A local insurance company is seeking a $250,000 grant from Orillia’s Downtown Tomorrow Community Improvement Program (DTCIP) while the developer behind a waterfront condo project is asking for an extension so he can tap into the $200,000 grant council approved a year ago.
The decision will be on city council committee’s agenda Monday. The meeting starts at 4 p.m. and will be livestreamed on Rogers.
City staff are not recommending approval of the grants, citing uncertainty related to the pandemic and suggesting the next phase of the grant program be postponed until 2021.
According to the staff report, McLean & Dickey Insurance made a conditional offer of purchase of the building at 4 King St. The deal was expected to close April 1.
The company, poised to celebrate its 100th anniversary in Orillia in 2022, plans to invest more than $1.5 million into its new home.
McLean & Dickey will move its operations into the 20,000-square-foot space of the building formerly occupied by Goodwill; the other side of the building (11,000-square feet) will continue to be occupied by Empower Simcoe, which did significant renovations in 2009.
Mike Holenski, the senior vice president of sales and marketing for McLean & Dickey, noted the local insurance company has been owned by the Tisi family since 2006.
When the Tisi family purchased the business, there were 13 employees working out of their Laclie Street office.
In 2016, the company consolidated operations by moving into the office building at 174 West St. S., owned by Accutrac Capital.
Today, McLean & Dickey has more than 60 permanent full-time employees, 50 of which work out of the Orillia head office location. They also hire 5-9 summer students every summer. Over the next 5 to 10 years, they expect to add another 15 employees.
Their current annual payroll is $2.7 million.
Because their lease expires in 2021, they have been looking for a new home for a while as Accutrac has been expanding rapidly and likely can occupy all the space in its West Street building within two years.
“Over the last several years, we have searched for many suitable options within the Orillia area, with the option of going outside of Orillia if the right scenario presented itself,” he said in a letter to city council.
However, when they learned the King Street property was available, they jumped at the opportunity.
The building became available when a local group known as NABI opted not to purchase the property for a new health-care hub. NABI had secured a $250,000 tax deferment grant from the city for the property; McLean & Dickey is hoping the city would, in effect, transfer the grant money to them.
Holenski said the retrofit of the former Goodwill “would represent a significant improvement at the intersection of West Street and King Street and would add vibrancy to this area.”
The plan is to reimagine the interior to create modern office space; a new HVAC and air purification system will also be created.
“Our budget and funds have been earmarked to first complete the needed renovations inside the building in order to operate our business,” said Holenski.
“However, as we complete the renovations it would be ideal to also deal with the façade of the building to match the existing renovations that were completed in 2009,” he said. “This grant would assist us in this process, for it to be completed by our anticipated move-in date of October 2020.”
Holenski, noting the planned work would increase the property’s value (and tax assessment) by $2 million, said the possibility of the grant was “an incentive in the acquisition of the property.”
STERLING GROUP
Meanwhile, in March 2019, council approved a $200,000 Development Charge Grant for Sterling Group, the company behind a $30-million townhouse project at the former Schacter & Sons Scrapyard site at the foot of Elgin Street, near Veterans’ Park.
However, the grant was dependent upon the project receiving occupancy by November 2020.
In a letter to council, Marta Pentsak, the project manager for Sterling Group, said the 60-townhome project has been delayed due to the “complex environmental conditions” of the site.
In the letter, Pentsak said a Phase One Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) and Phase Two ESA have been conducted at the site in accordance with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP).
The environmental assessments identified some impacts in soil and groundwater. Impacts identified included petroleum hydrocarbon F3, various polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and metals in soil and/or groundwater.
The impacts present are the result of the historical use of the site, which included a former auto body shop, railway tracks and a scrap and waste yard.
The focus of the studies is to obtain a Record of Site Condition (RSC) for the land use change.
“This ordeal is the primary reason for our recent delays,” noted Pentsak.
In order to comply with the Ministry of the Environment and eventually obtain the RSC, a Risk Assessment has been initiated to address the impacts present in soil and groundwater at the site.
The Risk Assessment process includes the evaluation of potential adverse effects to human or ecological health under particular conditions that may result from exposure to chemicals released into the natural environment.
“We are working with our environmental engineers to receive the RSC in a timely manner, which in turn will allow us to meet our occupancy deadlines,” said Pentsak.
At this time the Risk Assessment Pre-Submission (PSF) has been submitted to the Ministry; this is the first stage of the application.
“It took the Ministry approximately six months to provide us with their PSF comments, an unusually long time,” noted Pentsak, adding: “We are now proceeding with the full-scale Risk Assessment application.”
She said “the site preparation requirements due to the irregular site conditions will be inordinately costly and lengthy compared to a normal, greenfield project.”
