Construction has started on two massive industrial warehouse buildings on Pinebush Road on 9.76 hectares that was once short listed for the city's new recreation complex.
Owned by Hoopp Realty Incorporated, the real estate investment division of the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, the project is comprised of two industrial buildings, each with around 20,000 square metres of space, with frontage along Highway 401 and Pinebush Road.
Each building will be about 13 metres high.
The site, which is located at the Franklin Boulevard roundabout, will include a truck corridor, perimeter parking and areas dedicated to soft landscaping, including buffers and screening, according to a site plan submitted to the city in Dec. 2021.
City planners said the site has been designed to reduce the parking supply and "replace it with pedestrian targeted features, such as interconnected pathways, oversized sidewalks, forecourts at building entrances, benches, and bicycle parking."
The property will include 527 parking spaces.
Urbacon is building the warehouses with leasing handled by CBRE Commercial Real Estate Services.
The properties were considered in 2017 on a short-list of locations for the city's new recreation complex prior to that project landing in the city's southeast end.
At the time, the city could have acquired the properties for an appraised value of $10.2 million.
The site was eventually eliminated from consideration, in part, because an environmental assessment determined there could be "significant potential for soil contamination on the site, and a moderate potential for groundwater contamination" from two previous industrial warehouse uses.
Efforts to remove it could have cost the city upwards of $600,000 according to a report to council.
Site servicing was another factor hampering its consideration. It would have cost the city an additional $625,000 to upgrade the storm sewer, watermain and roads.
