Incentivizing development

NRU
June 14, 2018
Rachael Williams

While Durham Region staff is touting the region as being “open for business” critics are saying the region’s lack of market-ready employment lands is deterring non-residential development.

“I think there’s a perception that Durham is not getting its fair share of employment land development in the GTA context,” said Ajax mayor Steve Parish. “We have a lot of available land, it’s priced competitively in the GTA context and yet it’s not being developed.”

There are approximately 8,337 hectares of employment lands within both urban and rural areas of the region. Within the urban areas just north of Lake Ontario, there are roughly 4,094 hectares of vacant employment lands, 56 per cent of which is not serviced.

“The region has been very resistant to pre-servicing lands, but the lack of serviced lands is becoming an issue region-wide,” said Whitby mayor Don Mitchell.

Orlando Corporation vice-president Blair Wolk explained that when employment lands are not serviced, it can add years to the project timeline. Orlando is Canada’s largest privately-owned industrial real estate developer that specializes in building on large tracts of undeveloped and unserviced land in the GTA.

“When we have a company that wants to set up shop, we don’t have the luxury of time between when they give us the green light and when they need to be operational in the building,” he said.

Durham Region’s economic development and tourism director Kathy Weiss told NRU there are infrastructure projects in the works that will bring large swaths of serviced land to market. For instance, the Seaton Lands in Pickering will be part of an Innovation Corridor that will bring roughly 323 hectares of serviced employment land to market by the end of 2023.

“We have approximately 370 acres that are ready for us to go to market and sell, but the majority of them are very small [parcels]--one to three acres--so that doesn’t allow us to accommodate inquiries for larger parcels,” she said.

Another challenge with developing employment lands is the willingness of the landowner to sell, according to Durham’s planning and economic development commissioner Brian Bridgeman.
A report presented to Durham Region’s committee of the whole on June 6 identified 730 hectares of vacant, shovel-ready employment land. Of that, only 150 hectares are expected to be on the market within the next five years.

Mitchell said the province owns most of the lands abutting the Highway 412 and 407 corridors, most of which has been designated employment lands.

“They have been very slow...in getting those lands declared surplus and back on the market,” he said.

Durham regional chair Gerri Lynn O’Connor also credits the province’s decision to collect road tolls on Highway 412 as being another impediment to developing the region’s employment lands.

“We want the tolls taken off the 412 because it is sterilizing a lot of employment lands,” she said.

With the number of impediments to Durham’s economic development, Wolk said the region should encourage quick planning approvals to decrease the timelines for getting projects on stream.

“Mayors and members of council are getting fed up and saying the regional policy is just not responding to the current employment reality,” said Mitchell.

Pre-servicing lands to spur development of the region’s employment lands will be a priority heading into 2019. Regional council members have been actively pushing for an employment lands recovery policy that would allow developers to recoup the cost of servicing employment lands.

“We have an assessment ratio that isn’t good, we have a population that has to commute sometimes long distances to their jobs and we need to have many more of these jobs locally.”