check this out....what a load of crap.
Just tell us you're going ahead with aerotropolis and save us all the money of having some consultant lie to us. 2% is brownfield land....what a joke.
CATCH News – March 22, 2008
Only 2% of bayfront industrial land vacant
A consultant study has concluded that less than two percent of the old industrial bayfront is available for possible redevelopment. The report is being used to bolster arguments for the aerotropolis, but many councillors have reacted with confusion and disbelief at the findings.
The brownfield study <http://www.myhamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/AA8824DF-4643-4C09-8AE6-F72692C63482/0/Mar18PED08066.pdf> conducted by MMM Group used a number of provincial and federal databases to identify 1386 actual or potential contaminated sites in Hamilton, out of approximately 30,000 non-residential properties. But it decided only 91 are vacant and available – with most of the acreage in parts of the city not zoned for industrial development.
In the 3800-acre bayfront industrial area stretching from Wellington Street to Gray’s Road, slightly less than 75 acres met the study’s definition of brownfield. As a result, economic development staff are arguing the city needs to add over 2800 acres of greenfield lands around the airport to accommodate projected job growth.
Slightly smaller projections of need were issued a year ago, and led council to order the brownfield study in the belief that a significant amount of older industrial land could be re-used before considering more expansion onto prime farmland around the airport.
Employment along the bayfront has declined by more than 30,000 jobs in the past quarter-century and a drive along Burlington Street suggests that vast stretches of parking lots and closed buildings are no longer being used. But the study argues there is actually more brownfield land in four suburban business parks, including 44 acres in Flamborough.
Councillors spent over an hour questioning <http://www.hamiltoncatch.org/view_article.php?id=272> their staff and the consultants at this week’s planning committee with mixed results. Brad Clark, Brian McHattie, Terry Whitehead, Bob Bratina and Scott Duvall all questioned the figure as much too low, while Lloyd Ferguson celebrated it as evidence that Hamilton is in much better shape than expected and only needs better enforcement of property standards in industrial areas.
Clark repeatedly challenged the definitions used in the study and succeeded in adding another 232 sites that brownfield’s coordinator Carolyn Reid acknowledged staff “would classify as abandoned underutilized, based on the tax rolls”. However, the size and location of these additional properties remains unclear.
McHattie pressed for a prediction of what lands might come free over the next 23 years – the planning period being used to calculate how much airport land will be part of a greatly expanded aerotropolis business park. He moved a motion that “staff report back on the inclusion of an additional category of employment lands that may become available over the 2031 planning horizon, including the number of hectares in that category.”
But that move was blocked by Guy Paparella, director of airport development, who intervened in the discussion, and argued that “exactly that factor” would be presented later in the day.
“We have taken those kinds of factors into account and our consultants are prepared to answer questions in that regard,” he stated, “so it’s really important to hear the remainder of the presentations today before you start doing those kind of things.”
McHattie agreed to delay his motion, but the meeting lasted over 8 hours and he was one of several councillors who left before it concluded. Staff and consultants eventually contended that employment on older industrial lands will decline over time and thus require even more greenfield areas to be developed.
Whitehead noted that Brantford seems to have identified more brownfield sites than Hamilton and questioned whether Hamilton’s inventory included unused lands owned by Stelco and Dofasco. He was told by Reid that “if there was an element of their properties that fit the vacant definition, then they would have been pulled into the vacant number”.
Bratina’s questioning revealed that functioning scrapyards are not considered brownfields, to which he pointed out that Liberty Energy had purchased a scrapyard for their proposed east Hamilton sludge incinerator. He also pointed to railway lands and other areas that appear to be available for redevelopment.
“I can’t believe the number [91],” he declared. “I’m not saying someone’s telling me a wrong number, it just strikes me as not logical for many of the reasons that have been stated. You drive around and you say, you’re kidding.”
Duvall asked about the former Rheem plant and was told that just because a building is boarded-up doesn’t mean that it’s vacant.
“If we have boarded-up buildings and there’s something going on inside, we’ve got a serious problem of what they’re actually manufacturing in there,” he responded. “It seems to me if we’re going at heading in this way, we’re looking at going to more greenfields .”
Ferguson saw things differently, suggesting that the perception that there are more brownfields than the study found indicates that property standards bylaws are inadequate.
“One of our two key issues was perception and community and our image problem,” he noted. “Do we have a property standards problem then if people who have these facilities are fully operational, paying taxes, but they look like heck on the outside and leave the perception to people driving through town that these are brownfields, derelict buildings?”
He initially called for better property standards bylaws, but Tim McCabe, the general manager of economic development and planning, disagreed, noting that enforcement is strictly on a complaint basis.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with our property standards bylaw. It’s just the level of enforcement and our enforcement policies with respect to complaints and the amount of resources that we can devote. And some of it we can’t clean up anyways. It may just look ratty or unkempt, but it’s beyond property standards. It’s really our approach to enforcement and the level of enforcement.”
Ferguson responded that “it can’t be that expensive to take plywood off the windows and put something a little more presentable on them, and maybe a coat of paint, and maybe cut the grass out front.”
He went on to suggest that the planning committee hold a meeting to determine “how we can appeal to the corporate social responsibility, the businesses in our community, to take some pride in ownership and not make them look desolate and create this image of a ghost town, if you will, with these boarded up buildings when it’s not necessary.”
The brownfield study was presented in conjunction with two other studies that will determine the amount of greenfield land the city needs to use for industrial purposes to meet a target of 80,000 additional jobs in Hamilton by 2031.
Consultation with “the public, land owners and various stakeholders” on the latter two studies will take place between now and a final decision in June. In contrast, at this point, the brownfield inventory has only been received for information and future use by staff.
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