Farhi Holdings Corporation has been approved for almost $10.5 million in financial incentives from the City of Windsor as part of the Brownfield Redevelopment Community Improvement Plan.
The developer has owned a 24.5 hectare (60 acre) piece of vacant land next to the WFCU Centre, Windsors sports and entertainment complex, since 2005. It had been zoned industrial and had been the home of a GM trim plant and other industrial operations.
Farhi is working toward developing the site as office/retail/commercial space that will include 119 detached residential lots, four townhouse blocks, five multiple dwellings buildings, and a hotel. Approximately 3.1 hectares will remain for commercial development. The redevelopment is estimated to cost $59 million. The company is anticipating that work at the site will begin in the Fall.
The 24.5 hectare property represents approximately 11 percent of the City of Windsor’s brownfield inventory. It’s location next to the WCFU Centre makes it an ideal redevelopment opportunity.
The Windsor Brownfield Redevelopment Community Improvement Plan is designed to encourage the development of brownfields by offering incentives for development. In case of the Farhi Holdings property, the
$10.5 million in incentives from the City of Windsor will be in the form of tax breaks over a 13 year time period.
Farhi Holdings had a consultant conducted an environmental site assessment and estimate the cost of remediation. The environmental report estimates that 31,215 cubic metres of contaminated soil will need to be removed and replaced with clean fill. The total estimated cost for remediation and demolition work at the property is $6.4 million.
One section of the property (the area for the proposed hotel) has already been remediated and is not part of brownfield redevelopment incentive agreement. The hotel, once built, would generated between $380,000 to $450,000 in annual property tax revenue to the City.
A search of the Record of Site Condition (RSC) registry shows that one has not yet been filed for the property – 1600 Lauzon Road. Typically, an RSC is required prior a property zoning being changed. An RSC is a record of the site conditions and includes information on any remedial activity and the level of contamination at a site.
Farhi Holdings Corporation is a real estate and development company based in London, Ontario. The company was founded in 1988.
