The Ben Mulroney Show - A Toronto pickleball court gets a half million dollar tax bill

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

GUEST: Chris Rickett/ consultant for fairgrounds If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in store. Many promotions are available both in store and online, though some may vary. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about Toronto the good and the good old days and are the better days yet to come. And I think we do a pretty good job exposing what we think are weaknesses in lack of vision in this city, bad priorities that are leading us to spend money on things. that don't matter and not focusing on where we could put that money instead to make this city

more livable, more enjoyable, more affordable for all. And so let's talk city building. What do you want to see done with the empty spaces in this city? We've got a lot of city-owned parking lots, for example, and there's a major new initiative where the city wants to turn a lot of it into housing. Now, here's to be clear, we don't have a vacant land strategy in this city. Everything's done ad hoc, right? And then somebody shows up with a pet project and, okay, let's throw that onto the list.

Pressure is growing to create a unified vacant land strategy. Of those city-owned lots, 130 of them are being considered for housing, low-income housing, housing for the homeless, or more generally, housing redevelopment. And if you have an empty lot, well, a developer has to pay taxes and the lots are run down. So then what happens? They'll turn them into a tent city. There's drug use. This is not good for community.

I think we can agree, right? But then there's an example of good use of these empty lots. For example, stack market on Bathurst. Brilliant. City owned property that they know it was using. And so they brought in the shipping containers that were turned into shops and activations. And they developed it into a market. And it was so popular and has been so popular that the city extended the lease for 10 years.

There's something really cool about those things. There's another one. Remember where the salad king? was on Young Street just north of Young Dundas Square and no I don't call it Sankofa. Salad King burnt down and so there's an empty lot and they've turned

that into like a permanent area for food trucks and food vendors and they've got that's a nice little area they've got the festoon lights it's cool it's a cool little part of it breaks up the monotony of the buildings and it makes it increases foot traffic and interaction with people

and you're colliding with people and you've got different You know, you got a Jamaican patty place next to a FUP, a Vietnamese Fub place. Like, that's cool. That's good. That is good for building community and identity and for people to meet other people. It's good, right? That's, there's full stop. It's good.

And here's another great example. And I love this one because it's in my neighborhood. There's a fairgrounds pickleball court or series of courts. at a right right just south of Young and St. Clair. And one day I'm walking around. I was like, what is this? And it's sort of like a, it's a court. It's like a tennis club, right, for the city.

And you go in there and it's really well designed and lots of color and vibrancy. And I guess the owners of that vacant lot, I think they're waiting on some, approvals so they can build something. And until they build something, they put this pickleball court down and people pay small fees. And what that helps them do is it helps them defray the taxes that they owe on this property

while they wait for the city and the province and the country to get their act together and let them build a building. And I think it's amazing because in the interim there is the ability for strangers to come together, get active, be social, be outdoors. This is a net positive. It is taking the lemons, that is the inability of a developer to develop,

and it makes it lemonade for all of us to enjoy. As a matter of fact, Intrepid producer has played on some of these courts. Played on one of them. They've got a few of them. There's one at the Cloverdale Mall. There's also one up on Eggleton near Laird. It was a former Mercedes dealer.

Yeah. And they've jammed all these courts in there. And at times I've been there, it's jam-packed. It's great. Yeah, well, like I said, developers don't get a ton out of it, but it helps them offset their taxes

until either the market improves or, like I said, they finally get all the approvals that it takes forever to get in this country. Whatever, it doesn't matter. This is a stopgap that works for everybody. And the lots are taxed as residential. And that's, I guess that's been standard practice.

When the fairgrounds moved in, they were told now, now they get their tax bill, and this is the story we're telling the day, they're now told, no, no, not residential, commercial. Tax rate is 2.3 times higher than before. And they've been given a bill for a half million dollars. Half million dollars. Half million dollars. You're not making enough money on pickleball courts to pay a half million dollars. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, so. And so look, and then. So then we started doing a little digging here on the show. Who's to blame?

Right? Because this is, you've got a system that works where, where slow development is turned into a temporary respite where you've got these oases of fun and health and laughter in the city. It worked. But of course, government's got to come in and screw it up. No, no, you're not paying your fair share of taxes. So, which means these things will probably go away unless something changes.

That's why I'm saying, who screwed this up? Well, this is a city and a provincial issue, which means people are going to be pointing fingers at each other. The province can change the tax legislation, but that takes time. So this is in fact something that is written in the legislation of the province. But the city of Toronto is the one that levies the tax. they levy the tax that is given permission to them by that provincial legislation. And they collect all that money.

