Kitchener, Ontario’s Largest Brownfield Redevelopment|HazMat Management

Kitchener, Ontario’s biggest abandoned industrial site is well on its way into being redeveloped into a 50,000-square-foot facility for a tool and die company and a 3,150-square-metre medical office building.

The 78-acres industrial site is located on the southeast corner of Bleams Road and Homer Watson Boulevard in Kitchener, approximately 100 km west of Toronto. It was developed with a 1.2 million square foot manufacturing facility that was constructed in several phases beginning in 1967. The facility had been used by Budd Canada to manufacture auto parts, ThyssenKrupp Budd Canada, and eventually by Kitchener Frame. The land has sat idle since 2009.

2010 Photo of fhe former Kitchener Frame Building (Photo Credit: Philip Walker/Record staff

In 2010, a group of investors purchased the property with the vision of redeveloping it. It has taken eight years for the redevelopment to reach its current state – a series of approvals from various levels of government and a plan to start construction in early 2019.

The site is still waiting approval of the Record of Site Condition (RSC) from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MOECP). It was filed in January of 2018. An RSC is typically required by on Ontario Municipality if a property is being redevelopment for a more sensitive land use (i.e., from industrial to commercial or residential). It is filed by an environmental consultant following the clean-up of a property. It summarizes the environmental condition of a property based on the completion of environmental site assessments (i.e., Phase I & II ESAs).

Site Clean-up

Demolition work and subsequent site cleanup got underway in November 2011. The environmental remediation cost an estimated $8.5 million.

A soil remediation program was conducted at the property between April and June 2016 in an attempt to reduce the
concentrations of the contaminants of concern s in soil identified at the property. The remediation activity at the site included the excavation of approximately 9,360 cubic metres (5,200 tonnes) of contaminated soil for disposal at a licensed non-hazardous waste landfill. No sediment or groundwater was remediated or removed for the purpose of remediation.

The clean-up of the site included the preparation of a Streamlined Tier 3 Risk Assessment Report. A risk assessment provides an approach for developing property specific standards (PSS) under Ontario Regulation 153/04 (Records of Site Condition (RSC) – Part XV.1 of the Act), made under the Environmental Protection Act (the Regulation). A Tier 3 Risk Assessment goes beyond the generic approach of a Tier 2 risk assessment and involves a longer and more detailed review by the MOECP. According to the filed RSC, the MOECP has approved of the Streamlined Tier 3 Risk Assessment.

As reported in the Kitchener Post, a total of $7,787,000 in direct remediation costs are eligible to be reimbursed by the city and region under a joint tax increment grant application. The total estimated post redevelopment assessment value is estimated at more than $111 million.

Redevelopment

In an interview with the Daily Commercial News, Janinen Oosterveld, manager of site development and customer service in Kitchener-Waterloo’s planning division stated: “Approvals to finalize the subdivision of the lands into development parcels is currently underway.”

As of mid-October, the city had received site plan applications for two developments — a 50,000-square-foot facility for a tool and die company and a 3,150-square-metre medical office building.

Plans for the redevelopment envisage nine industrial parcels, totaling approximately 39 acres.