Can Wasaga Beach find its way out of the shade?

The Georgian Bay beachfront has seen a steady decline in tourism for years, but a new development proposal to revive the town’s fortunes has sparked division at city hall

By BETSY POWELL Toronto Star

WASAGA BEACH—A bundled-up couple walking a dog and a lone snowmobiler had the world’s longest freshwater beach to themselves on a recent morning as a frigid wind swept across Georgian Bay.

“Nothing down here will open. Who’s going to come and park here when it’s cold?” Deputy Mayor Nina Bifolchi says, driving past a stretch of closed-for-three-seasons fast-food eateries and bars facing the beach.

She was on the losing side when council voted to buy the properties for $13.8 million in 2015, using money borrowed from a bank and the province.

That’s no small sum for the town of 18,000 that will collect $20.3 million in property taxes this year and spend $48 million in operating and capital costs.

But waterfront purchase proponents, led by Mayor Brian Smith, argue Wasaga Beach needed a “bold” step after a steady decline in tourists — the town’s economic lifeblood — of roughly 100,000 a year between 2002 and 2012, compounded by a massive fire in 2007 that destroyed a bustling street mall in the beach’s east end. The mall was never rebuilt and has since been replaced by a beer garden and kiosks.

“The public sector since the fire has not been able to bring the beach to life,” Smith told a local newspaper in 2015. Buying the buildings was a way to generate rent revenue and help keep property tax increases to a minimum, he said.

The town collected $674,000 in rental income from the properties in 2016. But there were also property management, capital repair and loan repayment costs, in addition to headaches such as unpaid rent, which the town must now chase in small claims court. And last summer, two businessmen filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the town and Smith, over the leasing of beachfront bars Bananas and Copa Cabana.

“The plaintiffs state that the defendants’ conduct was harsh, vindictive, reprehensible and malicious and high-handed,” the statement of claim says. Smith and the town deny any wrongdoing in their statement of defence. The case is still before the courts.

Today, the efficacy of the purchase is hotly debated in a town with no shortage of past revitalization efforts.

“I say there’s a cupboard in the basement of Wasaga town hall that’s full of dusty plans,” says resident and businessman Alan Clegg, who posts biting observations about the local scene on Facebook.

Clegg had lots of fodder in 2016 after the town kicked in $2,600 for a promotional trip to the Hard Rock Café in Toronto’s Dundas Square that featured swimwear models — and Smith — posing beside the Wasaga Beach Brewing Co.’s fluorescent green 1975 Volkswagen bus.

The town also paid a local artist $3,800 for a song that originally included the beer company’s motto, “That’s how we say cheers around here,” before the lyrics were “adjusted,” Smith said.

“It’s a great, catchy tune that suits Wasaga Beach very well.”

But what suits the town’s future best has also sharply divided the seven-member council, triggering accusations of backroom deals, secret meetings and name-calling, and nine complaints to the town’s integrity commissioner, Robert J. Swayze. Last year Swayze — who has worked with 20 municipalities — cautioned Wasaga’s council in a report to councillors.

“I have come close to recommending sanctions where excessive political infighting is affecting the ability of a council to do its business,” he wrote. “I am beginning to have this concern in Wasaga Beach and will take that into account in reviewing any future complaints.”

Last spring, after serving eight years, businessman Ron Anderson had had enough. He abruptly quit council, calling it a “three-ring circus.”

“I didn’t like the way things were being done in the backroom. Things were always settled before council (meetings),” Anderson says. “It was never like that before.”

Few expect things to improve in 2017. The pressure to fix the problems is not going away.

“It’s a blood sport, being a councillor up here,” says town chronicler Clegg.

This month, council will vote on a development plan to spiff up the main beachfront area and turn the town’s moribund Main Street, dotted with dated motels and campsites, into what supporters hope will become a thriving “downtown” hub, with a traffic roundabout, shrubbery, civic square and a multi-use building.

Unlike previous “pie in the sky” development schemes, this one is “realistic, affordable and sustainable,” Smith told the Star before Christmas, saying it will attract investment and development and reignite the tourism industry.

“We’re the only town in Ontario with a main street with nothing on it,” said Councillor Ron Ego, a former NHL referee. “Ours is a gold mine that leads right to the beach. Other towns would give their right arm for that.”

But Bifolchi, a two-term councillor before she was elected deputy mayor in 2014, says the “plan has lots of pretty pictures,” but there are plenty of unanswered questions about funding.

“Some members of council have the belief that ‘if you build it they will come,’ Bifolchi says. “While this may be a calculated risk in private business, in my opinion it is unacceptable and irresponsible when public funds are at risk.”

Smith told the Star any new development “will not be paid for by the taxpayer,” except for “portions around that, such as a roundabout.”

Councillor Sylvia Bray, Bifolchi’s ally on council, doesn’t believe the municipality should be building a Main Street.

“As I travel, I see more and more traditional main streets in decline as shoppers spend their money online and at the big box stores or Smart Centre malls. Added to that is my concern that we have vacant (retail) units in our existing strip malls,” Bray wrote, noting Wasaga has a Walmart near its Main Street.

“Our beachfront and businesses benefit from visitors for three months of the year,” Bifolchi says. “However, we were elected to represent all of the residents of Wasaga Beach, including those who live, work and pay taxes here 12 months a year.”

Bray and Bifolchi opposed spending $350,000 to hire a firm to come up with a “blueprint for developing a unique and functional downtown that will attract private-sector investment,” according to a town report. The plan was jointly funded by the province, Regional Tourism Organization 7 and a local developer. The town’s share was $25,000.

Bifolchi said it was a “duplication and waste of money” after the town spent $57,000 on a 2011 beachfront study.

Last year, following a request for proposal process, an evaluation committee chose Forrec Ltd., a Toronto-based amusement and water park design company.

Forrec knew Wasaga Beach. The firm was part of the consulting team that worked on an earlier study, called the Blue Beach Plan, that some billed the Disney of Wasaga. That plan proposed developing a 27-acre site to transform Wasaga into a year-round destination.

But by 2010, that dream had dissolved, the developers were bankrupt, facing fraud-related charges, and “again, Wasaga Beach was a little worse off than when they got here,” Smith said.

Back at the beach, a bitter wind rustles the price tags dangling from the racks of sandals, Crocs and Hawaiian shirts outside Pedro’s souvenir/gift shop, a short walk up from the beach and one of the few businesses open at the eastern end of town.

Inside, owner Jack Prezio tends to his lone customer, a Cuba-bound woman looking for a bathing suit, amid the eclectic clutter of moccasins, earmuffs, costume jewelry, postcards and T-shirts.

Prezio bought the building back in 1949 and digs up a stack of faded postcards capturing the beach in its heyday. He’s still in awe, though bound for Florida soon.

“Have you ever seen such a large body of sand and beach in all your freaking life?”

But Prezio, like others, is wary of yet another redevelopment plan.

“Will this one come alive? Who knows? But there are people out there with money and they don’t know what to do with it. But they’ve got to do it in a place it makes sense.”