ARCHIPELAGO TWP. - A $750,000 marina purchased by the Township of the Archipelago has roused calls for concern from surrounding residents.
The private sector acquisition of Holiday Cove Marina in Parry Sound, a first for the Township of the Archipelago, will secure a water access point for ratepayers, says Stephen Kaegi, chief administrative officer for the Township of the Archipelago.
“Council said we’re going to keep (the marina) at the same service level it has been in the past, and that’s not one that provides boat storage,” said Kaegi.
“For next year, I don’t know if council is going to agree to do a little more boat storage, but at this point, we’re going to run it as a low key, low end marina, the way it has been run in the past.”
Nearly everything about the plan troubles Rose Point Road resident Millie Graham, who writes to the North Star: “There is a greater threat to current private marina owners who are very concerned the public ownership will create unfair competition in an already difficult environment.”
Graham lambasts the township for deceiving taxpayers and purchasing Holiday Cove without first querying members of public for approval.
“I put out the following challenge to ratepayers in an election year,” Graham writes.
“Do you know how your tax dollars are being spent and why? Do you know the hidden agenda of your council and what impact they will have on your friends and neighbors?”
Kaegi laughed when asked about suspicions of ulterior motives, calling them skeletons in the closet.
“I can’t say what’s going to happen 10 years, 15 years down the road. If marinas here close, or maybe they sell off some of the ones here in town and become condo development or something, the township may have to look at something and expand the current service level, but at this point, no.”
The Archipelago’s latest, and perhaps one of its most radical, ventures will also see the property converted into a lakeside landing for garbage and waste materials, a controversial component of the marina acquisition for Ron Quesnelle, who along with his wife purchased property from Holiday Cove Marina 28 years ago.
“The idea, as we all know, is not that the Archipelago is buying the marina, but that they are looking for a transfer station, by whatever name they call it,” Quesnelle wrote in a letter to the North Star.
“We do not believe that after building a custom house, extensive landscaping and maintenance, accompanied by a steady increase in Seguin taxes, that we should now be facing a drastic decline in the devaluation of our property.”