Owen Sound Council will not bend the rules to allow construction of the condo development at the Russel Brothers site to get an early start.
The Rafa Corporation entered into a conditional site plan approval with the City in October that would pave the way for the development of the first phase of a project.
But now Rafa wants to begin foundation work on the site without having fulfilled all 11 conditions, many of them environmental, and council has said No.
Council could have chosen to allow Rafa to go ahead with the foundations anyway, and Councillor Peter Lemon advocated taking this step.
But the site plan approval and the 2006 purchase agreement between Rafa and the City would have to have been amended — and Lemon found no support for his motion.
Council unanimously chose another option – to encourage Rafa to first complete most of the conditions in the site plan approval and then, if necessary, make the request again to go ahead with foundation work.
The feeling from Council was that they would be much more inclined to support the request at that time.
They also noted that the conditions were already agreed to by Rafa when the site plan approval was agreed to, and in no way are they unusual.
Neither staff nor council have any indication as to how Rafa is proceeding with its work on satisfying the conditions.
They hope to have more information within a month or so.
Council reiterated their strong support for the project, which has been in the works for several years — but said their first responsibility must be to the ratepayers.
Rafa says its project could be worth 250 million dollars before all is said and done.
