SADC pursues community development on two fronts: an urban push into the Downtowns of our County's cities, and a rural push into the townships and villages we've come to love. Where we can only afford to promote one, our Downtown Ambitions come first—but we're building toward both.
Priority 1: Downtown Ambitions
Our Downtowns are where SADC can move fastest and be seen soonest. We're targeting Barrie, Orillia, Bradford, and Collingwood—downtown blocks and select neighbouring streets chosen for one quality above all: good mixed-use buildings worth restoring, in neighbourhoods worth cleaning up and helping thrive again.
First Steps: The Restaurant & Store at Memorial Square
Our first community businesses are a Restaurant and a Store at Memorial Square in Barrie—both turnkey properties, so we can hire staff and start making money right away. They're not just profit generators: they're the third spaces that let us be a community in, providing employment that can downstream into the skilled trades we'll need to improve our own buildings, and producing and selling the things both our community and our neighbours actually want and need. Once proven in Barrie, this is the standard we intend to repeat in Bradford, Collingwood, and Orillia.
First Steps: Housing Projects
Our housing strategy starts by working directly with the existing managers of multi-storey apartment buildings in Downtown Barrie, Bradford, Orillia, and Collingwood, rather than trying to acquire a building outright on day one.
- We establish both apartments of our own and a community room on the ground floor. Where a building has an unsold floor—or even half a floor—we partner on that space, along with an unsold commercial unit downstairs for our community's use.
- As in our Downtown businesses, we seek to incubate Autarian jobs where our people live, including skilled trades and other work that SADC can provide directly to the property owner.
- Once we've built a foothold and a reputation for good management and filling vacancies, we look at enhanced partnerships and other options—working toward an eventual goal of buying the building and running it outright.
The Longer-Term Vision
Downtown Malls
We want to bring back the Downtown mall—in the spirit of buildings like 50 Dunlop and 10 Western—as a mixed retail, community, and office space, and show Downtown what's possible inside them.
Autarian Quarters
The goal in each city is an Autarian Quarter: a defined part of Downtown and its neighbouring streets where we live, restore buildings, and help a struggling block become a thriving one again—alongside the people already there, not instead of them.
These Quarters are not gated or exclusive. Existing tenants, landlords, and neighbours are part of the plan from the start—see our commitment to Open Residency below.
Priority 2: Rural Autarian Parishes
The Parish is our rural form of Autarian organisation—land we own and work, put to use for farming, housing, and building a complete village, serviced as one. A Parish isn't just a farm with Autarians on it; it's a community we intend to build in full, from the ground up.
What a Parish Is
- Land held and worked by the community, supporting farming and housing together
- A village core, built and serviced like any other rural settlement
- A complete community—not just a workforce for the farm
Towns We'd Subordinate Parishes To
- Tottenham, Thornton, and Angus
- Stayner, Creemore, and Singhampton
- Dunedin and Shanty Bay
- Washago, and other villages of a similar size and character
What This Means for Existing Residents
For the towns and villages we'd settle near, a Parish means new neighbours committed to farming the land, maintaining it, and contributing to a small local economy—not a subdivision dropped in from outside. We want existing community members to see the benefit of Autarian residency in these areas before we ever break ground.
Priority 3: Condo Board Conversions
For Condo Boards looking to dissolve, SADC offers a more democratic, accountable, and supported way of governing a housing complex than the current condominium model provides. Your board becomes a Council of SADC. The members you elect get access to SADC staff, resources, and equipment to keep your complex running smoothly and safely, and your community gains access to the public SADC services that Simcoelandic Autarians also rely on.
In return, all we ask is the chance to expand your community a small amount, if required, so that we can afford to live there alongside you.
Our Priorities in a Converted Complex
Self-Sufficiency
An on-site retail plaza, communal ventures like a shared taxi service, and support for residents' own entrepreneurial businesses.
Ending Private Contracting
Security, safety, maintenance, snowplowing, waste, and construction become essential services delivered directly by SADC departments—not outside contracts.
One Standard of Bylaw
A single, County-wide SADC bylaw system replaces patchwork condo rules, so residents, Councils, and staff all know their rights and responsibilities—and staff answer to SADC and its people, not to any one Councillor.
Boards Become Councils
Running a complex is comparable to running a small city. SADC provides each converted complex with its own staff, the way a City provides staff to support its council—work currently left to volunteers.
Transit Where It's Missing
Where transit is inadequate or absent, SADC brings in Bus Simcoeland to run a new route in partnership with the City, serving residents and any neighbours along the way. See our Bus Simcoeland project.
Room to Live There
As part of any conversion, SADC acquires vacancies or builds a new block so Simcoelandic Autarians can live in the community—the exchange for what we bring to it.
A Voice at City Hall
Councils can speak on their community's behalf at City Hall and within SADC itself, call referendums when residents want one, and invest in the community's cultural fabric, not just its infrastructure.
No Renovictions
Any renovation work we undertake is strictly tied to code compliance and state-of-good-repair—never a pretext to displace residents.
Open Residency, Not an HOA
Across every priority above, one rule holds: our communities are open residency. We are not building homeowners' associations, and we are not interested in homogeneously Autarian neighbourhoods. We know what it feels like to be excluded from community, and the only way forward is to open our doors, not shut them. Everyone a Downtown Quarter, a Parish, or a converted complex already welcomes is welcome to stay and be part of what we build together.
Want to Be Part of It?
Whether you're a resident, a landlord, a Condo Board, or a neighbouring town, SADC wants to hear from you about our Land & Community Development plans.
Register as an Autarian