Cambridge, North Dumfries shake hands over multi-million dollar land transfer; agreement not finalized

A land transfer between North Dumfries and Cambridge has passed some significant hurdles that will help add more homes to Waterloo Region.

The City of Cambridge and the Township of North Dumfries convened for a joint council meeting on Tuesday, signing off on the first steps that would see three parcels of land transfer ownership from the township to the city.

Cambridge is looking to expand by annexing off three sections of North Dumfries that sit roughly on boundary lines, with some houses split in between them. Those lands include; the Blair and Esther Lands, the West Lands and the South Lands.

The City of Cambridge plans to pay for the loss of tax revenue on those three sections of land by putting $3.2 million on the table. In addition, it would also give the township $200 per unit built on that land in the next seven years.

But the Mayor of the Township of North Dumfries, Sue Foxton, is firm that the council doesn’t plan to give away any more land after the deal is done.

Foxton joked while on The Mike Farwell Show Tuesday that North Dumfries is going to “build a wall” after all this is finished with, calling it more of a cleanup.

“My council is firm that this will be the end, we’re not giving away anymore land. And they wanted a part of Blair because Blair is in North Dumfries and they stood firm on that – we’re not giving you Blair, not even a section of it,” Foxton said.

The goal is to make room for more development and complete some new construction by connecting it to municipal services. The mayor mentioned it wasn’t their idea initially to annex the land but had to do it to end costly negotiations that occurred when developers took the region to the Tribunals Ontario over the region’s official plan in 2012.

“This is a thing that’s cleaning up from a litigation that happened years ago with the Region’s Official Plan,” said Foxton, adding that they work well with Cambridge.

Once in effect, the three areas would be represented by the city councillors for Wards 5, 6 and 7.

If the land deal goes through, the township agreed to give Cambridge 50 per cent of the city’s reasonable costs incurred while it obtains a legal survey of the annexed area, up to $25,000.

The deal between these two municipalities still needs to approved by the Region of Waterloo before being finalized.

With files from Josh Piercey, Reporter, 570 NewsRadio.