One of the region’s most popular outdoor recreation sites is slated for destruction at the hands of a Toronto-area developer. The historic Castle Glen site with its hundreds of acres of forest could soon become a megadevelopment unless our community joins together to protect the area.
The project currently plans to replace more than 1,135 football fields worth of forest (1,500 acres) and natural space with 1,600 houses, 300 hotel units, 3 golf courses, businesses, and other commercial developments. This would be the largest development of its kind along the brow of the Niagara Escarpment since the creation of the Niagara Escarpment Commission.
Here is a map of what is listed for development on the Town of Blue Mountains website: https://www.thebluemountains.ca/sites/default/files/2021-06/schedA6.pdf
And here is what is on the Town’s Official Plan: https://www.thebluemountains.ca/sites/default/files/2021-06/document_viewer%20%2817%29.pdf
Excerpts from the Castle Glen Development Overview:
1.2 Residential uses may include single detached and a variety of multiple residential forms. Commercial uses may include resort related facilities, including hotels and other forms of commercial accommodation units, golf course holes, including tees, greens and fairways and recreation facilities, as well as a range of retail, entertainment and service uses catering to the needs of the resort recreational community that are developed in conjunction with the recreational uses within the property. Civic and institutional uses are also permitted within the CastleGlen Resort Community.
1.3 The maximum number of residential dwelling units in the Castle Glen Resort Community shall not exceed 1,600. The maximum number of hotel or commercial accommodation units, shall be 300. In addition, the existing 87 lots in the “Thunderhill Subdivision” (Registered Plans 910 and 921) are permitted and recognized. Single detached residential dwellings and multiple residential Town of The Blue Mountains OfficialPlan June 2016 return to table of contents 273 dwellings shall be developed primarily in cluster form with a large open space component. In addition, a maximum of 300 hotel or commercial accommodation units, a maximum of 5,000 m2 of commercial uses, a beach club, as well as golf course holes, including tees, greens and fairways and clubhouse facilities, and other associated uses may be established. Flexibility shall be permitted to distribute commercial accommodation units and commercial uses within the applicable designations. The majority of the commercial activities shall be concentrated within the Castle Glen Village Core and Resort Commercial designations.
How in hell is this ever even being considered. There has been a stoppage in development for years of any areas that aren’t connected to sewers and water. This area is full of underground water, streams etc. Any building here will destroy anything below it. How on earth can anyone just the destruction of this amazing piece of property, the loss of wildlife, the removal of hundreds of acres of untouched forests. Is this not inside the biosphere of our area? Most places in our mountains can nor be touched because they are protected. Why isn’t this protected too? This is absolutely criminal and should never be allowed!
So wrong. On so many levels. Where do I start
How could this happen!!!So disappointing!!!My husband and I visited this property over seventy years ago.My parents visited with their friends back in the mid 1930s.It’s been left alone all these years!!! It’s quite the history!!!