The owner of the old General Hospital site has put the former renal unit building at 995 Queen St. E. up for sale — at a jaw-dropping price tag of $3.6 million — just months after taking the city to court over enforcing its property standards bylaw at the former hospital site late last year.
The property, which includes a 40,000 square-foot building and 150-by-181-foot parcel of land, is being touted as a “great redevelopment property” on a real estate listing posted Thursday. The former Plummer Hospital renal unit property is being sold in its present condition by real estate developer Leisure Meadows Community Living Inc.
Publicly available records from the provincial land registry office show that Leisure Meadows, a subsidiary of Wilsondale Assets Management Inc., acquired the former Sault Area Hospital site in 2019 for a combined $1.3-million: $450,000 for the old General Hospital site and $850,000 for the Plummer site.
Leisure Meadows is now hoping to sell the Plummer building for more than four times that amount.
The developer still has signage in front of the dilapidated structure, billing it as a future site for "luxury apartments."
The public face of Leisure Meadows is general manager Italo Ferrari. In December of last year, Ferrari appeared before city council to dispute its enforcement measures at the former General Hospital site, which was described as having fallen into a state of disrepair during the council meeting.
A motion allowing city staff to continue enforcement measures at the former hospital site, including possible expropriation and demolition, was passed during the same meeting.
The December 2022 council meeting also saw two city councillors walk out of the meeting in disgust over Ferrari’s use of the term "concentration camp’" to describe how the old hospital site would look if it were to be fenced in.
Ferrari later apologized for the remark. But the dispute between Leisure Meadows and the City of Sault Ste. Marie was far from over.
This past May, Leisure Meadows filed an application in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, requesting an injunction to prevent the city’s enforcement of provisions within its property bylaw regarding vacant, demolished and damaged buildings.
The real estate developer was also seeking a declaration from the City of Sault Ste. Marie that the portion of its property standards bylaw called into question was “vague, illegal and unenforceable.”
The court action was in response to Leisure Meadows being smacked with two bylaw notices — one for 941 Queen Street East and one for 995 Queen Street East — in November 2022.
Both notices stated that neither the former general hospital nor the former Plummer renal unit conformed to the city’s property standards bylaw on the grounds they were being “accessed by unauthorized entry despite responding efforts by the property manager to secure it.”
The notices ordered Leisure Meadows to provide security personnel to monitor the building — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — and to keep records. The company was also ordered to show the city proof it had obtained no less than $2 million worth of liability insurance for each building.
The matter returns to court Nov. 24, with the goal of setting a hearing date for sometime in the new year.
In a statement to SooToday via email on Friday, Sault Ste. Marie Mayor Matthew Shoemaker expressed his frustration with the current property owner.
“The site of the former renal building and General Hospital are a blight on our waterfront area, and the lack of action from the owner is well documented and visibly demonstrable to anyone who walks or drives past the area. I am beyond disappointed with the lack of development at that location despite public pronouncements to the contrary,” said the mayor. “I am very confident that our community will be better off with new ownership.
"I continue to meet with city staff about this issue on a regular basis, and our bylaw enforcement team will keep doing whatever it can to ensure compliance with the property standards bylaw.”
SooToday has reached out to Ferrari for comment but has yet to receive a reply.