Wasaga Beach council contemplates strategic vision for beachfront

The process of developing a strategic vision for the main beachfront area could end up playing second fiddle to the creation of a downtown core.

On Tuesday, councillors were given an overview on the work that had gone into Opportunity Wasaga, the name given to the strategic visioning process for Beach Areas 1 and 2.

The ‘vision’ included the development of Festival Square, and identified future development sites for a pedestrian mall, parking improvements, and general streetscape upgrades. A report was presented to council a couple of years ago, and official plan and zoning bylaw amendments were approved last October.

The official plan amendments create a definition for a hotel use at Beach Area 2 that would allow 40 per cent of the units to be ‘residential/condo’, along with policies that would allow the municipality to use bonusing provisions in the Planning Act, and urban design guidelines.

According to town planners Ray Kelso and Nathan Wukasch, the stage has also been set the stage to implement a community improvement plan that would allow the municipality to provide financial incentives such as financing, loans, and grants intended to promote development.

Both planners said the for the most part, the landowners in the Beach Area 1 and 2 areas were “happy the town was undertaking a process to make it easier and cohesive to develop the area.

“We met with a number of the landowners, and they were supportive of the initiatives. We didn’t really have anybody say no,” Kelso told councillors.

After the meeting, though, Mayor Brian Smith told The Sun his focus is to create a downtown core “not just for tourism, but for the people who live here year-round,” and the development of Beach Area 1 as a contiguous area.

Smith says he’s quite content to leave Beach Area 2 as parkland for the time being.

“We have some major issues down there (at Beach Area 1), that’s our growth in the summer,” he said. “The economic driver is Beach Area 1, and we need to get to work on redeveloping that.

“Beach Area 2 has been there forever, it’s been a park forever. It’s shovel-ready, so any developer coming along, it’s ready for them to get moving,” he said. “But we have some major priorities, and Beach Area 2, unless a developer comes along, it stays as it is.”

Council approved a motion last month to direct staff to investigate the options of establishing a development corporation with a focus on making a ‘Main Street’.

Smith, who was part of the council-appointed citizens’ committee that worked on the strategic vision, said the recommendations – along with an artist’s rendition of a possible look for the beach area – that did come forward from the consultant leading the committee were a surprise.

“When that report came back to the committee, my response was, ‘where did all this come from,’” Smith said. “It’s a beautiful vision, but is it affordable, is it sustainable, is it something we can do in Wasaga Beach in the short term – I believe the answer is no.

“That is a multi-billion-dollar [project]. We need to come up with ideas that we can start to work on in the fairly near future, that we can continue to work on for the next couple of years on,” he said. “To have plans that are 25 years out is great, and to having zoning and bylaws in place is great, but what does that do for people today, tomorrow, or even next year. We’ve got to start doing things for the people of Wasaga Beach and tourism, today.”

Smith is unimpressed with the pace of work that has taken place along the beachfront.

“There are parts of that vision that can be used, but it was put together three years ago, and the first time we saw anything was last summer when we put up three crosswalks, and build some sidewalks and some concrete planters, hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. “My question is, it looks great, but does it bring one more tourist to town? I don’t think so. We’ve got to look at ways to get people here.”