KITCHENER - A Toronto-based development company has bought the contaminated former Electrohome property. It says it intends to clean up the site, and build a mid-rise, mixed-use building.

Shannondale Developments announced the purchase of the problem-plagued property on Friday morning. A title search in the land registry office indicates the property sold for $1.4 million.

Coun. Sarah Marsh said she was pleased to see the property at 152 Shanley St. change hands. "We have such a special, great neighbourhood, but that building has always been an eyesore, always been something people have wanted more action on," she said.

"We are looking forward to having life put into that property again," Marsh said.

Shannondale is a family-owned real estate investment and development company. It has experience rehabilitating industrial sites; previous projects include the adaptive reuse of a brick building near Toronto's Port Lands, and a commercial condo project in Toronto built on a brownfield site.

The first step in what could be a five-year redevelopment will be to demolish the crumbling 121-year-old building early next year so that cleanup of the contaminated soil beneath the building can begin, said Ian Pinchin, development manager for Shannondale.

The sale went through on Tuesday and Shannondale has already started the application for a demolition permit. The developer is working on getting the studies and engineering reports that the city requires before it issues the permit.

Shannondale said its plans for the property are similar to those outlined in a city-led vision for the property, which calls for a six-storey residential building, with retail on the ground floor and underground parking.

The property's location is ideal, close to the region's planned transit hub and light rail transit, and in a "very nice neighbourhood," Pinchin said. The 0.87-acre property is close to several new developments such as the Breithaupt Block and the massive Station Park condo development.

Shannondale found out about the property after a friend of Pinchin's mentioned it might be of interest.

"We thought it had a lot of potential," he said. "We like the demographics of the Kitchener area, there's a lot going on ... We just think it's a great site. It will be a nice place to live."

The building's dilapidated state and the contamination in the soil mean the building will have to come down, but Shannondale plans to retain some original elements and incorporate them into the new building. "Some of the timbers are beautiful, original wood," Pinchin said. "We do want to respect the building's heritage."

The site is contaminated with some metals, petroleum hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, including trichloroethylene, an industrial degreaser.

Redevelopment may take less than five years, Pinchin said, but the process is long and complicated. The studies of the site's contamination are more than 10 years old and will need to be redone. Then, the developer will need to draw up a remediation plan and get it approved by the Ministry of the Environment before cleanup can begin.

After the cleanup is complete, development can't start until the ministry issues a record of site condition.

"All these things just take time," Pinchin said. "We just want to manage expectations that this won't be an overnight revitalization."

The developer plans to apply for city and regional tax increment grants, which are designed to encourage the redevelopment of contaminated sites. Under the program, a developer cleans up a site and redevelops it. The new development generates far more taxes than the vacant land had. The city and region hand over the additional tax revenue to the developer for a set number of years, to repay the cost of environmental cleanup.

The city's vision statement for the property was helpful, Pinchin said. Shannondale's ideas for the site are close to those contained in the vision, and that suggests development approvals may go relatively smoothly, he said.

Shannondale said it plans to work closely with the city and the neighbourhood to keep stakeholders abreast as the project progresses.

The city's building official declared the neglected building unsafe in May and ordered it repaired or demolished.

The site has been owned by a numbered company controlled by real estate agent and landlord Andrew Spylo since 1998. The building has been used for storage for much of that time, and neighbours have complained for years about the state of the building and the lack of even basic maintenance such as sidewalk shovelling and grass cutting. Kitchener has twice tried to force a tax sale to recoup $1.2 million in unpaid property taxes on the site.

The former furniture factory was built in 1898 by Leander Klippert for his Diamond Furniture Co. In the 1950s, Dominion Electrohome built hardwood television cabinets there. Later, the building was used by a company making plastic and foam components for cars, and then a sign-painting company.

cthompson@therecord.com

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Twitter: @ThompsonRecord

- Former Electrohome building deemed unsafe by City of Kitchener building official