Windmill Development Group will undertake and pay for soil remediation of the abandoned Domtar industrial properties on Chaudière and Albert islands, says partner Rodney Wilts.
“It’s a private-sector initiative that we would be on the hook for, remediating those lands,” he says.
Wilts says remediation work should start sometime next year.
Windmill’s plans for the lands involve the creation of a huge new mixed-use community that would accommodate 1,200 residences, many office buildings and several public spaces on the Ottawa River shore.
The green development group would be willing to help make the narrow, unfriendly Chaudière bridge more “multi-modal friendly,” he adds.
“Our development can go ahead with the bridge as is, but I just think, in many respects, it’s a lost opportunity for the National Capital Region.”
At a city council meeting on Oct. 8 – when the city approved Windmill’s ambitious plans for the lands – Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes said the federal government has “turned their back on the indigenous people,” and that Windmill’s plan will not meet native hopes and dreams of treating the land as sacred Aboriginal ground.
She added that the city bore the burden of making the decision about rezoning the land, “when the federal government should have stepped in and assumed their responsibility.”
Holmes was the only councillor to vote against rezoning the land, despite her general support for Windmill as a good developer concerned with creating an environmentally friendly community at the site.
“While the plans are all nice, somebody’s got to clean the place up, or we might be stuck with half the bill,” Rideau-Rockcliffe Coun. Peter Clark had warned at the meeting.
Mike Powell, president of the Dalhousie Community Association, says Windmill’s plan is an opportunity to “add a life to that part of the river that I think we’re missing right now.”
However, Powell says this situation speaks to a larger issue.
“You can pick and choose different properties throughout the city and other wards where there may have been an opportunity for the city to purchase them, add green space or preserve a heritage building, and in absence of a plan for funds, the lands end up going to a private developer.”
“On the other hand, of course, the federal government’s owned LeBreton Flats for 60 years and they’ve just got around to developing much of it in the last 10,” he says.
Powell says the federal government needs to come up with ways to get people to and from the island safely via the Chaudière Bridge, whether they’re walking, in vehicles or on bikes.
He says it will have to look at Booth Street as a whole – including traffic flows and cycling and pedestrian infrastructure around the planned Pimisi LRT station – and have a plan to the overall transportation context.
“There’s plans in the north for Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway to have cycle tracks and bike lanes and sidewalks added, but in the portion south of the parkway, where the new station will be, there’s not any plans for that, so there will be bus layups, no direct bicycle facilities, which will be a weird missing link for people.”