The Gardiner Shore Association (GSA) is an association made up of residents and property owners on Gardiner Shore road in Carleton Place, Ontario.
The Gardiner Shore community is in Beckwith Township, on the fringe of Carleton Place, Ontario, Canada. The community is made up of a mix of permanent residences, cottages and other properties where you will find long time residents and newcomers alike. It’s a great place to live, play and enjoy all that Mississippi Lake and the area has to offer.
Gardiner Shore has a long and colourful history in fact and it should come as no surprise that the land was originally owned by the Gardiner family and this was the case until 2002. You may also see references to 10th Line Shore in some documents but rest assured, it is also known by Gardiner Shore today.
Here is a 2012 article about Gardiner Shore.
The Transition of Gardiner’s Shore
(reprint of Mississippi Belle Magazine 2012 – by John Coburn)
In previous articles, I have mentioned how Mississippi Lake is transitioning from mostly seasonal cottages to more year round homes and nowhere is this more visible than the transition of Gardiner’s Shore (formerly known as McNeely’s Shore or 10th Line Shore).
Located close to the northeast end of Second Lake between Hay Shore and McGibbon Bay, this shoreline has always proved popular for its shallow sandy waterfront, proximity to Carleton Place, the short commute to Kanata (approximately 25 minutes) and wonderful sunsets. The shallow shoreline is particularly appealing to young families where children can play by the hour in waist-high water under the careful eye of their parents.
The community consists of nearly 90 properties stretched along a kilometer of recently surfaced road way. There are properties on both sides of the roadway and the non-waterfront residents have full lake access through a common lakefront park land. Personally, I have warm memories of my childhood years summering at my two aunt’s cottages along the shoreline. Back then (in the 60’s), it seemed to be a fairly remote area accessible by a very basic cottage road. It even had its own store to supply the residents with basic groceries, and especially candy and pop.
Up until about ten years ago, the property was owned by George and Keith Gardiner who rented plots to various cottage owners (a tradition handed down from their grandparents on the McNeely side). George and Keith took title to the shoreline back in 1962 but their family has enjoyed ownership dating back to 1890.
Not many cottage owners wanted to invest hard-earned dollars building year-round homes while they did not own the land their homes would sit on. Mortgage lenders frowned on lending to those living on rented land especially in the absence of a long-term lease. The Gardiners preferred an annual handshake agreement to a written lease. However, approximately seventeen years ago, they decided a change was needed and met with planners and local politicians in an attempt to subdivide the property into individual lots and allow the cottage owners the opportunity to actually own the land that they were occupying. This proved to be a time-consuming and expensive proposition. However, after five long years of satisfying countless objections, environmental concerns and obstacles, the subdivision agreement was approved and the current transition started.
One of the more difficult decisions involved moving owners of non-waterfront lots, deemed too small, to newly created back lots large enough to accommodate proper sewage disposal systems (most of these are now year-round residences). Many other important decisions had to be made and pricing the individual lots proved to be particularly difficult as the lots varied in both size and frontage. A formula was developed for the waterfront lots based primarily on lake frontage and lot dimensions. At the time, I was amongst many who consulted with George and Keith Gardiner on pricing and I felt they were very generous in offering prices well below market value to persuade and allow the cottage owners to buy their plots. Improvements to the road surface this past year add to the appeal of the area, especially for commuters. Today almost 60 properties are occupied year-round with many older cottages replaced by custom homes. A couple of these have sold for more than $550,000.00 which is remarkable when you look back at the sale prices of the cottages on rented land (one cottage in 1997 sold for $28,000 on rented land).
So as we look at this one particular shoreline over a very short 15 year timeline, we can easily see the trend of one-time family cottages giving way to year-round homes.