Costs:
Payment Options
Right of First Refusal:
Removal of Fixtures/Chattels
Availability of Halton Surplus Lands
Legal/Professional Costs
Appraisal Costs:

That is an impressive effort on the part of the Region. They have included everything – even the kitchen sink.

We get into the details on each of these “goodies” further on in this article.

What is pretty close to a shack was one of three properties bought by the Region in the past two years. The incentive package might result in additional sales. The Region has planned on a 15 to 25 year property acquisition time frame

Over the past 5 years, the Region has acquired four properties in the Beach area. It is anticipated that additional purchases from willing sellers will be made at a frequency of 1-2 properties each year; they estimate it will take between 15-25 years to acquire the remaining 27 privately held Beach properties on a willing buyer/willing seller basis.

The Beachway residents hate the phrase “willing buyer/willing seller” – they argue that there is just the one buyer and that is the Region. Under those conditions the residents had every right to squawk.

The package the Region has put together is generous and allows for a lot of time for the current owners to live out their lives in the property they own.

Perfect it isn’t but this is not a perfect world.

The recommendation was to implement the strategy immediately. Regional Staff are going to continue to engage property owners in the Beach area to identify additional options that may be made available to willing sellers as the implementation of the Burlington Beach Regional Waterfront park proceeds.

This property sold for something in the $600,000 range. The owners also got a rental agreement to remain in the home.

There was real fear on the part of the residents that they would be expropriated – and when it comes to the bitter end some 25 years from now the Region may have to actually expropriate a hold out.  The package that has been put together is as fair as it can get.

Each resident wants to look at the various options and choose the one that suits their situation. It also appears that the Region has decided they will do everything they can to meet reasonable requests – but the park is going to eventually get built.

It would be a better park if there were homes in it – but politically that option is off the table. Given the time frame the Region has to get the park built the political landscape may change – Burlington my get a council that sees the story differently and that Council might manage to find allies in Oakville and change the policy. Some of the homes that are in the way could conceivable be moved.

There are a number of heritage properties in Burlington that would like to find a new location – developers have better us for the land and it would make some sense to move a half a dozen or so heritage properties to the Beachway – include the Freeman Station in that list of properties.

That kind of thinking would certainly create a different park – all it takes is political will to bring about a change.

In order to get some sense of fairness in the talks the Region is talking about creating an index that would be reviewed and revised every three years.

How does one place a value on a home that is yards away from a noisy expressway on one side and yards away from Lake Ontario on the other side. The Region intends to create an index that will give allow property owners to benefit from the increase in the value of their properties.

The index would be a collection of “comparable” homes in south west Burlington that would be used to create a base price for properties. The idea was to come up with something that would allow the homeowners to at least think they would be in on some of the excellent property appreciation that has been taking place in Burlington.

The Burlington Beach Waterfront Park Master Plan implementation will be incremental with the park being fully in place in the next 25 years.

Now that the Plan has been approved, implementation can begin.