afransen
Senior Member
Because Doug is Getting It Done.
|
|
|
Planned Sprawl in the GTA
- Thread starter innsertnamehere
- Start date
Sunnyside
Active Member
I mean, Mt. Hope exists right next to the airport. I would guess the lands in Ancaster are owned by a residential developer. Very marketable and there’s not much room elsewhere in Ancaster. This parcel showed up in some old greenbelt maps as whitebelt land, so I think there’s been some back and forth on it for a while. It could turn into employment land, but considering all these new lands are supposed to have shovels in the ground by 2025, I’d imagine the residential market could move faster than commercial/light industry.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
It has to do with the noise contours coming from the airport, which have been supported as being hostile to residential development by the OLT as recently as this week.
The proposed greenbelt areas to be removed in Hamilton are shown here - you can see most of the Ancaster removal sits within the noise contour of the airport. It's "possible" for res development to happen of course, but the airport noise will be problematic. The urban boundary additions that the PCs made to Hamilton outside of the greenbelt additions were careful to ensure new residential areas weren't added within the noise contour of the airport, so it's interesting to see them being potentially added at the same time through the proposed greenbelt changes. These lands are maybe a kilometre from the main runway approach path for the Hamilton Airport, we are talking about large jets landing at a 24-hour airport perhaps 1-2,000ft above these areas. It would be loud.
Sunnyside
Active Member
I am familiar with the area, that makes quite a bit more sense though- I can usually see planes over what I now presume is that parcel.
I suppose being employment land is significantly better than new residential sprawl, both for the city finances and urban integrity of the city. But wouldn’t this generate far more regional freight traffic? There’s no way the 403 or QEW-linc can take on all this, assuming it’s all coming south from the GTA.
ericmacm
Active Member
Highway 403 widening through Brantford and Hamilton, twinning of HWY 6 south of the 403 to YHM, widening of RHVP, and widening of the QEW are all planned for the area. The the Hamilton-Brantford corridor is basically being set up to absorb large amounts of industrial demand for the GGH for when the remaining developable lands in the GTA are filled up.
Sunnyside
Active Member
Thanks for that, wasn't aware of these plans. Are there actually any developable employment lands in the GTHA besides Hamilton/Brantford right now? I'm not aware of any, and the only place I can imagine any could be are in York Region, which is probably close to maxing out any greenfield employment area.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
Plenty all across the region. Milton has huge employment areas east of James Snow just starting up, Oakville has employment lands along the 407, The 427 extension runs exclusively through large employment areas in Vaughan, Brampton, and Bolton, Caledon has large employment areas along Mayfield, and there are large employment areas in Durham along the 407.
The industrial market completely exploded through COVID for demand in warehousing facilities, after 10-15 years of the employment market demand stagnating though. Employment lands went from basically dead land with no demand to the most valuable land in the GTA in the span of about 12 months, developers are scrambling to get their hands on any serviced employment land they can right now.
Slate Asset Management just paid half a billion dollars for Stelco's land in Hamilton, for example - land that literally earlier this year was deemed worthless due to contaminants by MPAC. The rush on industrial development land is nothing short of shocking.
ericmacm
Active Member
Worth also adding that the 413 is planned to service many of those new employment areas throughout Halton, Brampton, Caledon, and Vaughan. However, they will likely all be filled out in the next 20 years, hence the need for Hamilton and Brantford.
COVID changed industrials and logistics completely, everyone saw how fragile and easily disrupted the modern “just in time” product supply chain model is, hence the massive rush for new employment lands and facilities to provide redundancies. Paying half a billion dollars for the Stelco lands is a lot easier to stomach when you know that companies losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year due to delays would pay through the nose to lease a warehouse in such a prime location.
COVID changed industrials and logistics completely, everyone saw how fragile and easily disrupted the modern “just in time” product supply chain model is, hence the massive rush for new employment lands and facilities to provide redundancies. Paying half a billion dollars for the Stelco lands is a lot easier to stomach when you know that companies losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year due to delays would pay through the nose to lease a warehouse in such a prime location.
afransen
Senior Member
Ecommerce is also much more industrial-space intensive. I laugh at people who used to say Amazon isn't a bricks and mortar retailer--they have a lot of sqft of 'retail' space, and their 'stores' are frequently upwards of 1M sqft.
Sunnyside
Active Member
I actually am aware of Slate's purchase, lots of chatter on SSP about it considering it's such a massive investment and seems to be a rare instance of reusing legacy industrial land for modern industrial uses. The potential with the site is a bit different from typical employment areas, I think; you effectively have a parcel with lake, rail, and highway access all bundled into one (emphasis on the lake- not many places around that offer deep-water shipping access). And, it is an absolutely huge site. It's shooting from ~800 jobs to over 25,000. It is going to be a great city-building project and will hopefully revitalize the north end dramatically. A fantastic scheme if you ask me.
I wasn't aware that Oakville had lands along the 407, though, or any of the other plans you mentioned. Do you find these just by combing through municipal land use plans? It is unfortunate that employment areas seem to be mostly planned on a municipal level and seem to have little coordination with the province. Would certainly make it easier to understand them. They don't show up in regional plans often, despite occupying huge swathes of space. The Neptis foundation was good for addressing their lack of attention on a planning level.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
The province does designate "provincially significant employment areas" through the growth plan.
To find where they are, you have to dig through municipal official plans, yes. You can look at the regional level ones and they typically will delineate where employment areas are (Peel, Durham, York, Halton, Simcoe, etc.)
Sunnyside
Active Member
Actually, I just found a pretty neat tool for this. Theres an interactive map from the province you can use to look at them
https://ontario-mma.maps.arcgis.com...gallery=true&disable_scroll=false&theme=light
wopchop
Building Toronto
Greenbelt lands for Southlake site bought for $80M in September
Records show land west of Newmarket was purchased by Green Lane Bathurst GP just weeks before the province proposed opening it for development
www.newmarkettoday.ca
"Records show that Greenlane Bathurst GP Inc. is the owner of the land located west of Bathurst Street and south of Miller’s Sideroad in King Township — land currently designated Greenbelt that the province now wants to open for development. The firm was incorporated July 19, 2022 and records show it transferred $80 million to Schickedanz Bros Limited to purchase the land Sept. 15. "
"King council is pushing for the province to fast-track the land as a potential site for a new Southlake Regional Health Centre campus. Mayor Steve Pellegrini said it is land they have eyed for some time, but the hospital site would only take a small portion of the more than 500 acres of the property. "
Kind of sad. I understand the need for hospital expansion, but Southlake is very centrally located. It has transit access (BRT + GO Train). With very recent investment (Davis Drive VIVA) and upcoming investment (GO all-day service). This new site is the edge of nowhere and would for sure have terrible access.
You would think that the example of Toronto would show that hospitals are important employers and drivers of local economies.
Last edited:
innsertnamehere
Superstar
Indeed. It's not like southlake has a shortage of land to expand onto either, they just may have to build a parking garage.
lenaitch
Senior Member
It can really only expand to the east, maybe. There is already a garage on the west. There is some parking to the south but a LTC building as well.
In terms of accessibility and serving population centres, I can think of better locations than just to the west of Newmarket centre that butts up against the Holland Marsh for a campus. There is a lot more growth to the east and south.