Central Frontenac To Purchase Simonett Building For Township Office

Jeff Green | May 15, 2025

In a split vote after an in camera meeting on Tuesday evening (May 13), Central Frontenac Council decided to proceed with an offer to purchase the Simonett Building at 14216 Road 38 in Sharbot Lake. The building is the former home of The Robinson Group.

The building was originally the home of Simonett's garage and car dealership. It has been the headquarters of the Robinson Group of Companies for a number of years. 

The motion before council was for council to “direct the municipal solicitor to prepare an offer to purchase the building, ..., on the terms outlined in a letter of intent previously agreed to between the parties, and authorise the Mayor and CAO/Clerk to execute same along with any documents reasonably needed to complete the transaction as may be recommended by legal counsel.

Before the vote, Councillor Duncan McGregor asked if Chief Administrative Officer Cathy MacMunn would be reporting back to council “at our next meeting our out meeting in June on how we are going to pay for this” and MacMunn said “absolutely”.

The vote was 5-4, with Councilors Klages, Everett, McGregor, Irwin and Mayor Smith supporting it, and Councilors Gowdy, Meeks, Smith and Kelsey voting against it.

The matter had been discussed at an unadvertised in-camera meeting over Zoom on Monday, May 5th. After a half an hour long in camera meeting, Council returned in open session and accepted the confidential report from that meeting

When contacted a day after the meeting, Mayor Frances Smith said that the plan is to use the 9.000 square building as the new office for the township.

“It is a great opportunity for us to get ourselves the office space that we need,” she said.

She said that not only is there no council chamber at the current office, the planning department meets with clients in the kitchen, and as the Mayor she does not have any office space to meet with residents and officials.

“We were contacted by Kelly (owner of the building Kelly Robinson) to see if we were interested in it before she listed it, and that’s where it started. When we were looking at a renovation of our office, it was a $2 million project,” she said.

After getting the go-ahead from Council at the in camera meeting on May 5^th, Smith and MacMunn negotiated a deal and brought a letter of intent back to the council meeting on Tuesday evening.

While Smith did not disclose the purchase price at this time, she said that township staff is proposing  to sell the existing Central Frontenac office building on Elizabeth and Robert streets, as well as some other properties that the township owns, in order to cover the cost of the new building.

The Sharbot Lake and Hinchinbrooke Public School sites are not included in the list of properties that will be for sale., and neither is the Smith added. She also said that the former Harvey barbershop building located across from the current office, is not slated to be sold off either.

“We may need a short-term loan until we can sell off the properties, but we do not expect to take on any new long-term debt for this.”

The current office is also the home of the Sharbot Lake branch of the Kingston Frontenac Public Library (KFPL).

The local township is responsible for branch locations, and the library board provides staffing and materials for all branches within the KFPL system. A branch study that KFPL completed over a decade ago, urged Central Frontenac to provide a larger space for the library, up to 5,000 square  feet.

There is nothing like that amount of space available at the Simonett building. Smith said that the initial plan is to move all township staff to the building, including the public works staff currently located at the Harvey building, and create a council chamber.

“Depending on who purchases our existing building, maybe we can rent the library space back,” she said.

(More on this story to follow)