Stratford council will be receiving a report from the Ad-Hoc Grand Trunk Renewal Committee at their February 10 meeting, outlining four recommendations to serve as next steps for the committee to begin advancing the project forward.
The committee was supposed to meet Monday, Jan. 20, but poor weather forced the cancellation of the meeting when they couldn’t form a quorum. However, the agenda for the meeting contained four recommendations that came from staff in a report at the December 16 meeting:
- Concerning activations and interim uses, the committee recommends that council direct staff to conduct background research on temporary and interim uses for the GTR site, including associated next steps and cost estimates, and report these findings back to council for consideration.
- Concerning community hub and partnerships, staff be directed to pursue the shared community facility option as outlined in report COU25-XXX, which includes investment from the city in addition to funding from external sources and operations partners; and that council direct staff to proceed with the exploration of the design, development and operations of a shared community facility, and report back with a detailed plan outlining the project scope, a range of potential costs, and funding options for council’s consideration.
- Concerning building of housing, staff directed to develop an Expression of Interest to solicit proposals for housing development on the GTR site, with a focus on the parcel known as 2D.
- Concerning parking and mobility, direct staff to develop an Expression of Interest to solicit proposals for the development and operation of a parking and mobility solution on the GTR site.
Joani Gerber, CEO of investStratford and a member of the committee, said the four recommendations were developed from a work plan the committee came up with with the goal of determining what would help move the project forward.
“Being intentional about activating the site and getting staff resources to help us do that, having council really weigh in – that’s how they came to pass,” she said. “Having the library and the YMCA at the community space inside the superstructure is going to be an exceptionally costly component of this project, and we really needed council to do a bit of a check-in to make sure that the committee and staff are on the right track as they see it for the community. And the other two, parking and the parcel of land known as 2D (the section of land to the left the transit hub) … if you go way back you’ll recall that PeopleCare had originally looked at that a number of years ago so there was some due diligence done on that parcel, which means we’re a little bit further ahead as it relates to box-checking and environmental work that needs to be done from a development perspective.”
Gerber said the inclusion of the parking component in the recommendations was timely given the discussions involving the GTR site and the Erie Street parking lot that council recently had. With nearly 500 parking spots at the GTR, she indicated that once construction starts on site there will need to be an adjustment made.
“We’ll need a parking solution that will meet the needs of employees that are working downtown, and our visitors and shoppers,” she said. “So we’re trying to be forward thinking about that, so really, again it’s council that has to sort these four things out the committee has identified as being high priority.”
Starting the search for official partnerships is big step to move the project forward, and Gerber said they’ve already been making small moves in that area via pop-up events held last year along with the site tour the city conducted. It was the committee’s way of checking in not just with council but with community stakeholders to gauge where they were at in terms of ideas for the project.
“A concerted effort to be doing these types of check-ins with the community and with council has been ongoing, and generally speaking economic development is my job,” she said. “Whether that’s commercial, industrial or residential, I have to support revenue generation in the community. We do need to be mindful that there will be components of this site that are institutionally zoned, which means they don’t pay property taxes, so there’s got to be a fine balance between the developments and investments that do support those and those that don’t. Being next to the YMCA and community resources does drive property value, so we’re trying to maintain that fine balance while being aware that this is a development that is realistically going to take 15-20 years to complete.”
Should council agree to the four recommendations, Gerber is hoping to get everything in motion the next day.
“Those REOIs will take some time because we’re going to use the committee as a resource as we build out, so how those are developed and what the scoring criteria will be is yet to be determined,” she said. “But if the council approves everything on February 10, I hope to get everything in motion by 8:30 a.m. the next day.”
