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The Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Green Municipal Fund™ (GMF) defines a brownfield site as “an abandoned, vacant, derelict or underutilized commercial or industrial property where past actions have resulted in actual or perceived contamination and/or threat to public health and safety and where there is an active potential for redevelopment.”
One of the crucial steps for municipalities dealing with these kinds of properties is to develop a strategy. A number of communities have prepared redevelopment strategies with funding assistance from GMF. Five such strategies have been completed and submitted to FCM, and are profiled below. Given that financing is often one of the greatest obstacles in the redevelopment process, many of the strategies focus on options and incentives for financing brownfields redevelopment. The full report for each initiative is available from the GMF Approved Projects Database.
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Cornwall Brownfield Strategy and Action Plan (GMEF 3798)
City of Cornwall, Ontario
As the second part of its brownfield strategy, the City of Cornwall developed a range of programs to encourage redevelopment of brownfield sites. The programs focus primarily on financial incentives, and include a redevelopment grant program, a municipal tax cancellation assistance program, a redevelopment fee rebate program, a municipal tipping fee waiver program, and others. The report for this initiative includes specific recommendations for evaluating and selecting applications for each of the proposed programs.
Chatham-Kent Brownfield Development Strategy (Community Improvement Plan)
(GMEF 5678)
Municipality of Chatham-Kent, Ontario
The Municipality of Chatham-Kent’s brownfield strategy and Community Improvement Plan is unique among these five profiled strategies in that it focuses on brownfields and bluefields. Bluefields are institutional or community facilities that are no longer in use, such as former schools, hospitals, or courthouses. The final report provides a solid summary of legislation relevant to brownfield redevelopment in municipalities in Ontario, as well as a review of best practices and programs in several municipalities in Ontario and in the United States.
City of Ottawa Brownfield Redevelopment Strategy (GMEF 5819)
City of Ottawa, Ontario
The City of Ottawa developed a brownfield redevelopment strategy and prepared a Community Improvement Plan. The goal of the city’s redevelopment strategy is to “set out a general policy framework that will guide the city’s program activities to promote brownfield redevelopment in Ottawa.”
Welland Brownfield Redevelopment Community Improvement Plan (GMEF 7016)
City of Welland, Ontario
The City of Welland’s brownfield strategy focuses on incentive programs, municipal leadership, and program monitoring. The Community Improvement Plan that accompanies the strategy elaborates on these three elements, and outlines a marketing strategy to ensure the city’s incentive programs are effectively communicated to property owners, developers and potential end users.
City of Brockville Brownfield Community Improvement Plan (GMF 9415)
City of Brockville, Ontario
Brockville’s Community Improvement Plan (CIP) explains the legislative and policy basis for the plan, the goals of the plan, and how it integrates with existing plans such as the Official Plan. The CIP identifies a variety of programs that the municipality can use to provide financial incentives to encourage redevelopment. These programs include assistance for site assessments, a tax increment equivalent program, a tax cancellation assistance program, and a grant program for building permit fees, among others, and in many respects are similar to those proposed in the City of Cornwall’s strategy.
Dockside Green (GMEF 7259)
City of Victoria, British Columbia
The City of Victoria conducted feasibility studies for the development of Dockside Green, a 1.3-million-square-foot, mixed-use development on a 15-acre brownfield site in Victoria, British Columbia. Dockside Green ’s integrated, systems approach to energy, water, waste and resource management is unique in Canada. The city’s report outlines details of the site’s energy system, which includes a biomass gasification system; the fully integrated water management system, which includes on-site wastewater and stormwater treatment with no connection to the municipal sewage system; the green technologies being considered, such as solar lighting for bus shelters, crosswalks and site lighting; as well as the remediation work itself. For more details on this exemplary initiative, visit the Dockside Green website.
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