Harding plant tour 'Blows my mind'
BY MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION AND SUSAN GAMBLE
EXPOSITOR STAFF / BRANTFORD
Mayor Chris Friel and Coun. Larry Kings were scrambling Tuesday to keep together the city's controversial deal with an industrial developer to buy the Harding Carpets Brownfield site for a warehousing operation.
The mayor was also making arrangements to install security around what has turned out to be, not a vacant 334,300-square-foot building, but one full of piles of products, debris, scrap tires, illegal activities and evidence everywhere of squatters. .
It's something city councillors and the developer, Steve Charest, president of Toronto-based King and Benton Development Corp., had not seen before a hastily arranged tour with the media Tuesday.
"If we had seen this we would probably have handled it differently," Charest told Friel and Kings at one point during Tuesday's tour. "How all this got here and where this is from blows my mind. We weren't aware of this when we made the offer. If the city wants to reconsider, well reconsider, too."
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Wed Oct 22, 2003
Old Factory 'a toxic dump'
BY SUSAN GAMBLE
EXPOSITOR STAFF / BRANTFORD
Broken shards of glass crunch underfoot as a small group of us maneuver past tall rolls of foam, through the dark cavernous spaces of what was once a bustling carpet mill. Tuesday tour is conducted by flash light and under the ambient light that spills in from broken skylights or cave-in fan housings in the ceiling. "We avoid areas where bolts and wiring protrude from the floor and stay back from untested edges while on the roof of the building. It's a first look at the Harding site for the sellers the city of Brantford, rep resented by Mayor Chris Friel and Coun. Larry Kings and the prospective buyer, Steve Charest of King and Benton, an industrial developer.
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