Aerotropolis takes another step

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After nearly eleven years of consultations and appeals, Hamilton’s airport expansion growth district, or Aerotropolis, is one step closer to becoming a reality.

In 15 years, the city is hoping to transform the farmland around the John C. Munro airport into employment land, creating thousands of jobs.

City council has one last hearing with a land owner on February 4th, but a deal has already been struck. So basically, once everyone signs off to seal the deal, companies will be able to inquire about using that farmland for their business.

Hamilton City Councillor Lloyd Ferguson: “The airport employment growth district appeals are behind us, and we’re now ready to move forward.”

Move forward towards the largest urban expansion in Hamilton’s history, bringing business to a vast amount of land surrounding John C. Munro airport.

Ferguson says: “This is 555 hectares around the airport that will now be industrial lands, pristine industrial, or what we now call employment lands — to create jobs, create tax revenue to reduce the burden on the residential tax payer.”

It’s expected that the new developments will create roughly 20 to 25 thousand jobs and between $35-50 million a year in tax revenues.

Ferguson goes on to say: “Too many people leave the area for jobs, primarily in Toronto, that’s why the QEW is plugged every morning. those jobs should be here.”

In preparations for the transition from agricultural to employment lands, the city kept the environment in mind.

Ferguson: “There is some environmentally sensitive areas, they’ve been carved out. it’s clear on the map where those areas are, so the environmentally sensitive areas are being protected in this)

However, according to Don McLean, the director of Environment Hamilton, building around environmentally vulnerable areas won’t prevent their contamination: “We’ve already seen pollution downstream from the flame retardant contaminants at the airport. We’ll see more of that if that’s industrialized.”

The land’s boundaries have changed throughout the years. But once the finalized map is revealed, McLean believes that certain pieces of areas will be left out in order to build communities: “The industrial development at the Aerotropolis is not something people are lining up for. But building houses is very lucrative and these landowners, these speculators have got the deal they wanted.”

McLean believes that the land to be left out of this urbanization is going to be along Garner and 20 Road West. We’re not going to get confirmation about exactly what lands are connected with the development until this last hearing which is scheduled for February.