CORNWALL Ontario – A local developer and investment group was left perplexed after Mayor Kilger voted to flip flop on the PAC decision to award a $1.8M tax credit to their $7 million dollar project.
Jack Haines and his team who were at the council meeting were stunned by council’s decision.
The credit was in the form of a tax vacation for the property which right now is dormant land.
The project was to create 40-50 apartments on part of the old Courtalds site in the East End in Cornwall which is desperate for development.
Mr. Haines remarked that with Councilor Thibault missing at the meeting it allowed the mayor to reverse PAC’s decision.
We will be updating this story in our Council coverage later in the day.
Don’t blame the mayor. If Councilor Thibault had been there it wouldn’t have been an issue. It’s not as if this was a special meeting. So Councilor Thibault should have been there. Council meetings are every second and fourth Mondays of the month. It’s not as if Councilor Thibault didn’t know when the meeting was.
Question….apartment building or condominium? We’ve seen “apartment buildings” being turned into condominiums soon after construction has been completed. Will the same happen to Knox Centre?
Editor,
Mr. Haines, just wondering, could this be pay-back on the part of Council ? When the majority of City taxpayers wanted the ice pads built at your site, on the Courtaulds property, but for some reason, the movers & shakers wanted to spend millions on a property across from the dump ?
Just wondering Jack, bullies are very predictable ? lol I truly hope , somehow, someway, you & your group can salvage this project ! If, this was a downtown project, it would of been given carte blanche !
My first experience with Mr Haines was way back… maybe some 15-20 years ago ( I was maybe 12 years old). I was just a young boy, who saved up money from my paper route/clown job to buy a little computer from his store micro age on Montreal road. When I got home and open the unit, it did not perform as expected and so when I when back to return it, he would not issue a refund. I asked why not since his return policy at the time would have allowed it ( minus a restocking fee, which I was fine with). The receipt said nothing about finale sale. But no… this guy stood his ground, in a condescending fashion… he even went to far as to tell me that everyone he sold to at Domtar loved them and so I should too. Well, I didn’t and I wanted my money back.
Let’s just say… this went on for weeks, Jack dodging my visits and calls being an arrogant prick. I even had my father come with me and still Jack did not budge..until one day he finally agreed to issue me a refund ( minus the restocking fee)… but this did not occur until there was a heated yelling match between my father and him.
After that incident, I never liked Mr Haines… he had always given me a weird gut feeling that he is up to something.
Sorry to hear your deal did not go through, but Karma works in interesting ways Mr Haines.
I sure wouldn’t live on land that was an industry and I remember all the pollution and it made me so very sick. All that is nothing but cancer nor would I step on the property where the new area (built with stolen money from Willie Wise and his Cornwall cohorts) no tanks. Take a good look at the bull Bare Ass and yes it is his doing.
Jules, I expect you to disagree. But you do know they clean up brownfields before they are used, don’t you?
Hugger not always. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. They didn’t clean up the one that Domtar owned where the arena is situated on at present. I wouldn’t trust it even if they said it was cleaned up. I wouldn’t live on that at all. I would not even step on that land for any amount of money.
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A Kings’Landing RENTER!
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As amusing as it is to read some of your rants Jules do you really believe anyone would build anything on brownfieds that hadn’t been cleaned up? They are usually cleaned up after they are sold, but before the new construction begins.
Yes Hugger I sure do believe that buildings are built on land that hasn’t been cleaned up and I read all that on the net about Cornwall and who was involved in the construction, etc. I had a good laugh at my end to see all the inbreds involved in this fiasco of Willie and Bare Ass, the Re/Max owners who sold them the land, etc. etc. etc. It was like reading about the Three Stooges in with a Barrel full of Monkeys = corrupted monkey businesses.
I thought you were against subsidies, repayable somehow or not or some other arrangement. Ultimately the bottom line is to improve the bottom line for Cornwall and our businesses and residents.
420 in this situation in my opinion the process was petty and political. I am in fact against corporate welfare, but if we have a policy in place it should not only be applied to the mayor’s supporters and not others.
Admin….either you support a policy or you don’t. If you were elected mayor could we expect you to flip flop on policy matters?
Hugger I think I have been very consistent in my feelings towards charity. IE Corporate Welfare. That is different than a clear policy of incentives for redevelopment; especially in designated areas.
I think for me anyway; the issue here is not applying our policies evenly and playing politics in giving some developers the credit and not to others.
That’s not how we build our city.
The builders are Team Cornwall dudes.
Of course the contracts go to their friends (clique) and if you are not part of that clique then you are a nobody and they do everything they can to destroy you. Never ever again would I live in Cornwall. So much illegal activity and corruption to the core going on. No tanks never again.
I agree the policy should be applied evenly to everyone. But is this not corporate welfare, which you are against.
Hugger this is different and before I dig too much deeper I’d want to more thoroughly review what exactly are the details of the current policy before I endorse it or reject it. Right now it’s clear the East End needs help and support and it’s also clear that this project has been Kilgered.
@ Jules …you do realize that there is a clique in your city too right? This isn’t an isolated incident.
Admin…do these kinds of corporate handouts exist in other cities? If memory serves me right I think the HOTC application by this group was outside the normal approved physical area.
Poor Jack got run over by a clique gathering steam a few years back when he lost out to PARIS Holdings et al, and the Benson Centre got plopped down on the polluted and still oozing Domtar mill site, instead of the somewhat suspect but better Courtaulds site.
No matter that learn your lesson, and try and play ball with bullies, or suck up to them after your beating — they’ll just do it to you again.
(Totally unrelated of course, but if let’s say, a group like Kilger, Rose, Healy, Landon, Cameron, Fitzpatrick, the Leckys, and Grants want their way in this town… they’re going to get it, thanks to the Team Cornwall sycophants and the only now barely waking S-F.)
Simon I agree with what you said – every word and you are right indeed. I have seen this in my childhood with kids and they act like kids – bullies. I see no hope for Cornwall with this gang hanging around town. Cornwall will go under as long as they exist. These are exactly my fears and I said it before and I don’t think that Jamie put it through but I did say this a number of times. This is true indeed.
Jules all the good people of Cornwall need to do is take the first step and that can happen in this election; but rejecting candidates that either supported the Kilger regime or would support it. It’s that simple. There’s more good than bad in Cornwall. There’s fertile ground for growth; but the bullies and corruption need to be balanced so that can occur.