The battle over the largest urban boundary expansion in Hamilton's history is finally over.

Councillors approved a proposed Ontario Municipal Board settlement agreement at a special council meeting Wednesday designed to end a decade of disagreement over the contentious Airport Employment Growth District.

"It's nice to finally have a settlement," said Mayor Fred Eisenberger, who presided over the original council debate on the so-called aerotropolis during his first spin as head of council from 2006-10.

"This (settlement) prevents any kind of residential incursion in the employment lands, which I think is the bottom line for many people."

The city finally won OMB permission in 2013 to allow hundreds of hectares of farmland around the John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport to be used as factories, warehouses and offices meant to create thousands of jobs and $50 million in new taxes over time.

But various property owners in the area appealed the boundaries of the 555-hectare urban boundary expansion, setting up an expected six week, $250,000 OMB hearing in February.

"Now it's finally done after 11 years," said Ancaster Councillor Lloyd Ferguson, whose ward encompasses some of the soon-to-be employment lands.

The final agreement involved "quite a lot of land swapping," he said, although not all of the details will be public until after the settlement is approved next month.

Public changes approved last night include including two farm properties on Southcote Road. Deals with Silvestri Investments and Twenty Road West Group were not made public.

Opponents like Hamiltonians for Progressive Development have long argued the city manufactured an employment lands crisis by ignoring the possible development of its brownfields – especially given the shrinking steel industry.

But the boundary changes also worried critics who felt developers were angling for future boundary expansions that would be geared to new residential development.

That fight probably isn't far away, now that the province has updated its growth targets for Hamilton to include another 50,000 jobs by 2041.

Guy Paparella, the city's director of growth management, has said that means the city is already falling behind again on employment lands, even with aerotropolis.