Ed Smith, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Pointer

For residents who have spent years demanding action on the abandoned former General Motors property in St. Catharines, the latest chapter will sound all too familiar.

Just weeks after the City’s Property Standards Appeal Committee upheld sweeping compliance orders requiring the owners to repair or demolish dozens of deteriorating structures, the controversial numbered company that owns the sprawling industrial site has taken the fight to Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice.

Residents have spent years pressing the City to force the owners of the former GM property to address deteriorating buildings, safety hazards and environmental concerns, and when the City finally issued sweeping compliance orders this spring, many believed the long-running dispute was finally nearing an end.

Instead, it has entered another chapter.

The company that owns the former GM site, 2390541 Ontario Inc., has appealed the Appeal Committee’s decision to the Ontario Superior Court, potentially ending or delaying enforcement of the City’s orders yet again. Government records list Chiara Megna as the company’s president and secretary.

She is the wife of Robert Megna, who was photographed sport fishing in the Caribbean with former St. Catharines mayor Walter Sendzik in 2015 when Megna sought City Hall’s help to get the former industrial lands approved for an upscale residential development after he bought the property from GM in 2014 for $12.5 million.

A freedom of information investigation by The Pointer in 2022 revealed the cozy relationship between Sendzik and Megna, who asked the former mayor for help when he had been ordered to disconnect his company’s water source from a fire hydrant it was using at the site without a permit when he had been ordered to deal with dust control on the property.

Despite Sendzik’s interference, the City eventually had to take Megna’s company, Bayshore, to court in 2020 in what it described as a “string of legal actions” over its failure to meet various property obligations, with the company ordered to pay $60,000 in fines after pleading guilty to 12 provincial offences charges.

A City report stated that a year later, “in April 2021, the property owners pleaded guilty at Provincial Offences Court to 13 charges under the Building Code Act for failure to provide a schedule of all required inspections listed on permits issued for the property and failure to submit general reviews from a professional engineer.”

In total, Bayshore was ordered to pay $140,000 in fines, on top of other costs that St. Catharines taxpayers had to cover due to the company’s negligence. The company eventually pleaded guilty to at least 42 charges.

Sendzik had overseen a council-approved tax incentive that saw St. Catharines taxpayers cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in “Community Improvement Plan” grants used to pay Bayshore’s property taxes for the former GM lands for at least three years, while it was violating numerous bylaws.

Bayshore was handed the tax exemption in return for its obligation to clean up the contaminated site. It never did this.

The latest legal challenge comes after years of criticism directed at City Hall over its reluctance to use its enforcement powers on the property.

As The Pointer previously reported, the City resisted issuing comprehensive property standards orders despite mounting evidence of deteriorating buildings, exposed materials, illegal dumping and growing concern from neighbouring residents. Mayor Mat Siscoe himself had previously maintained the City lacked authority to compel a cleanup, a position contradicted by the sweeping compliance orders eventually issued in May.

Those orders represented the first significant enforcement action against the property in years. They required the owners to either repair or demolish numerous unsafe structures, remove debris, secure buildings and bring the sprawling industrial complex into compliance with municipal property standards.

The Megnas appealed.

During a June hearing before the Property Standards Appeal Committee, legal representatives argued many of the City’s orders were unreasonable or unnecessary. After hearing evidence from both sides, however, the committee dismissed nearly all of the appeal, concluding the orders were justified while extending the compliance deadline by 120 days.

For nearby residents, the committee’s decision appeared to mark a long-awaited turning point after years of watching the former manufacturing complex continue to deteriorate.

Now that progress has again been placed in jeopardy and the community is watching.  

Gwen Kennedy is a spokesperson for The Coalition for A Better St. Catharines, the local community group that has been fighting to have the site cleaned up for almost a decade. In comments to The Pointer she expressed disappointment that the property owners, the Megnas, had chosen to elevate the issue into the courts, after more than a decade of controversial behaviour by Robert Megna.  