And last year they were collecting it at a residential rate. They are the ones who decided that no, no, now it's a commercial rate. And so now they could change that back or they could say, well, rebate you the extra taxes you're paying. Like in the city. It's easy to do. Or they could just not have made the decision to be greedy and come for more money. But I think it's actually not even up to them because it's a provincial, it is a provincial law with a tax rate, but it's entirely up to them how they collect it. See, they don't like giving tax rebates.

This city, during the duration of the crosstown LRT, where businesses were destroyed for a generation, right? Every single way, you couldn't, there's no foot traffic anymore. You couldn't even see in some cases that there was a business on the other side of the construction. these, all these businesses we're asking the city, can you give us a rebate on our property tax? Because we're really not able to enjoy it the way we were promised. No, no rebate for you.

Look a little to Jamaica, how much they suffered. Yeah, absolutely. No rebate. Not one red cent given back to the entrepreneurs who help build community. And that's what we're talking, a building community in those places. City of Vaughn, they have a community improvement plan with financial incentives to use empty spaces. Oh, wow. Geez, imagine

that. Yeah, look, it's a best practice and it's next door. Toronto, get your head out of your and stop killing the thing. I mean, Brad Bradford said it. He said Toronto succeeds because Torontoans make it succeed. I have a far less generous way of saying it. Toronto succeeds despite the people who run it. Toronto, the people who run it coming and try to destroy the things that the entrepreneurs are saying, look at what we can do here. Despite the, entrepreneurial killing incentive that comes from City Hall. They come up and they find a way to grow the garden. And then the city comes and just dumps on it.

So this is a problem for me. Because these fairgrounds are proof that entrepreneurs and people in Toronto can make this city survive and thrive despite the best efforts from the people at City Hall. And now they're coming and saying, no, no, no, no. We tried to kill you. But seeing, you're having fun and we don't want you to have fun. So we're going to tax you 2.3% what we, 2.3 times what you were being taxed at before. Benny don't like E. Benny don't like you one bit.

And so we're after the break, we're going to get, we're going to talk to someone in the heart of this. Chris Rickett, he's a consultant for Fairgrounds on this very issue. Don't go anywhere. The Ben Moornery show continues. Welcome back. And we're talking about the city leveling a massive tax increase on, uh, these businesses that use the Fairgrounds pickleball model to attract a little bit of business. People play pickleball on their vacant lots and in an effort for them to defray the cost of the taxes they have to pay until either they can get the money in so they can build or the financial situation in the city or the businesses or the community improves.

or they're waiting for approvals on what they want to build. In any event, we're taking an eyesore of an empty lot and turning it into a place where community gets built. And because the city has decided, yeah, you know what? We want more of a cut. Like the mob coming in and saying that whatever they take on the weekly basis off the top, now they want more. And that is putting the very financial incentive,

this model, this financial model at risk. and we could see a lot of these pickleball courts go the way of the Dodo Bird, which is very on brand for this city council. So let's talk now with Chris Rickett. He's a consultant for Fairgrounds on this issue. Chris, how are you? Good, Ben. You know, getting ready to play some pickleball.

Okay, give us a sense of how many of these are in the city and how popular they are. Yeah, no problem. So Fairgrounds is a public racket club, and we have sites. across the city and sites that are kind of in between development. So this specific one we're talking about today is at Rose Hill and Young, so near Young and St. Plare, but we have other sites at like Cloverdale Mall, up on Egglington at the old Mercedes dealership, and we have sites across Canada. And typically what we do is we come in and look at these interim sites that are awaiting

future development. And instead of them being boarded up and, you know, often becoming, you know, a bit of an eyesore, sometimes attracting other nefarious things while we're, you know, between developments. We activate them and use them as an opportunity to, you know, bring people to the site, bring people to the main street, spend at local businesses, and, you know, turn these into, you know, social opportunities and networking opportunities for local residents. And so, you know, at the Rose Hill location specific, we've got 28,000 users there. So, Elkhallon, hold on.

You've got how many users? 28,000 users. And over the course of how long, what's the metric there? Over a year and a half at Rose Hill. And we can't use that 12 months of the year. So that's 28,000 people who otherwise wouldn't necessarily have been in that area. they wouldn't necessarily have been congregating. When they're done, they might be thirsty.

They might go get a drink. They might as a team. If they went there for a team building exercise, they might walk up the street to Young and St. Clair and go to one of the restaurants. They might walk around and see something in a shop that they might want to buy. 28,000 people using this one activation.

