October 13 we go back to City Council. Realistically we expect the same answer. Which is why our lawyers are already building the Ontario Land Tribunal record in parallel. Here is the step by step from today through to shovels in the ground.
PV, Mit & Jeff
Most people have never had a reason to learn how this process works. Today is a good day to learn. Because this is the process every meaningful housing file in Ontario eventually routes through.
Yesterday's letter was about Jeff at the microphone and the mission behind the Wellington file. Today's letter is about what happens next, in order, from this morning through to shovels in the ground. We will keep this one practical. The goal is that by the end of today's read, you understand exactly how a file like Wellington gets resolved in Canada. Not the politics. The actual process.
There are two bodies that decide what gets built in Ontario. The municipality decides first. The province, through the Ontario Land Tribunal, has final authority when the municipal answer and the provincial planning framework disagree. That architecture is not a loophole. It is how the system was designed, specifically because every province in Canada has learned the same lesson over the last twenty years. Municipal politics and the housing supply targets a province actually needs do not always point in the same direction. The OLT exists to resolve the disagreement.
Here is where Wellington sits inside that architecture, step by step.
The Wellington file is already scheduled to return to City of London council on October 13. This is not a new application. This is the same file, back in front of the same chamber, under a formal reconsideration process. Our planning team and our counsel will be at that meeting. If there are substantive modifications that could meaningfully change a councillor's view on this file, those are the modifications that will be put forward.
We think the most likely outcome on October 13 is that council reaches the same conclusion for the same reasons it reached last Monday. We are not going into that meeting assuming a reversal. We are going into that meeting because the process requires us to, because the file deserves the full municipal track before we escalate, and because our lawyers will have a cleaner OLT record if the municipal path is fully exhausted first.
If October 13 does not change the file's trajectory, we move to the Ontario Land Tribunal. The OLT is an independent provincial body that hears appeals of exactly this kind of municipal planning decision. Its members are appointed by the province, not elected locally. Which means the OLT does not weigh the file against municipal politics. It weighs the file against the Provincial Policy Statement, the London Official Plan, and the applicable zoning framework.
That is a material shift in the question being asked. At a council meeting, the question is partly political. At the OLT, the question is strictly technical. Does the application conform to provincial policy? Does it align with the municipality's own Official Plan? Does it meet the zoning parameters the file is seeking? For a transit oriented purpose built rental file sitting on a corridor the city zoned specifically for that use, those are three questions that reward preparation and penalize politics.
What most people outside the planning industry do not realize is that OLT appeals rarely run all the way to a contested hearing. The vast majority of Ontario planning appeals settle before the hearing room. The settlement conversation that happens between filing and hearing is where the municipality and the applicant work out a version of the file that both sides can live with. Sometimes it is a modest modification. Sometimes the file ends up substantially as filed. Occasionally the city formally changes its position. All of these outcomes are more common than a full hearing decision.
We will be open to that conversation at every stage. The goal has never been to beat anyone at this process. The goal is to build 980 workforce apartments on a transit corridor that was built to receive them.
We have always underwritten this file with the OLT path baked into the model. This is not a scramble. It is the plan.
Purpose Built Rental · Southwestern Ontario · Workforce Housing
Targeted: 20% compounded annually
Currently raising. $100K minimum. Accredited investors, existing FC investors, or FF&BA exemption.
Three workstreams are moving in parallel.
First, the October 13 reconsideration package. Any clarifying material that can be put in front of council for the second look is being prepared this week. We owe the municipal process our full best effort, and that is what will be delivered on the 13th.
Second, the OLT record. Our counsel is already drafting the appeal materials, assembling the planning expert reports, and locking the technical evidence that will underpin the appeal. The best way to arrive at the OLT is prepared. That means the appeal is not written in the days after the second decline. It is being built right now.
Third, the file itself keeps moving in parallel. More on exactly what that means below.
The thing that would surprise most people outside the development world is how little of the real work on a file like Wellington is politics. The engineering continues. The architectural coordination continues. The Canadian precast design, the geotechnical, the environmental, the servicing coordination with the city, the pre construction tendering with our general contractor. All of it is still progressing in parallel to the entitlement question.
By the time the entitlement question resolves, through whichever door it resolves, the file is not scrambling to catch up to a head start it never had. It is ready to break ground. That is why we underwrite the OLT scenario into every file from day one. The real cost of a drawn out entitlement dispute is not the dispute itself. It is the operator who uses the dispute as an excuse to pause the work. We do not pause the work. We use the time.
$10K Minimum · RRSP / TFSA / RESP / LIRA Eligible · Also Cash
Targeted: 15% Annualized (7% cash monthly + 8% appreciation)
If you want to be in the workforce multi-family trade without entitlement timeline exposure, FCPRET is the fully income producing option. Distributions arrive on the same schedule whether a council votes or not.
A municipal decline is not a verdict on a file. It is the first door in a two door process the province of Ontario designed on purpose. If that first door closes, the second door is open, and the second door is the one where files like Wellington almost always get decided. Our underwriting has walked through that door before. Our lawyers have walked through that door before. The file has been built from day one to walk through that door if it comes to that.
That is why we are not deflated. That is why the mission has not changed. That is why October 13 is a calendar date, not a cliff.
Talk soon,
PV, Mit & Jeff
P.S. If the process above is new to you, you are not alone. Most Canadians have never had a reason to learn how the OLT works until a housing file in their own neighbourhood routes through it. We would rather over explain this now than have anyone reading these letters wonder what is actually happening in the weeks ahead. If there is anything inside this letter you want more detail on, hit reply. We read every one.
