Coves development deserves a hard look

London Free Press May 6 208

Debora Van Brenk, dvanbrenk@lfpress.com

Big plans are afoot for the Coves area of London. And now that a Brantford company has wrapped up soil testing on the former Valspar paint property, those plans are creeping tantalizingly closer to reality. King and Benton of Brantford hopes to buy about 23 hectares of that land and build condominiums on part of it. That, environmentalists hope, will unlock more public access and better caretaking of the landlocked little ponds -- which have simultaneously benefited and suffered from human neglect over the years. Without official access to the Coves, conservation of its attributes can't happen in any concerted way. This may be the best chance the hard-luck Coves has had in years. King and Benton specializes in cleaning and redeveloping brownfields. They also seem to excel in community-building. In Brantford, for example, the company bought an old carpet factory, turned it into a business centre and set aside part of it for a community room. It created space in a former clothing plant for a YMCA family program centre. Company president Steve Charest wants to designate most of the London Valspar property to the community for passive parkland. After getting go-aheads for the low-rise condos, of course. To his credit, he knows that's a lot more complicated than it sounds. This is, after all, a brownfield on a floodplain. The provincial environment ministry needs assurances the site is clean and that any development wouldn't harm the fragile ecosystem. The Upper Thames River Conservation Authority needs to assess the impact of any project that might affect or be affected by the watershed. (Although it could be argued there are hosts of unauthorized and non-conforming uses there now and that almost anything else is preferable to an abandoned, contaminated industrial site). City politicians and staff also need to shepherd this thing through the inevitable requests for zoning and master-plan changes. None of those approvals are a slam-dunk, nor should they be. But if the King and Benton plans aren't workable, for whatever reason, then local officials and and environmentalists and planners need to figure out something that will work there, and then get down to doing it. The Coves area deserves better than to languish as a fouled-and-forgotten jewel.