Vaughan's Cosmos condos buyers angry developer going ahead with project

Liberty Development, which cancelled Cosmos project, proposes building condos next door

Yorkregion.com
August 7, 2018
Tim Kelly

It’s bad enough for Vaughan resident Santino Paglia that his dream home, a condo in the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, was cancelled several months ago.

But what adds insult to injury for the young supply teacher and his fiancée is the developer who cancelled his project because it couldn’t get “satisfactory construction financing” several months back, is now involved in a new condo development -- right next door.

Paglia, who is part of a group of more than 400 Cosmos condos owners suing Liberty Developments after the project they put condo unit down payments on back in 2016, was abruptly cancelled this past March.

In Paglia’s case, he paid a deposit of $45,000 on a $280,000 unit that he and his fiancée were planning to move into once the condo tower, at the corner of Maple Crete and Hwy. 7, was completed in late 2019, or early 2020.

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Paglia, a teacher by training, lived at home with his parents and said he saved up and “worked hard for his deposit,” which Liberty paid back.

But he said the problem now is that the market for condos has gone up and he can’t find a similar unit to what he purchased two years ago.

What really bothers him is that Liberty has simply turned around and filed a new application with the City of Vaughan to build condo towers, similar to the Cosmos project, right next door to the old cancelled project.

Paglia attended the June 5 Vaughan City Hall committee meeting where the brand new project was presented and wasn’t pleased with what he heard. The City of Vaughan has confirmed Liberty is behind the ambitious project at Maple Crete and Hwy. 7. A request for comment on the project from Liberty Developments was not answered.

Indeed, when Cosmos offered the Cosmos condos for sale in 2016, real estate values in Vaughan suggested prices in the range of $540 per square foot, according to Urbanation, an expert source on condominium information in the Greater Toronto Area. That has risen recently to $700 per square foot. That may explain why Liberty is now proceeding with a new project.

Paglia said he thinks the whole situation, is “an extra blow for us (Cosmos condos) buyers. I told the officials at the City of Vaughan, you haven’t even found out what happened to the Cosmos condos owners, but the City of Vaughan didn’t want to hear it. They just told me, we have to look at every application that gets put before us.

“This is just more sad than anything, -- a lot of lives got changed, a lot of lives got ruined, and then a month later they’re applying to build again, just next door.”

Ted Charney, lawyer for the Cosmos condos owners who are involved in the lawsuit against Liberty Development, said he couldn’t go into detail about the suit as no statement of claim has yet been filed.

But he did say “Our (Cosmos condos) clients are in the process of preparing a court application. We have been retained by over 400 unit purchasers.”

Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua said he wasn’t happy with Liberty Developments at the time of the cancellation: “I was very disappointed to learn that the Cosmos Condominium project was cancelled. I am not at all impressed about what has transpired,” said Bevilacqua, indicating the City of Vaughan was taken by surprise the news back in late March.