Numerous economic opportunities await communities across Ontario if new legislation proposed by the government surrounding brownfield construction is passed, one town planner says.
Ian Laing, the director of community development in Parry Sound, says governments at every level stand to benefit from the proposed Brownfields Statute Law Amendment Act, which calls for looser guidelines for the redevelopment of brownfield sites while maintaining high environmental standards.
Brownfields are land where industrial or commercial activity once took place, but are now contaminated, underused or abandoned.
"The province has really seized this issue as something they want to try to get involved with and move along, whereas in past years, they really (weren't) too interested in dealing with brownfields," Laing says. "The interesting thing about brownfields is that they tend to be already developed and already have services by their properties; they don't require an awful lot from the point of view of servicing the property for development, and in a lot of communities the brownfields are pretty close to the downtown as well.
"All of this land, which is pretty valuable other than the fact that it's contaminated, lies vacant and often the taxes, as minimal as they are, aren't paid because the owners recognize that their property has a negative value."
Laing says the government is now working to encourage municipalities and the private sector to buy brownfield properties, clean them up and use them for development. One strategy is to provide financial benefit to an owner or developer of a brownfield site on the basis of the increased taxes that would result by developing the site.
"In other words, the site is sitting vacant now, you're getting very little in the way of taxes," Laing says. " If you just leave it be the way it is, you're going to continue getting very little in the way of taxes. But if it's developed, it's going to generate substantially more taxes to a municipality and you can use those additional taxes as an impetus towards providing a subsidy for the cleanup and development of the property."
Laing says Parry Sound has already started the process to allow for grants for owners or developers of brownfield sites based on the potential taxes that would be created by the development of the property.
"It's a sliding scale," Laing says of the grant process. "Once the property is developed, it creates (a certain) amount of dollars in extra taxes, and the municipality in the first year would give a grant equal to the extra taxes. This is all based on the cleanup costs, so it would all be money that is guaranteed to a developer to defray the costs of cleanup of the site, which is the costs that usually discourage a developer from getting involved."
In Parry Sound, Laing says a developer would receive a 100 per cent grant in the first year; that amount would decrease by 10 per cent each year until the tenth year when the developer would get only 10 per cent. Through time, the municipality would get a bigger chunk of the taxes generated.
There are currently two unnamed developers interested in cleaning up brownfield sites along Parry Sound's waterfront, although a deal has not been confirmed, Laing says.
"Parry Sound, for a number of years, was a fairly significant bulk oil storage location," Laing says. "The ships would come in and fill up the monster tanks right on the waterfront. So we've probably got 30 acres of more of waterfront land that was at one point or another used to bulk oil storage and at least has the potential to be contaminated."
One piece of waterfront land, owned by the municipality, has already been cleaned up and is awaiting development, Laing says. But financial obstacles are preventing the start of a proposed theatre complex that would house the city's music festival and sports centre showcasing hockey legend Bobby Orr.
"We have a lot of grants for the theatre/entertainment complex that we've proposed, but they're all related to having a certain amount of private development," he says. "We're trying to confirm the private development component before we can get the grants that we've been given by senior levels of government."
Brownfield sites along the waterfront aren't unique to Parry Sound. In Thunder Bay, the city's waterfront is undergoing rehabilitation work in preparation for a waterfront development project there, too.
Mark Smith, the general manager of the city's planning and building division, says Thunder Bay's waterfront is likely the biggest brownfield site in the city. A multimillion-dollar waterfront project has been proposed for the area, featuring a 180-room Sheraton Four Points Hotel, an amusement park, time-shared condominiums, shops, restaurants and water attractions.
Smith agrees that the province's proposed brownfields legislation will open up the doors to new economic opportunities by making the rules for cleanup and development clearer.
"If this legislation accomplishes what it says it's trying to achieve, that will certainly be a good thing," Smith says. "This legislation amends a number of different acts (and) that's a change that we support."
The City of Thunder Bay, he says, is one of the first communities to create a community improvement plan for some of the local waterfront lands, allowing the city to grant back any increase in municipal taxes to a developer to offset the cost of cleaning up the site.
And while the waterfront is the biggest brownfield site, Smith says there is plenty of land in the area that could be considered brownfield property.
"There are a lot of other lands sprinkled throughout the city where there used to be a gas station or it had an industrial zone applied to it because it had been used for warehousing different types of materials." Smith says there is a real need for clearer guidelines for brownfield development, and once the province sets out more specified rules, developers will know what is expected of them when they take on a brownfield site.
