Days of wine and clauses

Kemp Stewart stands in his hayloft. Years of legal and bureaucratic hurdles have left it empty.

After years navigating legal hurdles, Hillier Creek gets its Estate

When Kemp Stewart sat down at an Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) hearing at Shire Hall last Tuesday, the last thing he expected was to be getting back up 20 minutes later, finally vindicated, to go work on his farm. Because, according to the municipal board, that’s what Hillier Creek Estates (HCE) is.

With a seven-year struggle behind him, it seemed impossible to get his answer so quickly—almost as though this were an early April Fools’ gag.

When Stewart and his wife, Amber, bought HCE, it was a dump. Literally. Abandoned and neglected, the property had become a popular spot to leave trash that cost too much to take to the County dumps. The couple cleaned up the land and started growing vines, eventually spreading throughout the property and opening HCE.

The natural next step on the refreshed land was to expand the barn, turning the entrance into a tasting room and shop for wine, and turning the hayloft into an event venue. It would have been a perfect opportunity to sell the vineyard’s product locally.

It was this expansion that brought on difficulties. It exposed a rift between the old families, living in the County for generations, and the newcomers, building lives here that were different.

When the application for a permit to expand HCE’s barn was submitted, his neighbour and then-councillor Peggy Burris submitted an application for a new livestock barn, 100 metres away. The conflicting applications caused a two year delay.

The next problem came with a policy called minimum distance separation (MDS). Put in place by Ontario’s agricultural ministry, MDS was intended to prevent disagreements between livestock farmers and ever-sprawling suburbia in the greenbelt. Burris feared if HCE expanded, it would prevent her family’s farm from expanding. She argued to council that by expanding a business on zoned agricultural land, HCE was detrimental to the growth of the valuable farming industry in the County. She worked to get municipal policies put in place about MDS to protect her farm.

The trouble with this argument is the premise that HCE is not a farm.

Stewart then applied for estate status for his winery, part of his plan to convert the hayloft and hold functions there.

The problem snowballed. This was no longer generations versus newcomers. It was no longer Burris and Stewart. By this time other neighbours had gotten involved. The Prince Edward Agricultural Society had jumped in. Everyone had an opinion on whether a vineyard is a farm. Whether it was traditional farming.

Despite the noise, Stewart met all the County’s policy requirements, and the application succeeded. HCE would become an estate winery and he would be able to execute the next stage in his business plan. At this point, he was off track by years and millions.

Burris then filed a complaint to the OMB. For Stewart, it was Kafkaesque. It’s why the outcome surprised him.

Stewart says his hayloft should be ready to use before the end of the tourist season this year. There is still a lot of work to be done. The road must be hard-surfaced and widened. The building must be made accessible. He has a meeting this week with a city planner and an engineer to get started.

He doesn’t foresee any more trouble—it seems all avenues have been exhausted—but Stewart doesn’t want to get too optimistic.

“I’ve been surprised by the twists and turns, the circuitous route that this application has taken,” he says.

While he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of legal action against the years of lost revenue, Stewart wants to move on and get back to business, possibly with a better relationship with his neighbours, old and new.