[getsmart-l] Extension of Highway 404 takes toll on homeowner

[Janet May]

http://www.yorkregion.com/article/56911

 

HIghway extension takes toll on homeowner 

 

The house on Queensville Sideroad was completely demolished yesterday after
months of "absolute hell" for the family who lived there since 1990. 

MORE STORIES

  

East Gwillimbury 

Oct 24, 2007 07:08 PM 


By: Sean Pearce 

To many people, it must seem like a dream come true. 

Some level of government makes an announcement a new road or highway will be
constructed and your property is smack dab in the middle of the soon-to-be
built road. 

Cha-ching.

Suddenly, your new address is Easy Street, right? 

Well, maybe not.

For Newmarket's Doug Pettigrew and his family, the so-called dream turned
out to be more like a nightmare.

It all started two years ago, Mr. Pettigrew said, when he received a piece
of mail from the Transportation Ministry regarding an upcoming study to do
with the extension of Hwy. 404. 

At the time, Mr. Pettigrew and his family were living in Queensville and
expected to remain there for many years to come.

"We went through absolute hell, along with our neighbours, from the day this
started," Mr. Pettigrew said. 

"There was a notice to us that said a study was being done (regarding the
highway extension) and, after that, we received a map that showed a dotted
line across the front quarter of our property."

Mr. Pettigrew said he was out of town when the map arrived and heard about
it from his wife. 

Upon his return, he started to make numerous phone calls to try and
determine exactly what was going on.

Eventually, Mr. Pettigrew found a notice in the newspaper indicating a
public meeting would be held and he decided to attend with his wife to try
and gain insight about what was being proposed. 

"My wife and I went to a general meeting and there was a bunch of maps on
the walls," he said. 

"I said to this engineer there, 'That's my house on that map'. He said, 'Oh,
yeah? We're taking your house', and my wife just burst into tears."

The engineer's revelation was devastating to the Pettigrew family. 

They had lived in their home on Queensville Sideroad in East Gwillimbury for
17 years and had absolutely no intention of moving.

As Mr. Pettigrew began to investigate, it quickly became clear there was
little recourse to deter the government from taking his property and home. 

The Expropriation Act, he said, stacks the deck heavily against the
landowner.

Realizing there was little he could do, Mr. Pettigrew said he tried to
negotiate with the government so he could stay in the home as a tenant until
it actually had to be demolished. 

The province refused.

In the end, Mr. Pettigrew opted to shoot for what he called an early buy-out
that would permit his property to be surveyed and allow for at least a
little more flexibility in the negotiations than straight out expropriation.

His next step in the process was to get a lawyer, despite assurances from
the ministry he wouldn't need one, and permit the government to do an
appraisal of his property.

"(The ministry) sent some real estate agents to go out and do some
comparative analyses of some homes and when we got the results, we were
shocked," Mr. Pettigrew said. 

"They brought in Toronto real estate agents, who didn't know the area and
sent them to subdivisions in Holland Landing that had homes that weren't
even close to ours."

'Anyone out there who thinks the   highway isn't coming        is totally
wrong.'

Mr. Pettigrew countered by offering to have his property assessed by an
independent agent, who came back with a vastly different opinion of what the
property was worth. 

That's when the ministry's representative suggested Mr. Pettigrew put out a
price he'd be willing to accept. 

According to Mr. Pettigrew, the ministry's representative assured him her
superiors would accept the compromise.

"The same representative told us that the deal was off," he said.

Finally, after two years of back-and- forth with the ministry, Mr. Pettigrew
said he received an offer that was satisfactory. 

In addition to receiving adequate payment for the home, he said he was also
entitled to an additional 5 per cent  of the property price for the
inconvenience the family had been put through. 

The ministry's director also sent flowers and a card to the family
apologizing for all the trouble they had been put through, Mr. Pettigrew
said, pointing out it was little consolation for their suffering and all of
the lost memories.

"By that point, we were happy just to close the door, because I was starting
to have some health problems over it," he said. 

"The 5 per cent for my family's hardship was not enough; not even close," he
said.

Although the ministry cannot comment on specific matters, it always tries to
deal with individuals in the position of having their land expropriated in a
fair and amicable way, Transportation Ministry spokesperson Stephanie Kupiec
said. 

Offers on properties are made via appraisals from an accredited agent.
Property owners first become aware of the plans at public information
sessions as part of the planning and design processes for a new facility, Ms
Kupiec said in an e-mail.

When the ministry has determined the specifics of what property is needed
for a project, owners are contacted and the ministry begins negotiations in
the hope an agreement can be reached in an amicable manner. 

If the ministry is unable to reach an agreement, the process may proceed to
a more formal process legislated under the Expropriation Act.

The ministry constantly tries to find ways to lessen the hardships of
landowners under expropriation and compensate them where appropriate, Ms
Kupiec said.

Those words are of little consolation to Mr. Pettigrew. 

It's still a painful experience for him to drive by his old house and see it
sitting there, vacant and falling prey to vandals.

Even so, he's just glad the ordeal is over. He now rents an apartment in
Newmarket and owns a cottage on Snake Island on Lake Simcoe. 

He refers to the latter as the family home now.

What he does want to make clear, however, is just how stressful the process
of expropriation can be on a property owner. 

There has to be a more humane way for the ministry to operate, he said.

"Anyone out there who thinks the highway isn't coming is totally wrong," Mr.
Pettigrew said. 

"The highway is a good thing, but not at the cost of individual lives."




 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.web.net/archives/getsmart-l/attachments/20071029/4e05f9f7/attachment.htm