The first real sign of development is always shovels turning earth, and that happened Friday with the groundbreaking for an affordable housing development at 115 Bayfield St. in Barrie.
The eight-storey residential apartment building is to have 108 units, 45 deemed affordable housing, on just less than an acre at the corner of Bayfield and Sophia streets.
“It’s such a great central location,” said developer Coral Group’s president Tina Grant. “It’s near everything, people can enjoy the lake, there’s public transit, everything that was needed for affordable housing seemed to come together.
“Now all we need is just a little co-operation from Mother Nature,” she said of Friday’s cool, blustery weather. “This is bizarre.”
Coral has a 40-year history of providing affordable housing in Barrie, with more than 257 existing apartments and townhouses.
The Coral Sophia Lane Housing project will be receiving financial incentives for affordable housing through the city’s community improvement plan and from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) mortgage insurance and co-investment programs.
Grant pointed out that Coral has another building in view, at 14 Worsley St., 115 units right across the street, that dates back to 1990.
Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall praised the development.
“You’re not building a building here, you’re building a community that’s going to house people that are in desperate need,” he said.
"Those souls that you’re helping are what it’s all for, once we see those folks in there, creating the life, finding the hope and opportunity they’ve been looking for.”
At one point, however, this development faced daunting financial challenges.
“There’s been some hard days, I would say years,” Nuttall said.
Coral is a not-for-profit organization providing affordable housing, but this project faced a $10-million shortfall according to Paul Smith, CAO for DMS Property Management, speaking for Coral.
In a July 12, 2023 letter to Nuttall and Barrie CAO Michael Prowse, Smith said project financing included more than $25 million from its related not-for-profit housing corporation Coral Hills Housing.
It also noted that the developer had been working with lenders, including the CMHC, on various construction loan options, with commitments to approximately $28 million of borrowing. Coral has also been conditionally approved for funding through the City of Barrie's community improvement program (CIP).
But Smith said in the letter that city officials were informed in mid-2022 that the Bayfield Street project had been put on hold due to rapid increases in construction costs and interest rates, and that there was a funding gap of approximately $10 million on an estimated $63-million project.
“While we are still hopeful that we will be able to bridge this funding gap through non-government sources, our business case remains under significant pressure,” he said in the letter. “This project would likely have been built by now if a world-wide pandemic had not intervened and drastically increased construction costs.”
Smith said later the finding gap had been bridged.
He said that since July 2023, the provincial and federal governments have put in place measures to help projects like Coral’s.
Ontario’s Bill 23, for example, includes a waiver of development charges for non-profit housing providers. The provincial and federal governments introduced a waiver of the harmonized sales tax (HST) for purpose-built rental projects. And the federal government, through CMHC, is offering financing incentives through the Co-Investment Program for projects which meet affordability and energy savings.
Smith said these and other initiatives closed the funding gap so that Coral was able to start construction.
Coun. Craig Nixon, who represents this part of Barrie, has said council has also done what it could to help developers like Coral.
He has said one example is the reimbursement of the cash in lieu of parkland charge to Coral, $604,476, approved by council last summer.
This project has been fully approved for development since April 7, 2022. It’s rezoned for this use and its site plan control is approved and registered.
This property has been slated for development since the spring of 2018, when a cluster of buildings there was razed and the rubble trucked away. Some were old homes, turned into offices, but all came down by demolition permit.
Affordable housing is a range of housing types allowing families and individuals, of all income levels, to find suitable places to live without spending a disproportionate percentage of their income on housing. Affordable housing can include ownership, rental or subsidized housing.
The city defines affordable rental housing as a unit for which the rent doesn’t exceed 30 per cent of the gross annual household income for low-to-moderate-income households. That income is based upon the most recent Canada Census statistics for Barrie, which is updated every five years.
