Downtown shopping poised to expand?
Lands around Vaughan Harvey extension could be home to Metro's 'third retail power node, to join Champlain Place, Trinity Drive'
By Brent Mazerolle
Times & Transcript Staff
Published Wednesday October 3rd, 2007
Appeared on page A1
For years now, it has been predicted that linking Vaughan Harvey Boulevard to the Gunningsville Bridge and Assomption Boulevard would spur development at the western edge of downtown Moncton.
Now less than a week after the last link has opened to traffic, it appears those development plans are taking shape.
First there are the Sobey's supermarket and NB Liquor outlet under construction at the southeast corner of Main Street and Vaughan Harvey.
And now the land directly across from that, where once Moncton's exceedingly humble first Frenchy's outlet once stood on the now essentially defunct Tannery Street, has been assessed at $1.3 million and is poised for development.
"This is what Vaughan Harvey's all about," said Downtown Moncton Centre-Ville's general manager Daniel Allain said yesterday. "This is why DMCI has been pushing for this for so long."
Moncton City Council this week looked at a tentative subdivision plan for the land because landowner CN has entered into a purchase and sale agreement on the property, according to a Greater Moncton Planning District Commission report to council made public at Monday's regularly scheduled meeting of council.
A call to CN was not returned yesterday.
As well, a call made late in the day to Sobey's subsidiary ECL Properties to see if that company might be expanding its holdings in the area was not returned by the end of the business day.
A transaction between the two corporations has been long the subject of speculation in local development circles.
The planning commission report states, "no development plans have been submitted for the site."
Council voted to take cash in lieu of land for public purposes. At an established rate of eight per cent, the city added $104,000 to its coffers with its decision last night, but potential development on the land could mean a much bigger windfall with future property tax revenues.
The land lies directly to the west of Vaughan Harvey Extension and stretches from Main Street south to the CN main rail line. It curves west around the bottom of the residential neighbourhood bounded by Fownes and Prince streets before ending a short distance east of Jonathan Creek. The parcel of land is a bit more than five-and-a-half hectares or almost 14 acres in size.
Whatever the development that takes shape, it seems certain at least some soil remediation will be required. For decades, the area was home to various heavy industries. Tannery Street was, in fact, so named because it once was the home of a number of tanneries, which used various chemicals in their leather making.
Various rail yard activities have also taken place in the vicinity throughout the 20th century, so hydrocarbon contamination from coal and diesel is likely.
The experience with the land dug up for the rail underpass that allowed Vaughan Harvey to punch through was that the soil had hydrocarbons but no significant heavy metals. That's relatively good news, as hydrocarbon-saturated soil can be entombed beneath buildings, clay or asphalt and not pose any significant health risk. It's not the sort of thing you would want the kids digging up in the backyard, however, so that leaves a question mark over the possibility of residential development.
The former industrial land is now zoned for commercial business development, at any rate, and that suits Allain just fine.
"There's going to be a third retail power node in our region to join Champlain Place and Trinity Drive," he said. "And it's going to be here in the heart of the city."
Allain said he took a call from a site locator property shopping for a client, just yesterday, giving him a chance to sing the praises of the area.
While property scouts rarely disclose who they are working for, Allain said the scout did at least divulge that she represented a national retailer looking to build 30,000 square feet (2,700 square metres) of space. For those having trouble picturing those dimensions, the Future Shop on Plaza Boulevard is 25,000 square feet.
He said he provided her with information about Metro Moncton's other retail powerhouse areas -- better to land investment anywhere in the tri-community than see it go elsewhere -- but he said he hoped he had the scout now thinking about another viable option in the heart of the community.
"It's all coming together," Allain said upon hearing about apparent progress in developing this latest parcel.
The question that remains however, is just what is coming together on Tannery Street.
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Eco-revolution to take over Moncton
Schwarzenegger's energy advisor keynote speaker at conference
TOOL HELP
By Aloma Jardine
Times & Transcript Staff
Published Wednesday October 3rd, 2007
Appeared on page C2
The "rock stars of the sustainability movement" are headlining Moncton's ecoRevolution conference Nov. 27.
The presence of keynote speaker Terry Tamminen, an energy and environmental policy advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, was announced earlier in the year, but a number of further speakers were unveiled at a press conference yesterday at the Capitol Theatre.
"The rock stars of the sustainability movement are coming to this," says local businessman Craig Evans. "These aren't pseudo-experts, they are the real deal."
Evans, who owns the Pizza Delight at 1313 Mountain Rd. and works with Polycello Packaging in Amherst, N.S., decided to get involved with the conference as he is particularly interested in helping small business owners who are large energy consumers find ways of becoming more sustainable.
Restaurants, for example, use huge amounts of energy cooking and heating and freezing and chilling, but most are not in a position to spend huge amounts of cash to replace all of their equipment with energy efficient varieties.
"As we try to figure out what we can afford to do, we need help with that," he says.
Evans says the necessary information is out there, but there is no one-stop shop to find it and business owners often lack the expertise to know if what they are reading or hearing is true, which is where the conference will come in.
Rick DesBrisay, chairman of ecoRevolution, says the symposium has two main aims.
"One is to create the desire to actually go do something about it, and two, (to provide) specific ideas that they can apply to actually do something. So it is both a motivational thing and a practical one -- what can I do tomorrow to be more environmentally-friendly?" he says. "Our job is to tell them where to go, what to do, who to talk to."
Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce CEO Valerie Roy says in many cases companies want to implement better environmental practices, but don't have the know-how or time to acquire it.
"When you are a small business you are very, very tied down with the day-to-day operations of your business as it sits right now with today's technology. You want to move forward, but you really don't know where to begin," she says.
The idea for the conference grew out of a brainstorming session among local business leaders.
"By bringing business people around the table to talk about things that are important to them and to identify perhaps those gaps in terms of their knowledge of how to go forward, that was where this idea came from, so it was really led by the business community," Roy says.
"It really is one of those things that has grown and grown and grown since we started the process and it seems more and more relevant as we go forward."
In the spirit of sustainability, Roy says the GMCC is also looking at how it can make its practices more environmentally-friendly and a start was yesterday's press conference where they used mugs, cutlery, and cloth napkins instead of disposables to serve refreshments.
Roy says moving toward sustainable practices not only makes good environmental sense, it makes good business sense.
"They are actually saving a lot of money by being environmentally-friendly, which increases their bottom line, so why not do it?" she says.
The conference's presenting sponsor, Aliant, is a good example of a business making a few changes that offer positive impacts all around.
In the last year nearly 46,000 customers and employees switched to paperless billing, which has saved four million sheets of paper - that's over 500 trees -- and 600 tonnes of office waste was recycled at the company's major office centres.
Tele-conferencing instead of travelling among customers and employees also saved nearly 120,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions -- the equivalent of removing 23,000 vehicles from the road for one year.
One of the speakers at the conference is Aliant's vice-president of communications and public affairs, Robyn Tingley, who will be sharing more about the greening of the company.
DesBrisay says they're expecting to draw 300 to 400 people to the conference from throughout Atlantica -- the Atlantic provinces, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
The majority of the presentations are being held at the Delta Beauséjour, but Tamminen's keynote speech will be delivered at the Capitol Theatre at 7 p.m. to give more people the opportunity to attend.
Tickets for the day-long conference are $375 for chamber of commerce or board of trade members, $450 for non-members, and $200 for students and seniors, plus applicable taxes.
Tickets can also be purchased exclusively for the keynote speech through the Capitol Theatre box office at a cost of $70.
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