Redeveloped Site Get Seal of Approval

08/10/2005

Developer among first to meet new provincial guidelines

BY MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION
EXPOSITOR STAFF / BRANTFORD

Local Brownfield redeveloper King and Benton is the first company in the Brantford area to file provincially registered records of site condition verifying that two of its former industrial properties are environmentally up to snuff.

King & Benton Redevelopment Corp. has completed environmental assessments and filed a record of site condition (RSC) for the new Holmedale Business Centre at 85 Morrell Street.

The company took over the former Harding Carpets factory property more than two years ago and transformed it into a warehouse-distribution centre and providing a community room and industrial museum for the Holmedale community.

King & Benton has also gone through the same environmental assessment process and filed and RSC for the former Work Wear factory building at 143 Wellington St. at Clarence, and is in the midst of doing the same thing for a neighbouring property at 161 Wellington.

The company is redeveloping both for the transitional YM-YWCA, which will eventually be the Y Family Program Centre when the new permanent Y is built in the next two years

“We did it to show the high level of pride we take in our work and provide the comfort level to the public,” company president Steve Charest said Tuesday.

“The days of doing what you need to do to get under the wire are gone. We have to be good corporate citizens to the communities that we’re working in.”

According to new provincial environmental regulations, owners of brownfield sites have to do environmental assessments and file RSCs whenever they change a property’s use from industrial to institutional, residential or parkland.

An RSC certifies the sites are safe, providing a level of comfort about a former contaminated property to the public, new owners and other stakeholders such as financial lending institutions.

King & Benton didn’t have to go through the expensive process in its Holmedale project, because its redevelopment was done before the regulations came into effect.

Nonetheless, the company hired environmental firm Dillon Consulting Ltd. to do it anyway.

The Holmedale business centre will see an increase in traffic, not only from warehouse and distribution tenants, but also the public using the community room and museum, which is expected to be ready next month.

The former Work Wear factory will see greater activity when Y services start by the end of the summer.

Coun. Marguerite Ceschi-Smith, who has pushed brownfield cleanup and redevelopment for years, praised the company’s actions.

“Here is a private sector company that has taken the initiative to be as current as possible with new brownfield guidelines,” she said.

“Steve Charest is one of the first in the province to do this and certainly the first in Brantford.”

Going through the RSC process has been a learning experience for the company, the politicians and city staff as they get used to the new requirements, said Charest.

“We are going through a learning curve together, but it’s getting progressively easier.”