Attracting new industries is a central focus of Hamilton’s economic growth strategy, but the amounts of vacant and underutilized older industrial land available for this purpose are wildly divergent depending on who does the calculation, even within the city bureaucracy. An independent investigation indicates that city numbers are grossly understated and suggests Hamilton consequently is not following the anti-sprawl policies laid down by the provincial government.
Those policies require municipalities to give priority to “intensification and redevelopment” on existing lands “including the re-use of brownfield sites” with the objective of ensuring efficient use of already serviced lands before considering an urban boundary expansion.
In arguing for the aerotropolis expansion, the city calculated that as of 2006 there were only 47 acres of vacant land in the traditional employment zone along the bayfront. That’s just over one percent of the 4056 acres in the combined Bayfront and East Hamilton industrial areas, but five years later (at the end of 2011), the city’s annual employment land inventories showed 180 acres of “net developable” lands in these areas – 159 in the Bayfront and 21 in the East Hamilton zone.
That discrepancy, along with the visual impression that much more than one percent of these older industrial zones is vacant or underutilized, led the Hamilton Civic League to undertake an independent calculation using data from the city’s tax rolls. After consulting with the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation and a professional land use planner, HCL asked for a digital list of all Hamilton properties assessed as industrial for tax purposes.
When that was denied, six HCL volunteers spent a solid week at city hall manually going through 35,000 tax records and extracting details on over 1600 properties that have industrial assessment classifications. After excluding those found in the annual inventory reports, the search turned up an additional 215 acres classified as vacant industrial.
The researchers also examined the over 600 industrial properties that have been granted vacancy tax rebates, and identified 800 acres solely assessed as industrial receiving the rebates because of underutilization of parts of their lands. They also found another 1000 acres of properties assessed as commercial with vacancy rebates, many of which fell into industrial zones – a reflection of the effort of many companies including the two large steel corporations to reclassify some of their lands to the lower-taxed commercial designation.
HCL followed up their study with a review of internet-posted real estate offerings, finding more than 300 additional acres of industrial property on the market, including 94 acres at US Steel. The former Stelco sold 103 acres in 2006 to the Port Authority and another 150 the following year, but still holds over 800 acres in the former Hilton Works along the harbour.
The HCL findings were provided to the city and subsequently presented to the recent Ontario Municipal Board hearings on the aerotropolis, but the city’s lawyer and its lead consultant dismissed the study as unreliable – a view disputed by both the land use planner and the lawyer hired by Environment Hamilton and Hamiltonians for Progressive Development.
The two citizen groups contended that provincial anti-sprawl policies require the prioritization of re-development and more intensified use of existing industrial land before expansion onto farmland. They also criticized the city’s argument that older industrial lands should be discounted because they are not attractive to potential employers, and pointed to over 1800 empty acres in existing city greenfield business parks as more than enough for growth over the next 20 years.
Recent industrial development in Hamilton has located on both types of sites. Maple Leaf’s bread and wiener factories selected a total of 69 acres in the greenfield North Glanbrook business park, while the Port Authority has attracted a Parrish and Heimbecker grain distribution complex, a McAsphalt plant, and a 50-acre slag processing facility to the harbour front area, among other facilities.
Tim Horton’s chose a 12-acre greenfield site in Ancaster for its coffee roasting facility, while a group of land developers have announced the conversion of the 25-acre former Studebaker and Otis Elevator property into an industrial subdivision.