Builder

Maurice Rollins says the County is attractive, but fees way too high

When he was young, Maurice Rollins wanted to become a pharmacist. But mental health issues in his late teens disrupted his studies, and after grade 13, he left school behind, taking up a job with the H. J. Mc- Farland construction company.

After five years with the Picton-based company, the enterprising Rollins tried his hand at property investment and management, and found his calling, buying investment properties and finding the developers to build.

In the 1970s, Rollins began building the Journey’s End motel chain, building simple, two-storey hotels along highways and near airports where no hotel already existed, at one point owning 145 Canadian hotels. In partnership with Choice Hotels, the Journey’s End chain became Quality and Comfort Inns by Journey’s End, and the partnership continued until a hostile takeover by Westmont in 1999.

After that, Rollins focused on building condominiums and retirement homes. He also owns Kente Property Management, which manages long-term rental properties from Kingston to Cobourg.

Maurice and Mark Rollins in their Belleville offices.

His ventures have brought Rollins wealth. He has used that to address a problem that has plagued him all his life, and that he hopes to prevent for others. He has commissioned Belleville author and historian Orland French to write his biography, in which he discusses his mental health challenges, running a business while being dogged by depression. The complete proceeds of sales from that book are being donated to the local chapter of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

Rollins also donated $1 million toward building a community cultural centre at the former Belleville Collegiate Institute, although the project never proceeded.

His ventures have also brought him jobs for his five children, all of whom have, at some point, worked for the company he built. Today, his son Mark is a developer and director of Rollins Investment Corporation.

But at nearly 90, Rollins isn’t ready to retire. In fact he gets into the office every morning before 7:30.

“I like to work. Besides that, I’ve got to keep busy,” says Rollins. “I had mental health problems from grade 12, to 75 years old for various periods. There were periods I couldn’t work. I went through shock treatments and the like. And so to tell you what you can do, and still have mental health [issues], that was the purpose of my book.”

Earlier this year, Rollins received the Belleville Chamber of Commerce’s first lifetime achievement award.

VENTURING INTO THE COUNTY
One of his latest business ventures is in Picton. The Rollinses have purchased 54 acres of land across from Cold Storage Road, and plan to partner with developers to build a subdivision on Picton’s west end, connecting to both Loyalist Parkway and Talbot Street, just north of Argyle Crescent.

The new Picton residential development could see over 300 new detached homes and townhouses added to the town of Picton.

“We think, even though the population is going down in the area, Prince Edward County is getting noted, it’s in the Toronto newspapers, there’s always articles about it, and some very popular people are moving in,” says Rollins. “I think the old County is going to get much greater, much bigger, and we’re quite interested in being in that particular market.”

This is not Rollins’ first time building in the County. His company created the subdivision between Bridge and Union streets, along with apartment buildings on Downes Avenue.

This newest project has run into some trouble with provincial red tape. The Ministry of Transportation does not want to download a portion of Loyalist Parkway that would be necessary in order to build new roads into the subdivision. The County has been helping, in an unusual turn, by lobbying the province to approve the change, something municipalities usually balk at.

Ostensibly, that’s because the County needs new housing, and much-needed property tax income.

But according to the younger Rollins, the County’s own policies could be trouble. That includes high connection charges. Especially because, in Prince Edward County, those charges are separate from development charges, which are provincially regulated. Mark says in Belleville, development charges are slightly higher, but include connection fees, and so cost developers far less to build.

And the County’s policy means a lot more risk.

“There’s something that can happen without proper checks and balances,” says Mark. “If you’re talking about development charges, there is an act, and it tells you the ways it can be increased, and the information has to be assembled before you make any changes. The County does that for their development charges, but they’ve put their water and wastewater connections outside of development charges,and there’s really no checks and balances at all. And that becomes the concern, that you start building something, and the connection charges are going to be $10,000. In two years they might be 15 or 20. We don’t know because there’s no regulation around it.”

Mark thinks there is an appetite to change.

“I think [the County is] trying to find their stride. They know that they need to be doing something better than they’ve been doing, but the process is still very slow,” he says.

Still, Mark says prices in Toronto are driving people to find solutions elsewhere, and that will mean an increased demand at almost any price.

“What we’ve noticed now, Belleville, which was always take-it-or-leave-it, prices have increased dramatically, the number of days a home is on the market has decreased tremendously, we have more multiple offers going on, and we have more bidding over the asking price going on. The exodus out of Toronto is coming this way. There’s only a matter of time before it will continue into Picton.”