I appreciate the opportunity to fill in some of the gaps that the news articles failed to cover or clearly misrepresented. It is definitely a complicated issue – understandably causing a great deal of concern in the community. There is so much mis-information out there … always a frustrating part of the job. It certainly doesn’t help when a member of council chooses to purposefully perpetuate the myths through measured statements put forth in chambers … political life is always interesting and apparently facts are unimportant at times.
Here are the facts.
In 1993, the Golf Academy owners signed a 15 year lease with the city for temporary use of the land. I repeat – they signed the lease. It outlined all of the elements of the lease, including dates of closure. Legally, we are able to exercise the lease in 2010 with a year’s notice. The deadline for that notice is June 30, 2009. if the lease had been extended to 20 years, the WGA would have been scheduled to close in 2015. We have altered that until 2012, in an attempt to balance the needs of the WGA and our need to service the employment lands in a timely manner. Over the years, the City has remained consistent with it’s message that the golf course is an interim use and that we would be needing the land around the year 2010. It is all very well-documented and, interestingly, we were provided with that documentation by the Golf Academy. I imagine that the issue will stay “alive” for awhile, as the golf academy owners are seeking legal counsel and need to make a decision as to how to proceed.
As many of you are likely aware, we have several local hightech companies in town who are actively pursuing large blocks of land in order to continue to accomodate their workforces. In our zoning, industrial is all “clean” industrial – employment lands – the high tech campus idea is a good example. Within that parcel, there will be plenty of “green” opportunities.
The Golf Academy lands (53 acres) are part of a larger 200 acre block of land that is worth tens of millions of revenue dollars to the taxpayers of Waterloo. Currently, we are collecting an average of $7000/year in lease payments from the golf academy.
Was it an easy decision? Nope. I am well aware of the role the golf academy has played in the community. I think that when the golf academy was conceptualized, there was not a flicker of awareness as to how much our city would grow – it definitely predates the hightech boom in our community. Recently, I’ve even heard from one of the shareholders – in their words, Waterloo was “stagnant” at the time … no one really could see the impact that the University of Waterloo and all of it’s resultant hightech spinoffs would ultimately have on our city.
What a problem to have…arguably the strongest economic engine in Canada. Here in Waterloo.