“This appeal means more delay for a community that has already waited too long. The clean up order from the City offered hope that meaningful action would finally begin, instead we are facing more legal proceedings while the site remains unchanged.”

The Megnas have a long history of legal problems.

Bayshore was sued after ATCO Structures and Logistics Ltd. alleged the company stopped paying the lease for a trailer in 2016.

CRS Contractors Rental Supply took Bayshore to court in 2017 alleging it stopped paying outstanding amounts for equipment.

Modern Corp. of Niagara Falls also took Bayshore to court alleging the company failed to pay for waste disposal equipment.

California Closets of Cambridge filed a claim against Chiara Megna alleging work done at the family home was not paid for.

Bayshore was sued in 2017 after a dispute over payment for an appearance by boxer Mike Tyson.

And in 2017 Attar Metals Inc. sued Bayshore and the Megnas for $15 million alleging they did not honour a contract that would have seen Attar get revenues from the sale of metals on the site. The claim alleged Bayshore received proceeds from the secret sale of assets on the site and mortgaged the property twice for a total of $25 million after entering into the contract with Attar. The matter was eventually settled in 2020.

Bayshore and the Megnas denied all the claims against them in all of the matters.

In its recent Notice of Appeal, 2390541 Ontario Inc., the company directed by Chiara Megna, asks the Superior Court to overturn the Property Standards Appeal Committee’s decision and set aside the City’s compliance orders issued under the Ontario Building Code Act.

If the court declines to rescind the orders altogether, the company asks that the deadline for complying with them be extended until June 30, 2027, more than a year beyond the original compliance date and more than eight months beyond the October 23, 2026 deadline granted by the committee.

As a further alternative, the company asks the court to modify the orders “in a manner that this Honourable Court deems just.” The owners are also seeking legal costs associated with the appeal.

Whether the appeal ultimately succeeds remains to be seen, but it ensures the dispute over one of St. Catharines’ largest abandoned industrial properties will continue inside a courtroom before the cleanup ordered by the City can move forward.

In the appeal, the owners argue the City imposed an unrealistic timeline for complying with orders involving a former industrial property with complex structural and environmental issues.

According to the filing, the original compliance deadline of June 12, 2026, approximately three weeks after the orders were issued, did not provide sufficient time to complete extensive engineering reviews, coordinate with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP), or safely sequence the required work.

The company says it retained engineering consultants to review the City’s orders, identify additional regulatory requirements that could be triggered by remediation work, and develop an appropriate plan for carrying out repairs.

It further argues that, even after the Property Standards Appeal Committee extended the compliance deadline to October 2026, the timeline remains unreasonable given the complexity of the site and the need to coordinate work with multiple regulatory agencies.

That argument stands in contrast to assurances provided by City staff during the committee hearing. On more than one occasion, municipal bylaw officials indicated the October 23 deadline was not intended to be inflexible. They told committee members that if the owners demonstrated meaningful progress toward complying with the orders, the City could exercise discretion in its enforcement rather than strictly adhering to the deadline.

Staff emphasized they would be looking for tangible progress, not completion by a fixed date, and said they anticipated working collaboratively with the owners as remediation of the former industrial site moved forward.

Those comments formed part of the City’s argument that the additional 120 days granted by the committee struck an appropriate balance between allowing the owners more time to address the site’s complexity while ensuring the work finally moved ahead after years of delay.

This latest twist follows the recent discovery that soil on the property is contaminated with asbestos, a development that has heightened concerns about the site’s condition and underscored the importance of ensuring remediation proceeds without unnecessary delay. 

The appeal is set to be heard at the St. Catharines courthouse on August 13 at 10 a.m. For residents, it marks another chapter in a years-long battle marked by delays, leaving them to wait once again before learning whether the City’s cleanup orders will stand. 

Gwen Kennedy hopes the Megnas do the right thing. 

“We urge the property owners to accept responsibility and move forward without further delay. St. Catharines deserves a safe, remediated property—not more years of waiting.”

Email: ed.smith@thepointer.com

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