No takers for Harding factory
But City does make $60,000 on sale of parking lot
04/25/2003
BY MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION
EXPOSITOR STAFF / BRANTFORD
The city is free to move ahead to the next step in its cleanup of the Harding Carpets brownfield, says Coun. Marguerite Ceschi-Smith, after a tax sale of three properties that make up the site closed Wednesday.
One property sold while two others were untaken.
At the close of tenders at 3:30 p.m., no bids had been received on a 9.7acre property holding the main building of the defunct carpet maker at 85 Morrell St. The property had a cancellation bid of $3.76 million, equal to the total tax arrears that had collected over the past five years.
A 3.4acre property at 82 Morrell that was once Harding's parking lot sold for $158,500 to Maddock Manufacturing Ltd. The bid exceeded by $60,785 a tax arrears cancellation price of $97,715.
The smallest property of the trio, 18 Reade St., had only one bid, but a cheque accompanying the tender was not certified. Under tax sale rules the bid had to be disqualified.
As a result, said city solicitor Larry Tansley, the city is now free to move on to the next step of a planned cleanup of the two unsold properties - conducting environmental assessments before council decides what to do next with the properties.
Under new Brownfield regulations passed by the provincial government, those properties remain in a sort of holding pattern while the city has unfettered access to them for one year to conduct the necessary tests and studies before deciding whether to take possession or refuse them, which would put them back in the tax sale process.
If the city decides to take the two properties, it has four years of protection from environmental liability while it conducts a cleanup and either redevelops or remarkets them.
Tansley said city staff is expected to move "as quick as can be" to conduct the environmental studies, "because a year isn't very long."
An environmental consultant has to be hired, tests have to be conducted, a report written and the results brought to the Brownfield’s community advisory committee.
"It's another step," Ceschi-Smith, who chairs that committee, said of the tax sale's outcome.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
'I’m a bit concerned about the length of time it might take to conduct the assessment. This is also an election year and some time could be lost at council. It's imperative that we move forward with it as soon as possible."
If council ultimately decides to take the two properties, Ceschi-Smith said a process should be in place for community involvement in a redevelopment strategy — as has been done for other Brownfield’s.
She pointed to a multi-stage strategy of study and community meetings used to develop a renewal plan for the 54-acre Greenwich Mohawk Brownfield area that council has adopted in principle.
"The community must be involved in this process, too," Ceschi Smith said of the Harding site. "That's very important."
She said a well designed study and consultation process could encourage private sector partners.
Coun. Larry Kings, who represents the ward along with Paul Urbanowicz, said he and his wardmate also want the neighborhood involved.
"Anybody who has talked to Paul and me about this building doesn't want the building going back to heavy industrial," he said. "I see interest in high residential or light industrial uses."
A preliminary environmental assessment suggests the main property, containing the large vacant factory, has a moderate to high risk of contamination.
Council could decide to simply forgive the taxes and sell the property "as is" to interested developers. But Tansley pointed out that council would have to go through a formal process that could take months to forgive those taxes, and it would have to take over the property first before trying to sell it.
If it did that without conducting an assessment, the buyer would have to accept the consequences. But the new Brownfield regulations could expose the city as a short-term owner to future liability for any contamination on the site until it is cleaned up.
