Monday, May 26, 2003
Noreen Rasbach
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The Kingston Whig-Standard
To borrow from an old expression, developer Kim Donovan wants to turn a dung heap into a daffodil. His dream is to turn four ugly-duckling city blocks (bounded by Queen, Wellington and Ontario streets and Place D'Armes) into a commercial, residential and retail palace - with parking, no less.
Donovan's company, Kincore Holdings, is responsible for some amazing restorations in this city - the Brock Street Common and the British Whig Building, to name just two in the downtown. He is the kind of developer other cities should be courting and Kingston should be fighting to keep. He is a developer who understands the concept of keeping people living and working downtown. Sadly, Donovan hasn't had an easy go of it. For the past eight years, he has worked to get his vision built but has hit one obstacle after another. To be fair, some of those stumbling blocks aren't the city's fault, but many are.
The land that Donovan wants to build on is contaminated and because of that, he is still mired in the most dreaded quagmire of them all - the municipal study. Worse, even before he can even decide whether it's worth it to build, he needs to wait for four studies to be completed and accepted - a city facility study, a study of the Queen Street buildings involved, a coal tar study and the city's much-awaited brownfields policy.
Even for the very patient Donovan, that may be too much to ask. So last week, in The Whig's excellent and comprehensive series on pollution in the city's core, Donovan stated the obvious: "There comes a time when you have to decide how long you can justify holding vacant, underutilized lands within the overall portfolio."
Hank Doornekamp, who plunged ahead and redeveloped the stunning Woolen Mill building (from which The Whig publishes), offers this conclusion about the high cost and incredible hassle of developing on toxic land: "if I had to do this all over again, I probably wouldn't do it."
Can anyone blame Doornekamp or Donovan for their frustrations? They are two people who make a difference, who have contributed to the beauty of the city. Shouldn't they be encouraged to do more? The answer to that question has to be yes, and even the city must understand that. It has just been slow to act. While other cities have developed brownfields policies and are beginning to see the benefits from them, Kingston is just putting one together.
A brownfields policy sets the rules and incentives for developing on contaminated land. For example, a city will give a developer tax breaks to help offset the huge costs of cleanup. Those tax breaks also help developers with the greatest obstacle of all - getting financing. People may balk at giving developers a free (or near-free) tax ride, but remember: What possible use are sites like the Davis Tannery to the city when they are sitting vacant? If you give a company a 10-year break on taxes to encourage development, we all will benefit in the long run.
And what about the so-called North Block, the site of a number of parking lots and crumbling buildings where Donovan wants to build his dream? An astute brownfields policy could help truly this city achieve the remarkable. We could get rid of the parking lots and put up paradise.
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City Must Do More to Boost Cleanup |
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