City incentives, red-hot real estate market fuel action on brownfields
A city program created in 2010 to entice investors to build on contaminated old industrial sites has been blazingly successful in the last 18 months.
In its first six years, uptake on the Brownfield Redevelopment Community Improvement Plan was tepid — just four approvals for grants to help investigate possible contamination and tax breaks to compensate for the considerable costs of cleanup. Things sped up in the next four years with 23 approvals. And since January 2020, interest has kicked into high gear with 15 approvals. The increased interest has been driven by the attractiveness of the incentives and the red-hot demand for housing, says Greg Atkinson, a senior City of Windsor planner who has administered the program since its inception.
“When I put the numbers together, I was quite impressed,” he said Wednesday, referring to a recent report on the program's success and suggested tweaks. Normally, such a review happens after five years, but there wasn't enough data available due to the low initial uptake.
“We've got that now,” said Atkinson, referring to the 42 total approvals — most of which happened in the last few years — to spur new projects on these usually vacant properties contaminated by years of use as factories, dry cleaners, fuel depots, landfills and gas stations.
City council has so far approved $13.2 million in incentives to drive redevelopment of derelict old properties. The result is private-sector investment to the tune of $182.7 million and a rise in the assessed value of the properties totalling $216.2 million.
“Just doing quick math, it's close to $14 in private investment for every public dollar in incentives,” Atkinson said. “So value for money, this community improvement plan (one of several created by the city in recent years) is really performing well.”
A study conducted in 2009 identified 137 brownfield properties on 559 acres that had sat unused for many years. “Historically, there has been little interest in redeveloping brownfield sites due to the uncertainty surrounding the extent of contamination and the potential cost of cleanup,” Atkinson's report said.
Mayor Drew Dilkens said the CIP was designed to change that.
“With the combination of the program and a hot real estate market, we're seeing a lot of action,” he said, explaining that developers are looking everywhere — including these brownfields — for places to build.
“Having this program ... is really instrumental in seeing some of the more difficult land activated in an improved way.”
The first application was approved back in 2012, for redevelopment of a long-abandoned gas station at Dougall Avenue and West Grand Boulevard. Andre and Hoda Abouasli used the grants available to help clean up contamination before building an attractive commercial building. The project served as a visible example of what the CIP can do to transform eyesores throughout the city, Atkinson said.
The projects since have ranged from modest to major. The biggest by far was for up to $12.5 million in incentives to help with the cleanup of the former GM Trim plant on Lauzon Road so that Farhi Holdings could proceed with a massive $250-million residential development that's one of the biggest in the city's history. A cleanup costing $6.5 million to remove contaminated soil and remove the footings and concrete from the former building cleared the way for the project, which is well underway.
Other big projects approved recently approved include $3 million in incentives for the 123-unit Graffiti residential/commercial project at 1200 University Avenue West; $457,700 for an 81-unit apartment project on Argyle Road, formerly the site of a pharmaceutical plant destroyed in a 2018 fire; and $579,185 for a project to build a 24-unit residential building at 840 Wyandotte St. E., formerly a commercial building destroyed in a 2016 fire.
And in June, a committee of council endorsed a CIP application to help with the $81,600 cleanup of an 11-acre former industrial site bounded by Walker Road, Edna Street, St. Luke Road and Richmond Street. The owner, the Sood family, has a plan to build three five-storey towers with 62 units each, plus 90 two-storey townhouses. It's a development Atkinson believes will help link up Walkerville and Ford City, which for decades have been separated
Having this program ... is really instrumental in seeing some of the more difficult land activated in an improved way.
by industrial wasteland.
The CIP provides grants for 50 per cent of the cost of studies to see how feasible it is to redevelop a brownfield and study what it would cost to clean it up. Those are cheques the city writes in the range of $7,500 to $25,000. The CIP can also reduce development charges by 60 per cent. But the biggest incentives by far are the Brownfields Property Tax Assistance and Brownfield Rehabilitation Grant programs, which provide annual grants to offset either 70 or 100 per cent of the tax increases that occur after a brownfield site is redeveloped into something more valuable, like an apartment building. The grants are paid out for 10 or 13 years and can end up saving developers many thousands of dollars — after the projects are built.
“The whole premise is the city is not collecting a lot of tax revenue, in some cases almost nothing, from these properties that are negatively impacting their neighbourhoods,” said Atkinson. “So forgoing some of that tax revenue, over a 10year grant period, is a low price to pay for a redevelopment where you might get 50 dwelling units where you had vacant land before.”
If all 42 of the approvals proceed, the result will be 962 new dwelling units on 119.2 acres of brownfields.