Developer hits snag at Vaughan committee of adjustment

TheStar.com
Jan 25, 2019
Tess Kalinowski

A controversial Vaughan condo development application has hit a dramatic snag after the city’s committee of adjustment deferred it for a second time this month.

An 11th-hour application for a legal injunction against Gupta Group, the developer that cancelled the giant Icona condo project last year, prompted the committee to postpone indefinitely a decision on the company’s variance application.

Vaughan Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua said he doesn’t have any power to sanction developers, “but I do have moral persuasion and morality certainly on my side.”

The postponement came as temporary relief for about 100 condo buyers who attended the meeting Thursday in hopes of pressuring the city to dismiss Gupta’s application to sell condos on the same site they bought into.

But it remains unclear whether the development will go ahead once a court rules on the injunction.

Buyers say the developer never had and still doesn’t have the right to sell homes there because of a restrictive covenant on the property.

Although purchasers in the Icona towers were refunded their money more than a year after buying pre-construction condos, many say they have been left behind on the region’s pricey property ladder.

It was the numbered company that sold the property to Gupta with the restrictive covenant that has applied for an injunction stopping the development application on the site near Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.

Last year a court upheld the covenant.

“You know there is a covenant now so why is this application being considered,” Mary Darmanin told the Vaughan committee. Her son was one of 1,600 buyers “deceived” by Gupta, she said.

“Let the courts decide... that’s the only way it’s going to protect (from) this happening again,” buyer Patricia DeBartolo told reporters following the committee’s decision.

A lawyer for Gupta, Daniel Artenosi, told the committee that another deferral violates the planning act but would not speak to reporters.

In a statement emailed shortly before Thursday’s meeting, Gupta Group apologized to Vaughan and “all stakeholders involved” for the Icona cancellation “because of market conditions.”

The site plan, zoning, height, density and official plan amendment for the site have all been approved, and the application for minor variances being considered at Thursday’s meeting “is to implement approvals from city council, which is also supported by city staff,” the Gupta statement said.

Even committee of adjustment chair Joseph Cesario said the restrictive covenant was insufficient cause to refuse Gupta’s application for minor variances.

But, he said, the city’s lawyer counselled postponement pending the injunction decision.

The committee deferral came two days after Vaughan Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua publicly scolded developers that cancel condo projects.

“If you advertise projects, I expect them to be completed and I don’t expect anybody to be out in the cold,” he said at a meeting of the Committee of the Whole Tuesday.

Although he did not cite any particular developer, representatives for Gupta and Liberty Developments have applications before the committee.

The mayor said he doesn’t have any power to sanction developers. “But I do have moral persuasion and morality certainly on my side,” he said.

Liberty Developments, which cancelled the Cosmos condos, is part of a group redeveloping Promenade Mall at Bathurst and Centre streets.

The Gupta application discussed on Tuesday was for its 1,900-condo project at Yonge St. and Steeles Ave. W., not the site of its cancelled Icona project.

Liberty and some numbered companies associated with the Cosmos project are the subject of legal action by a group of 451 buyers who purchased condos in 2016 only to receive cancellation letters and refunds last spring.