The need for serviced residential land in Elliot Lake was mentioned several times at Monday night's meeting of Elliot Lake City Council.
At the virtual meeting where Council approved the release of land that would produce 51 city-owned lots, CAO Daniel Gagnon stated, "We've been coming at this from a couple of different angles.
"We've seen very low vacancy rates and large demand for housing across the spectrum, from rentals, to homes, to waterfront, everything, the phone is ringing.
"So we're looking at opportunities for residential development. We saw the success of the early cottage program.
"We realized that we already had land that we owned to the high watermark in several lakes within the urban area.
"The land on the eastern end of Esten Lake is a case like that where we have reasonably close water and sewer," Gagnon continued.
"We could be developing 23 waterfront lots similar to a cottage style waterfront, with 200 feet of frontage, 1.7 acres; and approximately 28 estate lots that could be serviced, not on water, but in the natural environment there.
Coun. Luc Cyr said, "I think it's too close to the dump. I wouldn't support that."
Coun. Cyr said he did not want the four lots closest to the city dump included in the project. Otherwise he was in favour of the plan to service the land and sell it for residential use.
Coun. Chris Patrie said it doesn't make sense to change the official plan several times.
"Whether they're estate lots or waterfront lots, I think that you change it all. Change the official plan at once and then if we have developers willing to do this, we do this," Patrie said. "I think Esten Lake is a bad choice. We have leakage from the dump. So the contamination is too easy to happen."
"I think as a Council we set our top three priority lakes and we move with it," said Coun. Norman Mann.
"People are leaving the cities in droves, buying anything they can get their hands on, just to get out. As long as we can have the internet access for people to work remotely, I think we can attract a lot of people," Coun. Sandy Finamore said.
The motion was amended to include other lakes in the plan. At the same time, Councillor Ed Pearce cautioned that people need to understand the City will work on getting land at Esten Lake ready first.
Gagnon said the cost of preparing the land to create the shovel-ready lots is reckoned at $7.2 M. The planned sale price of the lots would be $130,000 for non-lakefront lots, $150,000 for lake estate lots.
It is estimated that it will cost $8M to service road improvements. (That is based on zero grants for the road and servicing costs.) A minimum of one year will be needed for planning and studies.