Business park north of Welland Walmart could include restaurants, hotel

Land behind Welland’s Walmart store is being prepared for future development that could include restaurants, warehouses, labs, light manufacturing and a hotel.

Fourteen new lots and a new road will be built north of the SmartCentres property, said city planner Grant Munday.

“We’ve been getting calls from the public wondering what’s going on behind Walmart,” he said.

Land-clearing machines have been working on the land — it borders Highway 406 to the east, River Road to the west and the Welland River to the north — for the past couple of weeks.

Walmart, Canadian Tire, Rona Home, Mark’s and Dollar Giant are the five stores that make up SmartCentres.

“It’s a previously-approved plan of subdivision for a business park. One of the lots just had a minor variance approved on it for a hotel,” Munday said Monday afternoon.

River Road, he said, will be extended north from where it currently ends by the Atlas landfill remediation site and a new road, to be called Power Drive, will be built.

Power Drive will go east toward Highway 406 through the property and all of the lots will be accessed off of it eventually. All of the lots will have to be serviced as well.

Munday said the business park was originally approved by the city in 2012 and is the second phase of development in the area. The first phase was what is now SmartCentres.

The new business park would also allow for such things as transportation businesses, logistics, research and development facilities, training facilities and call centres.