New 3 tower Vaughan plan similar to cancelled Icona condo that caused lawsuits

New chair of Gupta Group, Reetu Gupta, says the company doesn't plan on any more cancelled projects

Yorkregion.com
May 24, 2022
Jeremy Grimaldi

The new chair of a York Region development firm caught up in the controversial 2018 cancelling of a Vaughan highrise that resulted in plenty of anger and lawsuits, has called that decision ‘gut wrenching’.

Reetu Gupta, who was appointed to succeeded her father Steve Gupta as the new chair of Thornhill’s Gupta Group, said the decision to cancel the project was not something the company was proud of, but Reetu insisted she was happy the company was able to return the entire amount of people's investments unlike others, who, she said, did not.

Investors remain angered at Gupta Group, suggesting they lost plenty in the scrapped project, considering the money that was left sitting with the company for that time, could have been invested and made returns for them in the meantime.

Some of those investors are now part of a lawsuit against the company.

Neither the lawyer involved in one lawsuit, nor Reetu would comment on the ongoing lawsuit that’s before the courts.

To add insult to injury, there is now a new project at the same site, that strikingly similar to the Icona plan at much higher prices than originally sought.

Graywood Developments LP is now planning to build a three-tower highrise with 1,730 units at the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, at the corner of Interchange Way and Hwy. 7.

"We are highly confident in our strategy,” announced Stephen Price, president and CEO of Graywood Developments, in a press release.

Reetu said there were multiple reasons why the Icona project was cancelled.

“There was a lot of issues at that time, tariffs on steel, prices had gone up immensely,” she said. “The economies of the project did not make sense so we had to close shop.”

She reiterated that it wasn’t just Gupta Group who were forced to cancel at the time, but others in York Region and Toronto.

When asked if residents and customers should expect a different result out of the company given her leadership, she said it wasn’t the fault of the leadership at the time but market forces beyond their control.

“It’s not something we planned for, it’s not something we plan for in the future,” she added.

As for whether the rules governing customer protections in these sorts of developments should be reworked by governments, she added they can be ‘looked at’.

Reetu further noted that Steve Gupta will remain as part of the company as executive chair, ‘overseeing projects’