Christian Gammon-Roy
Tribune
Nickel Belt MP Marc Serré was once again in West Nipissing to deliver a funding announcement on Tuesday morning, August 27th, lauding a $147,000 FedNor investment in economic and cultural development in the community. The Conseil des Arts de Nipissing Ouest (CANO) received $97,000 to go towards their 2024 to 2029 strategic plan, and the remaining $50,000 will go to the municipality for the phase 2 environmental assessment of the Sturgeon Falls mill site, a necessary step to finally get development of the site underway. Serré made the announcement on behalf of Minister Patty Hajdu, responsible for FedNor.
West Nipissing Mayor Kathleen Thorne Rochon oversaw the announcement which took place in WN council chambers at town hall. “Today’s announcement is a testament to the government of Canada’s commitment to fostering economic growth and support for our francophone community, and creating opportunities for our residents,” said the mayor in her opening speech, thanking “everyone who made this possible.”
Serré gave some more specifics about the funding and how it is essential to drive economic development in northern Ontario, saying this is “always difficult.” He mentioned that cultural and economic development are important for enticing youth to remain in the north, rather than “losing them to the south.” While both of the projects supported are very different, Serré insisted that they will both drive economic development in their own way. “Culture and language are important in West Nipissing. The mayor and I, we’ve had a lot of conversations on the importance of the francophone culture and attracting businesses to the area because of that,” Serré pointed out, adding that CANO’s continued presence is a boon for francophones who live here, and those considering a move to West Nipissing.
As for the mill site, Serré had this to say. “As the younger people here may not remember, but Macmillan Bloedel and Weyerhaeuser, when that closed down [people thought] oh my God, the municipality was shutting down and everything was going to go. But no, there’s other avenues, there’s other opportunities.” He added that West Nipissing, and particularly the mill site, are well-situated for economic development due to being on the Highway 17 corridor and on the Sturgeon River.
Slow but steady movement on the mill site
Mayor Thorne Rochon mentioned that the phase 2 environmental assessment of the mill site is “the next step that must be taken” for the municipality to move on to development, adding that the municipality has an award-winning development plan for that land. “We’re looking to use that property to enhance the quality of life for our residents, support more housing development, support commercial development, and also create community spaces. The transformation will breathe new life into this property that has been a bit of a scar on our landscape for two decades,” she described.
Kassandra Girard, the municipality’s Economic Development Officer, elaborated. “Phase 2 is essentially just figuring out what is in the ground so that we can set up a plan for remediation; to clean it up and get it ready for development,” she explained, adding people will be physically going to the site, digging the soil, and then analyzing it to determine what contaminants may be present. When asked if there would be a phase 3, Girard explained that will be entirely determined by the results of the phase 2 assessments. “There could be additional environmental studies required, but we always have fingers crossed that things are going to be good. Then, we move on to a remediation plan. Hopefully, it’s not anything that’s too constricting when moving on with development, but essentially, we won’t know until we do the study,” she admitted, adding that the remediation plan is also going to be entirely dependent on the results of the soil analysis, and at this time she could only guess what will be required.
Both Serré and Girard acknowledged the excitement around the mill site, and that people want to see it developed soon. However, they also insisted that it is important to not skip any steps. “Some people might be asking why it’s taking so long, but there is a process that we need to build upon to make sure that the lots are developed properly, and that it’s done in a sustainable way,” Serré said. Girard echoed the sentiment and added some perspective from the municipality’s side of things. “Our priority is doing due diligence ahead of time. We understand that everyone is excited, and taking on that property was such an exciting moment for the municipality, but we have to take that step back and we have to do this right because we only get one shot at this. You’re never going to have a piece of property just so strategically located in the heart of West Nipissing. We need to do it justice, we need to do it right, and we need to bring something that’s good for the community. Even though the timeline is maybe not what we were hoping or what the community is hoping, it’s always worth it at the end to do it the right way,” she assured.
When it comes to the plan itself, Girard gave some insight on the vision, which includes housing, commercial and green space. “We came up with this great concept plan where stakeholders were consulted, staff was consulted, the public was consulted. It was a huge process, and it took about a year to go through the whole process to really create this preliminary concept plan; something that, across the board, everyone felt we were hitting all of the targets, and it’s going to be mixed-use for sure,” she described.
While Girard admitted that the environmental assessments will ultimately have an impact on what can be developed on different areas of the site, she assured that even if things don’t go exactly according to their plan, they will endeavour to respect the spirit of that plan. “We took our time making sure that we were consulting everybody so that the public were involved in the process, we wouldn’t want to just deter from that completely, and go off rails,” she assured. One final point Girard made, is that the municipality will be including contractual obligations for developers to also respect the land-use strategy, and add construction timelines so that the plots do not remain empty for overly long periods of time.
CANO wants stability, success over next five years
Marc Lavigne, President and Executive Director of CANO, thanked the government for its investment in CANO’s 2024 – 2029 strategic plan, a roadmap for the organization, which was developed by LMDSolutions. “This plan will go through 3 phases: survival, stability, and success,” he stated.
