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The Tuesday session for council saw the elected members tasked with determining which changes the province had made should be kept and which should revert to what council had initially approved in 2022.

City staff had recommended council vote to revert to what had initially been approved for the Crawley site, with a report prepared for the meeting noting they recommend the property owner go through the same public process any other landowner would need to in order to get land rezoned.

Council, however, narrowly decided to go in the other direction, voting 7-6 to keep the province’s changes in place.

The reason? According to Mayor Cam Guthrie, “this is to allow the $1-billion investment with hundreds of jobs to keep moving.�

The Crawley property is owned by NewCold, which is planning to build a cold storage facility there. David Falletta from Bousfields, the planning consultants working with NewCold, told council Tuesday the company expects, when the 160,000-square-metre facility is fully built out, it will result in 570 new jobs and will involve more than $1 billion worth of development.

“It will remove obstacles to allow for the development of the proposed new cold industrial campus, will achieve numerous council adopted objectives, will result in significant economic benefits to the city — including a significant amount of new tax base for this vacant site — and most importantly, it will allow for this development to occur quickly,� Falletta said of NewCold’s desire to keep the province’s changes in place.

As for what would happen if council had decided to undo the province’s changes, Falletta said NewCold would likely look somewhere else to build.

“Yes, in my opinion, NewCold will most definitely pull the application,� he said, adding reverting back to the original official plan would bring on significant delays for the project.

A vote to maintain the changes, Guthrie said, would show “this council is open for business� and that the millions of dollars annually in property taxes expected from the site, once fully built out, would help “offset the burden of property tax payments on residential payers.�

“We can choose to not believe them, that someone’s calling our bluff, or we can take this opportunity to send a signal that we’re going to remove a hurdle because we want a $1-billion investment and good jobs,â€� the mayor said, adding the millions of dollars annually in property taxes anticipated from the development would help “offset the burden of property tax payments on residential payers.â€�

“To me, this is a reputational vote for us — are we open for business or aren’t we?â€�

“I take exception to (the idea that) öÏÓãÊÓƵapp is not open for business because we’re not prepared to clean up the mess that the province made,â€� Coun. Cathy Downer said in response to Guthrie’s comments.

“The province created the situation that we’re in today — they have done a backdoor process and we’re trying to do an open-the-door-a-quarter-inch process.�

While NewCold has been dealing with city hall behind the scenes for some time on this project, the company had not submitted any applications to develop the Crawley property prior to the province announcing this past April it would be making changes to öÏÓãÊÓƵapp’s official plan, including making the changes to that property.

As previously reported by the Mercury Tribune, a number of letters from NewCold and other supporters of the project were sent to the province ahead of those changes being announced.

A site plan application was not made by NewCold until late July, at which time it filed plans for a 15,000-square-metre (158,000 square feet) warehouse standing 46 metres (151 feet) tall, along with a two-storey dispatch warehouse and another three-storey bump-out for storing equipment.

That matter is currently before the Ontario Land Tribunal, as city hall had determined the application was incomplete, while NewCold maintained it had submitted everything it needed to.