BRACEBRIDGE, ON – The owner of a marina that had a disagreement over permits with the Town of Bracebridge earlier this month has softened his stance.
Clayton Smith had posted a sign saying the Spirit Bay Marina, formerly known as Indianhead Harbour, would possibly be closing due to pressures brought from enforcement of construction permit requirements by the town for work being done. He took the property over in April with the intent of providing an enhanced level of service for the 300 boaters that rent out his slips and use their boats to access million dollar seasonal homes.
He has taken the sign down in the past couple of days and said it was all a misunderstanding and he wants to work with the town to move past the previous issues.
“That’s why we posted the sign that we were closing potentially if we didn’t get these things resolved,” Smith explained. “We found other ways to mitigate and resolve these issues.”
He said he tried to explain what he was up against when talking to the town’s planning department.
“We sat down with the municipality and said there are things wrong here. We can deal with it immediately. Like replacing a washroom that was literally disgusting and decayed and quickly moved on it so we have washroom facilities for the season,” he recounted. “And they chose not to cooperate.”
Smith explained with delays from spring flooding they were under time pressure to be open in time for the summer season. He owns and operates the Orillia airport that went under massive transformation and has been held as a shining example of a private airport.
“We clearly pushed things to the point of shutting us down so that we couldn’t provide again the things, the same structure, same everything but trying to clean it up before our customers came,” he said.
He said a lot of the work that got shut down was what he believed to be cosmetic changes that did not require permits for upgrading.
“But we are still hopeful and positive the township will approve the fixing of the decks,” he offered. “I wasn’t aware that you needed permits to take rotting wood off of a building and put in new cosmetic nice cedar and things like that giving it that Muskoka feel that we should all be proud of.”
He said posting the sign at the entrance of the marina explaining why it might close at month end was his form of protest, though he conceded putting the town offices phone number probably added to the friction between the two parties.
“Nothing the Town of Bracebridge has done would necessitate that,” said Mayor Graydon Smith last week about the sign. “While our phone number is at the bottom (of the sign) if people have questions about that they should be speaking to the owners of the project.”
Clayton Smith said the bottom line is they were trying to improve a dilapidated facility and had a short time to get the work done.
“I guess everybody can assume what they want but the reality is that taking over an operation like this that has been derelict for so many years and has health and safety and liability issues,” he said.
He says they will be going to the permit route as requested, which will add time to getting work completed, leaving him worried it will not be done during the coming summer season. The immediate work he wants approved is the upgrades to washroom facilities he has done.
“This is within my current shell and we are just improving the facility so I have wheelchair accessible washrooms, men’s and women’s washrooms that are functioning instead of one toilet for 300 slips or 800 people in a day,” he explained. “So we will definitely lose the season and I had some very strong concerns about health, safety, and personal and corporate liability for customers there.”
Of the early work without permits, he says he has adjusted things for customers.
“We managed to fix a bunch of things and we are going port-a-potty ways to look after people in that way,” Smith said. “After a three or four-hour drive people like facilities. We have no facilities for handicapped or wheelchair accessible people.”
For now, the sign is down and the hope is to get changes done as quickly as possible to catch as much of the boating season as possible.