Eight years in the planning, an 18-unit assisted-living facility in Hudson’s downtown sector is being withdrawn by its backers following council’s rejection of a proposed parking modification.
Although the Villa Wyman project was approved by council a year ago (Nov. 7/22), the configuration of parking spaces on the enclaved lot proved to be the devil in the details.
According to Hudson mayor Chloe Hutchison, the project’s promoters could not reach agreement with its neighbours on the layout of the parking area shared with the former Wyman Memorial United Church, now a Sikh temple.
At its December meeting, council voted to reject Villa Wyman’s request to modify the approved project to satisfy both its neighbours and the town’s bylaws. Council’s rejection was based on the lack of landscaping and vegetation on a parking lot that has existed in its current form since the church was built in 1909.
Council’s refusal to grant Villa Wyman a derogation of less than three feet was the last straw for Villa Wyman’s volunteer board.
“Our Board of Directors […] decided on Thursday by resolution to abandon the project,” founding member Diane Ratcliffe told me Saturday. “If [this council] had wanted to wear us down, they’ve succeeded.”
The project’s financial backers, including Soulanges MNA Marilyne Picard, Vaudreuil-Soulanges MP Peter Schieke and the Town of Hudson will have received an email advising them of the board’s intent to terminate the endeavour, Ratcliffe added.
The board’s decision triggers the lengthy process of unwinding years of work, beginning with the hiring of a professional evaluator early in the new year. The property — with a 2020 evaluation of $3,296,672 — will be listed for sale and close to $7 million in funding from the federal and provincial housing programs will be returned. Hudson’s only financial exposure is in the form of a 10-year tax holiday, representing $23,661 annually.
At some point in this process, the Town of Hudson is expected to file a preemptive reserve on the property. At the August 2023 council meeting, the mayor included “the Wyman Memorial parking lot where Villa Wyman is to be built” in a list of properties eligible for a pre-emptive reserve.
Adopted at that same meeting, Bylaw 762 enables the municipality to freeze the transfer of designated lots for up to 10 years while an expropriation tribunal determines its market value. (Companion legislation currently before the National Assembly would allow a municipality change zoning to lower a property’s market value.)
Ratcliffe questions the motives of the current council, which twice rejected approval of plans for the structure (in June and October 2022) before conditionally approving them in November.
“Consistently, every single time, council would tell us to go back and redo the plans. They have not shown any good will. There has been zero co-operation…if you don’t have the support of the town, you won’t succeed.”
She also wonders whether the temple’s executive has its own agenda for refusing to agree to a servitude in a shared parking lot when Villa Wyman already has 22 parking spaces, whereas the bylaws require 15. “At first they were very agreeable to a servitude, but after months of chasing after them to make it official, they said no.”
Could it be that the temple hopes to buy the entire site for parking after the town refused to allow them to pave over the greenspace at the corner of Main and Selkirk? Ratcliffe asks the question, but doesn’t expect an answer to this or any queries about council’s agenda.
After years living in Hudson, she and her husband Peter moved to Kingston to be closer to their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. Their son James, a Hudson volunteer firefighter, died in a nautical training accident June 7, 2005.
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