By Emily Stonehouse

It’s been a long time coming, but the ongoing dispute between Harburn Holdings and Friends of Grass Lake around the contentious property development has been resolved. 

“We negotiated in good faith,” said Paul Wilson, the owner of the property. “I didn’t get everything I wanted, and they didn’t get everything they wanted, but that’s how a settlement works.”

For nearly four years now, the two parties have been at odds over a piece of land between Peninsula Road and Grass Lake, south of County Road  21, on the west side of Haliburton Village.

The original proposal for the land included 88 residential units spread across the four lots. In order to proceed, the Municipality of Dysart et al had adopted an official plan amendment, which was later approved by the county, who passed a zoning amendment in order to enable the proposal in May, 2023. 

At this point in the dispute, the approvals from the multi-tiered governmental agencies were  appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal by Friends of Grass Lake (FGL); a resident-led organization dedicated to education and awareness of environmental initiatives. 

A three-week hearing had been scheduled to begin on Monday, Nov. 25.

Instead, the two organizations; Harburn Holdings and FGL, found a middle ground, bypassing the hearing and moving forward in ways they found mutually agreeable. 

Rather than the original proposal of 88 residential units being spread across four lots, there will now be a total of 35 units on one lot, and a single residence on the three remaining lots, for a total of 38 dwellings in total. 

“We made this change on our own,” said Wilson in a press release that came out in light of the settlement, “and we greatly regret having to reduce our planned contribution to Haliburton’s housing needs.”

According to Wilson, the intended use for the lots was to accommodate the need for affordable housing in the community. Fay Martin, who is the chair for Place for People and sits on the Habitat for Humanity board, believes they can move forward with any property that may become available. 

“We’re confident that we can develop a model of partnership that will bring the very best possible combination of the housing that the people who live and work in Haliburton County need,” she said. “Making housing happen is so complicated and expensive that we need to be creative and collaborative to make progress, and both these organizations excel at exactly that.” 

When asked about the reasons behind the decision to pull back on the builds, Wilson was transparent in his reasoning. “The cost is so high right now,” he said. “Between construction and the cost of labour, the problem is that the time just isn’t right, and I don’t want to wait for years for the time to be right.”

Wilson noted that while he is scaling back the build, his intention is to still offer the residence for affordable housing in the area. “I still want to support Places for People,” he said, “and I will make sure I continually work with them to make it happen.” 

The property owner is confident that if the two parties went to the tribunal, Harburn Holdings would have come out on top. “I think we would have won if we had done it,” he said. “But I was the one who agreed to drop the units.” 

Friends of Grass Lake are celebrating the settlement, which was formalized and made public on Monday, Nov. 25. “We are pleased that we have been able to reach this agreement with Harburn Holdings prior to the Ontario Land Tribunal hearing dates,” said Don Ross, a member of FGL, in a media release sent to press agencies following the agreement. “This significant reduction in residential units will help to preserve the wetland environment to a much greater degree than the original proposal would have allowed.” 

“It’s bittersweet,” added Carolyn Langdon, a key figure in the FLG citizen group, who has been vocal about the significance of wetlands around the village of Haliburton. “It could have been worse, but these wetlands are natural filters within Haliburton, and we are losing these areas.” 

Langdon noted that the Ontario Land Tribunal encourages settlements between disputes prior to court proceedings. “They had set aside three weeks for the hearing,” she said, “and that would have been very costly for all parties involved.”

She shared that she believes it’s difficult for a citizen group to “go up against a developer.”

“We just don’t have access to the same kind of resources,” she said. 

While Langdon and the FGL are aware of the housing crisis, they shared that they believe that there are other locations that could have worked for affordable housing. “We’ve never been opposed to housing,” said Langdon. “We’re just opposed to anything put on that fragile piece of land.” 

The FGL are hopeful that their fight against the large development could influence the kinds of builds happening in the municipality moving forward. “I hope we can educate people on things that would lessen the environmental footprint,” said Langdon.