Greenbelt only part of giveaway
Approving development of nearly 2000 acres of local Greenbelt lands last November was in addition to doing the same for over 5400 acres of rural land in Hamilton three weeks earlier. The owners and developers of those farms, forests and wetlands will also reap financial benefits similar to those who own properties removed from the Greenbelt. According to the Auditor-General, the latter averaged property value gains of more than one million dollars an acre simply by the act of making their lands available for development.
The scathing reports of Ontario’s Auditor General and its Integrity Commissioner have described in detail how developers used insider routes to get the province to make their Greenbelt lands available for subdivisions and enrich them by over $8 billion. Demands are now surfacing for similar investigations into these provincial government decisions, and whether they were also biased and not in the public interest.
A recent letter issued by the Alliance for a Liveable Ontario and co-signed by many organizations including Environment Hamilton and the Hamilton 350 Committee calls for more investigations by the Auditor-General. The Alliance letter identifies seven controversial provincial government actions since in the last year that favour greenfield development.
One was “forcing municipalities to significantly expand their urban boundaries to include lands not required to accommodate forecasted growth or to meet provincial housing targets.” Others included gutting Conservation Authorities, reducing wetland protection, eliminating density targets and the restrictive growth plan, and shifting growth costs to local property taxpayers.
In Hamilton this imposition overrode the public and council desire to preserve farmland and natural areas. The largest portion of that forced expansion is a 2800 acre (1137 hectare) bloc known as Elfrida that is located south and east of the intersection of Upper Centennial and Rymal roads.
Representatives of the Elfrida Community Builders Group who own over 80 percent of this area submitted comments this summer on proposed city policies on the expansion areas. The submission by Bousfields Inc included mapping of Elfrida and a list of all owners and their property sizes.
This mapping shows Paletta International, Multi-Area Developments and Effort Trust as the three largest Elfrida landowners, each holding at last 200 acres. All have been frequent municipal election donors for past and present pro-development Hamilton councillors.
Paletta also appears to be a direct beneficiary of the Greenbelt removals. It is a meat-packing giant that also has real estate holdings worth more than a billion dollars. According to the Integrity Commissioner, Paul Paletta is the CEO of Penta Properties.
Penta owns a 40-acre slice of the Greenbelt removals along Whitechurch Road in Hamilton. The property is far from the existing urban area of Mount Hope, but the company appears to have convinced the Ford government to carve out a much larger piece of the Greenbelt to meet the provincial rule that removals be adjacent to an already urbanized area.
Effort Trust, controlled by the Weisz family, has long dominated Hamilton’s apartment market. Multi-Area Developments, the builder for the 1000-unit Summit Park south of Rymal Road, is headed by Aldo DeSantis who personally spoke in favour of boundary expansion at the November 2021 city council meeting.
In response to huge public pressure, that council meeting decided to protect local farmland by freezing the boundary. A city survey that drew over 18,000 responses had chosen that option over proposed expansion by a margin of over 90 percent.
City staff implemented the council decision with detailed plans to accommodate all the growth that the province allocated to Hamilton, and submitted that to the Ford government in July of last year. However that was overturned by the province last fall and the massive urban expansion imposed. The new council has unanimously opposed that expansion.
