Wasaga Beach Mayor Brian Smith is pushing back on the suggestion that the town plans to develop its famous shoreline, saying the beach will remain public as work continues to renew the commercial area around it.
"There are no plans to develop the beach. The beach will always remain public," Smith wrote in responses to questions submitted by the Toronto Star, reproduced in full in a post on the Town of Wasaga Beach website. The brief is dated October 13, 2026.
Smith said the Destination Wasaga initiative is about redeveloping land that is already built up or covered in aging asphalt — much of it surface parking left over from a provincial park model built around summer day-trippers. Roughly 42 per cent of the Main End study area is surface parking, he said.
"Our North Star is simple: A place where people love to live is a place people will want to visit," Smith wrote.
A different kind of town
Smith argued Wasaga Beach grew unlike other Ontario communities because it was built around tourism rather than rail, shipping or manufacturing. Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1960s and 1970s, the Province expropriated extensive waterfront properties to create and expand Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, removing homes, cottages and family-run businesses.
The park now spans more than 1,840 hectares — roughly one-third of the entire municipality — and for more than 50 years the community's principal tourism asset was controlled by another level of government, Smith wrote. He said that history helps explain why Wasaga Beach developed differently from communities such as Collingwood.
The town's tax base sits at about 95 per cent residential and 5 per cent commercial, according to the mayor, even as Wasaga Beach welcomes more than two million visitors a year.
Land purchases and a Marriott
In 2015, when Smith was already mayor, council decided to acquire a majority of the commercial beachfront properties along Beach Drive — an approximately 800-metre tourism corridor along 14 kilometres of beachfront. Many of the aging seasonal properties had been repeatedly damaged by flooding, and the town had lived through a devastating 2007 fire and a failed major redevelopment proposal.
"I've always said: We can't control what we don't own," Smith wrote.
Among the projects now moving forward: a rebuilt Beach Drive to address decades of flooding, a roughly $60-million Marriott hotel at Beach Area 1, and mixed-use development by Stonebridge. Companies including Doppelmayr, EcoTrek and GVC are exploring new attractions, according to the mayor.
The Marriott, the first phase of Sunray's three-phase development, is proposed at approximately 160 rooms with a year-round restaurant, meeting space, wellness amenities and commercial uses. Sunray is required to obtain a building permit by April 1, 2027, with substantial completion by September 2030.
The second phase would be a parking structure with ground-floor commercial space, while third-phase uses remain to be determined. Festival Square will stay in municipal ownership, with Sunray contributing up to $1.5 million toward its construction.
Smith said approving the Destination Wasaga master plan does not authorize the town to take private property, and any land assembly for individual projects would go through the normal municipal process.
Asked why the town struggled for decades to attract a hotel developer, Smith pointed to former mayor Walter Borthwick, who cautioned against promoting redevelopment plans before shovels were in the ground — and who once described the old beachfront as "a whole lot of fun back then."