Exactly. It's a very popular space. It's, of course, an area that's seen a lot of development in the city. And as we know, lots of development in the city, we're starting to get constrained when it comes to park space and recreation space. And there's definitely a hunger for that. And fairgrounds has done that in this location.

Well, that's a site ultimately, you know, awaits redevelopment. And when you go into sort of partnership with the owner of the vacant lot, what sort of commitment do you need from them in terms of how long they are going to allow for the activation to remain? Yeah, you know, we don't look at these sites as long term. They're not there to keep the development from ever happening. But typically, we'll look at a few years and understand what the business model might look like.

So, you know, being able to make that investment, it's a significant investment to get the site ready to put in, you know, into the courts and the infrastructure. associated with that. So, you know, typically we're looking for, you know, to, you know, three, four years, you know, to ultimately make a project like this work in the interim. So that's, you know, and sometimes that is a bit of the cycle of going through a planning process and getting your approvals and then going through your pre-sale process. So that's, that's the kind of thought that we fit in. And then, of course, you know, where the condo market is right now generally in the city and beyond, you know, there's a lot of these redevelopment sites that are just kind of sitting there in transition. And so to me, to me, I've got to say, Chris, this, what you've come up with at Fairground seems like this perfect, a temporary solution, right? So somebody, a group of people decide they're going to buy a vacant lot and for whatever reason, interest rates spike, a bankruptcy, the market crater. Like, you name it any, any number of reasons. And that development needs to be put on hold.

And rather than those people who took a chance on that vacant lot, losing it because this was not part of their plan, you provide them with the runway that they could need to just wait out that problem. Or it might be an issue with government taking too long to approve whatever designs they have for that redevelopment. In any event, the people who bought it in the first place, you're giving them an opportunity to keep their vision for that property alive. For sure. And again, origin developments who owns this, they have full intention of developing that land, they've got their approvals, you know, the market is what it is right now. And so they've been a great collaborator on activating that site because, of course, you know, when they went through the planning process, they heard about the need for, you know, recreation space. And more importantly, they want to be a good neighbor. Yeah. You know, so while they're in that development process and awaiting to start construction, and, you know, a way to be a good neighbor is to open up that space to community uses. And then they find out, then they find out to get a tax bill that's at 2.3 times higher than it was last year. Yeah. So, you know, in essence, what's happened here is the municipal property assessment corporation,

which does property assessments across the province. They saw the court set up. And so it was, the property classification was residential. But they saw the courts and they basically changed the classification to commercial, which basically, you know, 2.3 times the residential property tax rate. And so that's added about a half a million dollar property tax bill on the site. So that changes the value proposition of keeping pickleball courts there. Was there a conversation between that municipal organization and you and the property owner?

I mean, did they ever say, hey, this is something we're thinking of doing? If you have an issue with it, you can bring it up in this hearing, or did they just hand them a bill? Yeah, so, you know, basically they impact notified the property owner of the change of classification will ultimately appeal that. But they're following the legislation. There's a commercial use there, so it's commercial. You know, we're having conversations with them and we're hopeful maybe there's a solution. and then of course, you know, we've reached out to the city to engage on, you know, what the city could do. And there are solutions to this on the city side.

The city's not going to give them a rebate on their property tax. If they didn't do it along St. Clair or if they didn't do it along Eglinton, they're not going to do it for some pickleball players. But, you know, I think your best shot here, if I may speculate, this is a type of thing that when Doug Ford finds out this sort of thing happened on his watch, he gets right on it. Honestly. Yeah. Yeah. So, but you're going to appeal this at the provincial level, but you're also simultaneously

going to see if you can get a rebate from the city? Well, the thing is, is the city's not going to get an increase in taxes, right? So what will happen is if the tax classification changes and it adds $500,000 a year to the tax bill, basically we'll remove the pickleball court. Yeah. It'll return back to residential. The city won't get increased taxes. Right.

And the 28,000 users won't have a place to play pickleball. Right. In this scenario, nobody wins. Yeah. And we just end up with a vacant lot that will be boarded up until development happens. And so on that, no, we're going to end it there, Chris. But if you're listening and you're one of those 28,000 people that have enjoyed that pickleball court and you're looking forward to it reopening in the next, I don't know, a few weeks or so. and you're hearing this, then make your voice heard.

Email your city councilor. Email your MPP. Email Doug Ford personally. Like, let's get, this should be democracy and action. This is a great thing that is going to go away because government. Because government. They saw a good thing and said, no, no, no, no, no. No, we can make this worse.

That's what we're going to do right now. Anyway, Chris Rickett, consultant for fairgrounds. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember, 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline.

It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.