Saturday, October 26, 2013

Illegal Muskoka boathouse called an aircraft hangar to duck environmental rules: Owner claimed it’s a plane hangar to skirt environmental laws

 
 Boathouse Aerodrome 
Paul Bak 

This image submitted by developer Paul Bak shows a Cessna float plane docking in a structure that he insists is an “aerodrome,” not a boathouse. A judge ruled this month that Bak’s “aerodrome” designation was an invalid attempt to get around environmental rules about boathouses on Lake Rosseau. 






An attempt by a developer to pass off a Muskoka boathouse as an airplane hangar to skirt environmental regulations has been quashed by a judge. 

"(I)t looks like a boathouse, and at all material times it was utilized only as a boathouse on a lake," Ontario Superior Court Justice Stephen O'Neill ruled. 

"We were delighted by the decision," said Seguin Township Mayor David Conn. 

Paul Bak's application to build a boathouse on Lake Rosseau's environmentally protected shoreline was first rejected by the municipality in 2008. That didn't stop him from building the structure with a 1,000-square-foot upper-level living area, despite a stop-work order, according to O'Neill's ruling. 

When the boathouse was almost finished, in 2012, Bak filed an application with Transport Canada, claiming it was actually an "aerodrome" to house a plane. If successful, federal regulations for such a structure would have trumped local zoning that protects the shoreline. 

Bak said he will appeal the decision, which ordered the structure's demolition within 90 days. 

"I fly a windsock. It will accommodate a Cessna float plane. To me that's kind of the short and sweet of it," he said. "I own and I operate an aerodrome." 

But the judge's decision states that Bak, "does not own a plane nor does he have a pilot's license." 

The decision also states that a Cessna 182 (float plane) would not fit in the building and that pictures taken in the summer of 2012 "show boats and watercraft moored inside the structure." 

A promotional video for Bak's property from last year shows a sumptuous lakeside manor, complete with several shots of the tree-lined vista and a floating structure referred to as the "boathouse." 

Subsequent advertisements for the property labelled it an "aerodrome" and "float plane hangar." 

The court decision mentions a 2011 real estate sales listing for the cottage that describes a "floatplane hangar/aerodrome" to be built on the property. 

But the judge grounded the plan in his Oct. 2 decision. 

The judge stated Bak purchased the property on Lake Rosseau "to tear down the old cottage, build a new cottage and construct a single-storey boathouse," and that the person who prepared the boathouse's building plans "knew nothing about airplanes and undertook no investigation of plane sizes." 

Speaking Thursday from his home in Etobicoke, Bak said the structure is meant "primarily" for the storage of float planes, and provided photos of it holding a small amateur-built ultralight C-GREZ plane. 

Bak added that Lake Rosseau is a getaway for wealthy cottagers who use float planes, many of whom he knows through his work as a homebuilder. As the property developer, his plan is to sell the "aerodrome" to one of the high-flyers on the lake, he said, acknowledging it would also be used for boat storage. 

"The township wouldn't allow me to build a boathouse, so I decided it would be a better option to build an aerodrome, because there are many clients that I have that have (float planes)," Bak said. 

Lawyer Gerard Chouest, who advised the municipality, said "federal regulations which provide for the registration of an aerodrome are very liberal." 

Chouest said the Lake Rosseau boathouse could possibly fit a plane. "Only the smallest that I know of, possibly. We argued that there was no intention, no actual use as an aerodrome — that it was a boathouse. And that's what the court found." 

A similar situation arose in the Township of Scugog in 2011, where a company called Earthworx Industries was dumping soil at a landfill, but managed to dodge an environmental bylaw by claiming an aerodrome would ultimately be built there. 

A judge ruled there was no aviation activity at the landfill site, and questioned "the sincerity of the avowed intention to build a runway and an aerodrome," noting the company didn't announce such plans until after a stop-work order was issued. 

In the Lake Rosseau case, O'Neill's ruling included a statement that might help prevent other developers from ignoring environmental rules regarding Ontario's waters. 

"Lakes and rivers are not immune from slow degradation as a result of human activity. . . . Aerodromes looking like and operating as boathouses will in due course come to proliferate or at least become more prominent on Ontario's lakes, all without environmental zoning or planning oversight." 


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