I have lived in the district…

I have lived in the district since 1971, and remember the Ontario Stockyards. The stockyards smelled awful but provided thousands of jobs to people, many living close by, but the area declined since no one built new commercial properties. When the stockyards closed, the jobs went away, and locl secondary employment businesses closed too. We were told that the St Clair AVENUE would lead to new mid-rise development and that the remaining slaughterhouses would gradually be moving away. That has not happened. We still have hectares of underutilized employment lands because the smell from the slaughterhouses, and especially the smells from trucks transporting the animals which drip fecal material on our arterial roads. The smell and traffic drives developers away. IF we are serious about redevelopment, the slaughterhouses should be relocated adjacent to the cattle producers. More efficient for food production, and better land utilization as the lands currently used for slaughterhouses are mainly used to store and maintain trucks. Glen Scarlett road is essentially a series of huge parking lots with a small factory at each end. The slaughterhouses are automated and employ very few people per hectare, the truck storage and maintenance lands are factored in. Additionally, increasing the emission of objectionable substances will drive away the few good businesses in the area, since the objectionable smells will impact a larger area. Please review the lengthy list of complaints about violations for the district and understand that the best interests of all are served by the relocation of agricultural processing plants to source, and allowing the redevelopment of prime urban commercial lands for multi-story commercial, institutional, and multi-purpose buildings.

[Original Comment ID: 214814]