CBC Amazon.com will not build the largest retail warehouse in Canada on the Pickering Wetlands Reserve. An Amazon Canada executive said the company is no longer considering the Duffins Creek wetlands, a 4-million-square-foot warehouse project located off Highway 401, east of Brock Road, for its new logistics center.
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Friday was the deadline for the Toronto Region Conservation Authority to approve the owner, Triple Group of Companies, to begin development of the wetlands. It is unclear how Amazon’s withdrawal from the proposal will affect the developer’s plans to build on the wetland, which is designated as a provincially important wetland.
In an email to the CBC on Friday, a spokesman for provincial Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark said plans are underway to contact Pickering and Duham boroughs “to ask if they wish to amend the MZO (Ministerial Land Use Planning Order) to exclude the portion of the land where the distribution center could be built. ” Spokeswoman Stephanie Bellotto said, “As always, when it comes to MZOs on non-provincial lands, the municipality takes the lead.”
The Amazon executive said the company is in talks with multiple other locations about its expansion, and they have never signed a lease for the Pickering land.
Last October, the Ford administration approved a special director-level land use planning order to allow construction at the Pickering wetlands to expedite the project, even though the wetlands are a protected area. It was the landowner and developer, not Amazon, who applied for the director’s land use planning order.
Dave Bauer, Amazon Canada’s media director, said, “We always have different sites in mind for expansion matters, and we take environmental issues very seriously.”
Sources say another developer is fighting for the project
CBC sources said another developer is also vying for the Amazon Warehouse project, located on an Ajax golf course less than a kilometer from the wetlands.
The proposal is to build a 2.7 million square foot distribution center on a recently rezoned site to allow for a warehouse.
However the owner of the Pickering Wetlands recently filed a legal appeal against the Ajax proposal, delaying the development from proceeding. A month ago, the developer of the Ajax land applied to the government for a director-level land use planning order to have the site withdrawn from appeal, but that request has not yet been granted.
To help the Pickering developer, the Ford government issued an MZO two days after receiving its application, which curtailed the Nature Conservancy’s authority to retroactively remove the law prohibiting construction on protected wetlands and ordered the Toronto Region Conservation Authority to issue a development permit for the land by Friday.
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