Brewery settlement gets nod from OMB
All five parties to the Creemore Springs OMB hearing – the Brewery, Clearview Township, Simcoe County and appellants Paul Vorstermans and Christine and Austin Boake – gathered before the Board on Monday morning to present their recently reached minutes of settlement to OMB member Sylvia Sutherland.
The result of two sessions with OMB mediator James McKenzie as well as countless unofficial meetings and discussions, the settlement provides for substantial changes to the expanded brewery’s façade, site plan, trucking schedule and shipping/receiving practices. It also calls for the creation of a “Brewery Liaison Committee” that will serve as a conduit between local residents, businesses and the brewery throughout the construction phase and beyond.
“This is a very complex, very fair settlement,” said Marshall Greene, the lawyer for both Creemore Springs Brewery and Simcoe County at the outset of Monday’s hearing. “I want to thank all of the parties for their spirit of co-operation.”
After hearing from participants Dave Huskinson and Michael Bennett, both of whom spoke in favour of the settlement, Greene called Brewery planner Jim Dyment to the stand to speak to the new proposal’s planning merits.
A new site plan, which has now been submitted to the Township for consideration, shows several of the changes that came about as a result of mediation. The vast majority of the site’s 60 parking spaces have been moved from the south portion along Edward Street to the eastern boundary of the brewery property, which was made bigger with the purchase of two additional houses after the expansion process was underway. This allows for greater buffering along Edward Street, where Vorstermans and several neighbours had been concerned about their proximity to an expanded industrial site.
A sound wall now blocks the southern boundary of the warehouse loading/unloading area. Water and malt delivery and spent grains removal, which currently take place on Mill Street and Elizabeth Street, are now set in behind the brewery, with the malt and spent grain operations proposed to be done inside a garage.
The Mill Street façade of the building will now feature of mix of brick, board and batten and textured pre-cast wall panels, all colour-matched to the original Creemore Springs building at the corner of Mill and Elizabeth Streets. Through a mixture of wood frame entrances, faux doors, display box windows, cornice mouldings and banding, the entire façade will have the appearance of a stretch of Victorian commercial storefronts. Additions on the north and south sides of the building will also be given suitable windows and, on the north side, board and batten siding.
To ensure that the façade is a priority, a provision in the terms of settlement states that, no matter what phase of construction the Brewery is completing, it must recognize its obligation to “respect and enhance the streetscape of Mill Street as a commercial core with aesthetic attributes, providing a retail, public open space or high quality architectural façade along Mill Street, and to use landscaping and building architecture to enhance the downtown core while providing for a combined commercial/industrial brewery use.”
The Brewery has also agreed to provide a meeting room, fronting on Mill Street, available for BIA meetings on a minimum of 12 days per year.
On the subject of traffic, the Brewery has promised that, from Monday to Thursday, no shipments or deliveries other than water will take place before 8 am or after 5 pm. On Fridays, those hours would change to 8 am and 3 pm. Water deliveries can take place from 7 am to 7 pm between Monday and Friday.
On weekends, the Brewery has promised to receive just three deliveries of water on Saturday and one delivery of water on Sunday. One removal of spent grain will take place on the weekend, and no beer shipments will take place.
All trucks owned and operated by the Brewery will also be equipped with directional back-up beepers, and all trucks delivering materials to and from the site will be instructed to avoid idling and prohibited from overnight parking.
The Brewery Liaison Committee, which will meet frequently during the construction phase and less frequently once construction is complete, will consist of one staff person from the Brewery, one member of the Creemore BIA, Paul Vorstermans or his designate, Christine Boake or her designate, and any other member of the community as selected by the members above, up to a maximum of seven members. The Brewery will also have at least one staff person on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to deal on an immediate basis with the handling of any serious and time sensitive complaints regarding noise, odour or traffic. That person’s cell phone number will be provided to all members of the Liaison Committee.
The final section of the settlement, dealing with noise and odour, is where the complexity comes in. As explained by Brewery vice president of operations Gordon Fuller, who took the stand after Dyment, Creemore Springs has always operated with a Ministry of Environment Certificate of Approval for its air emissions, but had never been aware it needed one for noise and odour until it started planning the expansion. The MOE has since told the Brewery that an Environmental Compliance Approval (the new term for a Certificate of Approval) must be issued for the existing operation before the plans for facility’s expansion will be considered.
Noise issues have been mostly dealt with, but the Brewery is still working on a way to reduce its odour emissions. A few potential solutions have been filed with the MOE, including one, a 24-metre-high exhaust stack, which the Boakes and Vorstermans had concerns with. It has now been written in the terms of settlement that “such a solution, if approved by the MOE, is not acceptable to either [the Brewery or the Appellants], and will not be considered unless all other reasonable alternatives have proven not to be viable.”
The preferred solution at this point, said Fuller, is an exhaust recycling system which would recover much of the energy lost and prevent odour from leaving the building.
Given that the MOE approvals are still not resolved, it was decided on Monday that the OMB would allow the appeal and approve the new zoning bylaw and official plan amendments, but hold off on approving the site plan agreement. If the Brewery needs to make changes to the site plan as presented on Monday in order to be granted its Environmental Certificate of Approval, it may do so, but once the MOE is satisfied and the site plan is finalized, all parties will be allowed to review it before it is approved by the Township. If all are happy with it, then the OMB will be notified and will issue its final order on the appeal. If, however, one or more parties are unsatisfied with a change, the OMB will call a teleconference between all parties and deal with the issue as it sees fit.
Given a chance to make general comments before he left the stand, Fuller commented that the process to this point had been “somewhat long and arduous,” but noted that it had never been acrimonious.“That, in no small part, is why we were able to sit down together and reach a settlement,” he said, thanking everyone involved in the settlement for their hard work.
He also said that the expansion would secure the Brewery’s future in Creemore. “We are intrinisically tied to this village,” he said. “We position ourselves as much for Creemore, the place, as Creemore Springs, the beer. We firmly believe that if people come visit us, if they see the town and tour the brewery, we’ll have a customer for life. So we have an enormous vested interest in our brewery looking like it fits here.”
Vanessa Bacher, the lawyer for Christine and Austin Boake, also spoke, noting that her clients, as real estate agents who work across the road from the Brewery, felt like they needed to appeal the application, no matter what the risk was to them, in order to ensure that Mill Street would remain a comfortable pedestrian experience.
“This settlement is the result of a lot of hard work,” she said. “There’s still a lot more to be done, but my clients are happy.”
With that, Sutherland allowed the appeal, noting her opinion that such a civil settlement was “due in no small part to the corporate citizenship of Creemore Springs Brewery, which is clearly sensitive to the built environment in which it finds itself.”
The hearing then ended, with all parties invited back to the Brewery for lunch.
TO SEE THE NEW SITE PLAN, CLICK HERE.
TO SEE THE NEW ELEVATION DIAGRAMS, CLICK HERE.
