Crowd expected at Strawberry Island meeting

The developer eyeing a 120-unit condo community on Strawberry Island in north Lake Simcoe says the company is working within government parameters to protect existing ecosystems.

“We’re not disturbing the habitat. We’re working with all the guidelines to protect any species that are considered to be endangered or any type of nature description,” said Phil Usprech, senior vice-president of marketing on the project.

Usprech and officials from the Alberta-based Trans America Group — which bought the 25-acre Ramara Township Island in 2007 — will make a deputation to council during its 7 p.m. meeting Monday night. Because of the number of people expected to attend, the meeting has been moved from the administrative office in Brechin to the Ramara Centre at 5482 Hwy. 12 E. in Atherley.

Trans America Group has presented a concept, said Dave Wellman, Ramara’s chief building official.

The process to have it approved includes a lot of “back and forth,” he said.

The deputation is required by statute in follow-up to the public meeting held about the proposed project in August 2014. A second public meeting is planned for June, after which council will look at granting the zoning amendment that could allow it to progress to the next step.

That has Pam Fulford, who worked in the watershed for 25 years as a biologist with the Ministry of Natural Resources, concerned.

The development would include more than 50 cottages as well as multi-unit apartment-style buildings. There will be a central green space for recreation, trail system, community pool, tennis court, community clubhouse, general store, administrative building, main dock, resident docks with 15 to 20 slips and gazebos.

Fulford said 80% of the island is currently woodland. She’s worried a development as large-scale as the one proposed could mean it and and the animals living in it are lost. She also has reservations about how the shoreline vegetation will be impacted.

Fulford is hoping to hear Monday night the scope of the project will be reduced.

“I think this is a precedent-setting case,” said Fulford, who expects the project that ultimately goes ahead on Strawberry Island will shape the ones that could potentially go ahead on other islands.

It’s the natural beauty of Strawberry Island Usprech said appealed in the first place.

He acknowledged not everyone has been supportive of the proposed project.

“We listen to whatever opposition people have to say and take what they’re saying to see if it has any validity,” he said.

“The reality is this is an island that is owned not by individuals, but by a group. And everything that is being done is in accordance with what you can do under the law,” he said.

He said he hopes to have shovels in the ground in 2016. The project, in its entirety, would take about five years to complete.