Quote:KITCHENER — For sale signs will go up in front of the former Schneiders plant this week, the first step in a major redevelopment project expected to attract interest from across the country.

Owner Maple Leaf Foods, which closed the historic meat processing plant in February, believes it's sitting on a gold mine with the vacant factory and surrounding land. The 27-acre property on Courtland Avenue at Borden Avenue is a rare find in the middle of the city — it's near two future light rail transit stations and has about 750,000 square feet of office and industrial space.

City planners, meanwhile, envision a new neighbourhood springing up from the ashes of Schneiders. That could mean condos, shops, restaurants, brew pubs, space for tech companies, retailers and possibly light manufacturing on land that used to produced hotdogs and luncheon meats.

"It's one of the largest offerings in the region today, and there's a rapidly shrinking pool of infill opportunities," said Peter Whatmore, senior vice-president and executive managing director of CBRE Southwestern Ontario, the commercial real estate firm that will sell the property.

"These kind of properties don't come along very often, and it's pretty special."

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(12-11-2015, 10:25 AM)clasher Wrote: Just looking at the buildings on the 3d google view I don't see much if any redeeming features. I would guess the cost of re-working the industrial interior into something useful for offices or residential wouldn't be worth it. Given the way the buildings are all attached to each other now it might be not even be feasible to knock some of them down without compromising the structural integrity of whatever might be worth saving. It would be neat to salvage the brick and incorporate it into something new.

The biggest question is whether they could get the hotdog smell out of the place

(12-10-2015, 11:19 PM)clasher Wrote: I would be in favour of demolishing most of it, the solid wall of brick facing courtland is particularly uninviting and makes for a rather dark street most of the time. There's not really any doors, windows or anything to interact with the street. Even though some of them are kind of old they are really bland red brick buildings. I also don't know what value there would be in saving any of the walkways or covered conveyors (I dunno what they are) and it would limit possibilities for building the site up.

Personally I'd get the first plans for the property at 83 Elmsdale (see this thread for pics) and tweak them to fit part of this site.

I'd love to see the creek opened up and re-naturalized... the city ought to take the opportunity to build a trail following Shoemaker creek all the way to Homer-Watson and connect it to the Iron Horse. I walked through the entire tunneled portion when I was in high school, there wasn't much of anything down there, we were hoping for a body or something exciting, lol.

Here's the google 3d view looking from a western view. Massive amount of opportunity for city building here. I hope it doesn't end up being too bland and banal.

(12-11-2015, 11:33 AM)Spokes Wrote: What exactly is owned by Schneiders here?  I know about the main buildings, but I thought there were some on the other side of courtland too?

(12-11-2015, 11:54 AM)tomh009 Wrote:

(12-11-2015, 11:33 AM)Spokes Wrote: What exactly is owned by Schneiders here?  I know about the main buildings, but I thought there were some on the other side of courtland too?

At least the parking lot across the street from the office building used to be Schneiders.  I don't think they owned any (many?) of the other buildings on the north side of Courtland, though.

(12-11-2015, 12:01 PM)panamaniac Wrote:

(12-11-2015, 11:54 AM)tomh009 Wrote: At least the parking lot across the street from the office building used to be Schneiders.  I don't think they owned any (many?) of the other buildings on the north side of Courtland, though.

I was wondering about that myself - isn't the large parking lot down Kent also part of Schneiders?  I'm also not sure about the empty area bounded by Stirling, the train tracks and Palmer (behind the properties fronting on Courtland).  I thought that used to be parking for Schneiders as well, but I can't remember.

• I'd take the older, streetfronting buildings, and punch out the windows back to their original design.
  
• The 70's era brick buildings, I'd leave it up to a decision on how good the bones of the building are.  They are 50 years old, and probably a simple steel frame that may be fine, or may be corroded to death. You could still punch out windows in the walls, even if they never existed before (see the current works on the Manulife/King Centre)
  
• Sacrifice (part of?) a building in the middle of the block on Courtland to add some permeability.
  
• The brutalist office tower likely has some good life left in it. The two storey building behind it could be decent "Loft Office" space.
  
• In the interior of the block, any additions that glued existing buildings together should go. There may be one or two interesting, salvageable, and economically viable buildings back there, but they've been built around so much, it's really hard to see.
  
• Unless there's a serious "Distillery District" push, to make this a cute, night-lifey district, then the overhead conveyor, and most of the industrial paraphernalia should probably just go. Except the smokestack. Those are great.
  
• The warehouse on Borden can become KWs premier EDM/Rave/Party space! Or... get demolished. One of those. I'm not really sure what can be done with that building. It's got a neat aesthetic, very 60's, but it's just so dead. Could it become an independent mall? I don't know.
  

• Bring a pedestrian/cyclist path up from Borden alongside the railway tracks up to Palmer, protecting for eventual connection to Stirling, Madison, and the Iron Horse Trail. This is the most direct path to the Mill LRT stop.
  
• Keep parking to the interior of the lot, avoiding fronting Courtland and Borden. Vehicular access will be from Borden and Palmer. Palmer may need to become signalized.
  
• Frontage on Borden should be restricted to 3-storeys (or 4 with a setback) to keep from overwhelming the bungalows across the street. Any towers should be about 50m back or further. I imagine stacked live/work townhomes along the frontage.
  
• Any awkward parts of the interior (thanks to saving a few heritage buildings) can be made an open park/plaza.