An industrial strategy
A friend of mine asked me what the Town should be doing in the wake of the Kraft closing. So here goes - don't expect much in the way of domestic initiative after all this is the Council that has failed to make Local Economic Development a priority. Rather strange considering that the Mayor, in his first campaign, crucified the opponent with cries that not one job had been created by her. And the Town has yet to hire a new Director of ED instead preferring to run the department with a Manager. So in this atmosphere can we expect anything other than pleas to upper level of governments for help in locating that illusory industrial plant.
But let's look at we have - 53 acres and large industrial buildings, but more than that the site has a mother lode of sewage capacity. It is possible to rezone the area to residential and cover every inch without adding one more cubic inch of sewage capacity to Plant 1 - the nearest processing plant. General Foods, later to become Kraft used to make Rice-a-Roni. This product required more than the average industrial sewage capacity because of the potential to produce product that, if poured down the sewer, would kill the bugs in the sewage plant. Bugs are an integral component of the waste processing process, they eat the solids. A spill at the Kraft plant was deadly, consequently a larger capacity was reserved for Kraft at the plant. That capacity is greater than the norm for an industrial site.
So what we have now is a mother lode of capacity. I bet dollars to donuts that local developers have already started to drool over the prospect of getting that capacity. So in that light the Town should adopt the following process:
But let's look at we have - 53 acres and large industrial buildings, but more than that the site has a mother lode of sewage capacity. It is possible to rezone the area to residential and cover every inch without adding one more cubic inch of sewage capacity to Plant 1 - the nearest processing plant. General Foods, later to become Kraft used to make Rice-a-Roni. This product required more than the average industrial sewage capacity because of the potential to produce product that, if poured down the sewer, would kill the bugs in the sewage plant. Bugs are an integral component of the waste processing process, they eat the solids. A spill at the Kraft plant was deadly, consequently a larger capacity was reserved for Kraft at the plant. That capacity is greater than the norm for an industrial site.
So what we have now is a mother lode of capacity. I bet dollars to donuts that local developers have already started to drool over the prospect of getting that capacity. So in that light the Town should adopt the following process:
- Rezone the area into an industrial holding zone so that greater planning controls can be exerted on the site
- Isolate and control the sewage capacity, do not allow one cubic inch to be siphoned off the site into development applications
- Buy the site with the dividends from the Northam Park account
- Take a proactive role in preserving the site and the sewage capacity as a "rainy day fund"
- Realise that we only have one chance at this and don't dribble it away
3 comments:
Basically I agree with Ben, especially as his ideas are based on a detailed knowledge of zoning and the town’s sewage system.
I also feel it may be possible to utilize parts of the Kraft site and industrial building to meet the town’s needs for recreation facilities. There are groups in town drumming up support for a seniors centre and for a new arena. Additionally there is the $1.3 million that the town holds from the province , originally designated for the Frink, but which according the province can be used for purposes that would improve the health of citizens of the town. The proponents of all these projects ( including the Mayor for the Frink) are all relying on an expectation that the Town of Cobourg will be putting in additional amounts of taxpayers money to fund the projects. Unfortunately it is unrealistic to believe the town can find or borrow sufficient funds for three separate projects with out greatly increasing taxes. It is also rather futile to be pursuing three separate but related projects. The Kraft site provides a well located space near the centre of town that has good municipal services, sturdy buildings, good road access and lots of parking space. It is unlikely that the town is going to find a major employer for all this space, so to use it for the benefit of citizens makes sense.
In addition to the use of parts of the site for housing, some of the buildings might be adaptable for use as seniors centres, recreation centres for young as well as old, and for new arenas. This might upset those who want new buildings, but increasingly round the world communities are taking their existing major buildings and reusing them . Examples include Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto being turned into a giant retail centre, the Bankside power station on the Thames in London just south of St. Paul’s becoming a vast art gallery, and Paris turning a disused railway station on the banks of the Seine into the Musée d’Orsay which is the world’s greatest museum of French art. I know that Cobourg isn’t Paris or London but for many years we have had sweat shirts with Paris, London, New York and Cobourg inscribed on them, so maybe this is the chance to actually do it.
In summary I am suggesting that all the groups who want new facilities in Cobourg should start working together, and they should explore where some of the building at Kraft could be adapted at a reasonable cost to create Northumberland’s best integrated recreational and cultural centre. The site is probably large enough this to be in addition to some new housing . All this would still provide jobs for the building adaptation and for running the centres.
Great Ideas Ben .... but maybe that "extra" capacity would be better allocated to the new homes already approved by the mall. That way the town wouldn't need to run the "Big Pipe" out into the lake and we could maintain the higher standards of discharging into the creek. (cleaner product, less pollution)
I understand that by running the pipe out into the lake we can significantly reduce the level of treatment ~ which will allow us to treat a much greater volume.
So ..... in order to make it cheaper for developers to build new homes for people who don't live here yet .. we want to intentionally increase the pollution of Lake Ontario (sounds very wrong to me) .... but we even want to do it upstream from our beach (sounds very dumb to me).
The Foods capacity could allow us to protect our greatest asset.
I hope that you are confusing storm water management with sewage capacity. Sewage is the stuff we flush and then have to process, Storm water is the rainwater that hits the streets and can be put in a big pipe. Sometimes with disastrous results, just look at the problems of the discharge at Lookout Point in the East end.
The main problem of handing over sewage capacity to offsite house builders is that it would denude the 53 acres of its potential to accommodate housing if necessary on that site. Doing that would mean that we would still have build a new treatment plant, let's use the 53 acres up first!
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