City lawyer takes Kal Tire's side in feud with J.J. Hilsinger

The brouhaha between Water Tower Inn owner J.J Hilsinger and his soon-to-be neighbour Kal Tire returns to City Council tonight.

As SooToday reported one month ago, Kal Tire is planning to move next to Hilsinger's inn from its current location in the industrial park on Drive In Road.

Hilsinger argues a tire business creates industrial noise and belongs in an industrial park, not next door to a hospitality establishment where as many as 100,000 travellers sleep every year.

He points to the city's zoning bylaw, which prohibits heavy equipment in the commercial area around the inn.

Tonight, the city's legal department will argue that the zoning bylaw contains no definition of heavy equipment, so commonly accepted definitions must apply.

City lawyer Jeffrey King will disagree with the Water Tower Inn's assertion that the heavy equipment prohibition includes transport trucks.

"Our research suggests that 'heavy equipment' is best defined as machinery used in the process of building roads,tunnels and construction and not regularly permitted to operate on the highway," King says in a report prepared for Mayor Provenzano and councillors.

“Heavy equipment is clearly not a commercial motor vehicle commonly known as a transport or other vehicles that are licensed to operate on a highway, but is what is commonly known as construction type equipment, being excavators, backhoes, and bulldozers, to name a few."

King points to classified ads at AutoTrader.ca.

Separate categories are offered there for commercial vehicles such as transports or buses; and heavy equipment machines used mostly to move dirt.

Thunder Bay’s zoning bylaw defines heavy equipment as a road-building machines, farm equipment, motorized construction equipment or any similar machinery.

The proposed Kal Tire location isn't on a recognized truck route, but King will argue that exceptions are allowed for:

• persons delivering or collecting goods or merchandise to or from, or providing services at the premises of bona fide customers
• persons going to or from business premises of the owner of the heavy truck concerned
• persons going to or from premises for the servicing or repairing of the heavy truck

"Therefore, the property in question is accessible to transports and is not a violation of the city’s heavy truck route schedule," King says.

Hugh MacDonald, lawyer for the Water Tower Inn, is expected to attend tonight's City Council meeting, as is Joseph Bisceglia, counsel for Mar-Li Investments Inc., owner of Northside Toyota.

Tonight's meeting will be livestreamed on SooToday starting at 4:30 p.m.