Would creating a lakeside city inside an industrial park be Haldimand County’s folly — or its salvation?
Empire Communities sparked a passionate debate about the future of the rural county when the developers approached Haldimand council last year with a plan to build some 15,000 homes and light industry on 4,200 acres of industrial land surrounding Stelco’s Nanticoke steelworks.
The expanded town of Nanticoke would sit just west of an oil refinery and the site of a since-demolished coal-fired power plant.
Empire’s proposal to house 40,000 new residents in a “provincially significant employment zone” — areas designated by the province for industrial development and declared unsuitable for housing — would almost double the county’s population and turn the village of Nanticoke into the largest community in Haldimand.
In advertising for the project, dubbed Your Nanticoke, Empire promises a “bright future” that includes 110 acres of publicly accessible waterfront, recreational facilities such as an indoor pool, a park and trail network, 2,000 affordable housing units “for young families” and a new sewage treatment plant.
All of this without a tax increase, the company says, and with the creation of more than 10,000 jobs.
Proponents of Empire’s plan say Haldimand cannot afford to reject the opportunity to add much-needed water treatment infrastructure on the developer’s dime while finding a new use for industrial lands that have sat empty for decades.
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“My feeling is the positives far outweigh any negatives that could be,” Haldimand councillor Stewart Patterson, whose ward includes Nanticoke, told The Spectator.
“There are going to be some bumps in the road, but the big thing is the added infrastructure that there’s no…
