Kitchener wants feedback on how to redevelop Schneiders site

If Kitchener residents have aspirations to see their community morph into a more accessible and pedestrian-friendly place, now may be a prime opportunity to do so.

That's because the historic Schneiders property, with roots in the city for nearly a century, was listed for saleon the open market last week. With 11 hectares (27 acres) available in the downtown core, the prospective purchaser will have plenty of land to change and impact the region for many years.

City officials also say they see the potential for redevelopment.Brandon Sloan,the city'smanager of long range planning,spoke withCBC Radio'sThe Morning Editionhost Craig Norris about the site,what the future may hold and why potential buyers should celebrate the property's rich history.

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What is the city's role in the sale?

Typically, the city does not have a direct role in the actual land sale. However, given the importance of this site to our community, we want to ensure that any prospective purchasers had an idea of some of the high level objectives from the city, but also to make surethey knew the process for working with the neighbourhood.

Why is what happens to this property so important to the city?

Kitchener has an amazing industrial legacy. We've been able to have a lot of transformative projects, especially in the downtown with the Kaufman Lofts and a few others. So, we want to make sure that this one, which is a key site in this area along Courtland which has remarkable potential we want to make sure it's done right.

What vision do you have for the property?

We have a number of possible ideas. One of the main things we want to do, though, is to make sure we're working with the neighbourhood and surrounding area to plan these kind of neighbourhoods to be more walkablearound the LRT stations. So, we're actually about to launch a new project for this area called the Planning Around Rapid Transit Stations (PARTS).

We're about to launch it in early in the new year and we're going to be taking 2016 to sit down with the neighbourhood, sit down with the landowners we'll see if there's any purchaser of this site that we could alsosit down with and outline what the vision could be, what the objectives are and what the future uses are.

What are the barriers to making that happen?

Obviously, there's still a lot of car usage. So we're still making that transition to more cycling, walking, more transportation demand management. If we can look at, for this site, something that's more of a mixture of uses where you have people that could be living and working and possibly even shopping or going to restaurants within a similar area, that'll reduce the travel time and allows people that ability to walk.

To be honest, you could probably extend some of those streets, like Kent Avenue or Palmer, whether it's as a public street or a nice walkway, and start to link that to our trail system. That gives people more options.

Are we talking about the building being torn down?

It'll be interesting to see what a potential purchaser wants to do with this site. There are a lot of buildings on the site. I think there's approximately 750,000 square feet of different buildings that have been constructed since 1918 over the years into the '70s. I think there's a lot of opportunity to adaptively reuse some of the existing buildings. There's also opportunity to add in and fill in more.

What role does the historical significance of the Schneiders factory play in the sale?

I think that's some of the high level objectives that the city has right now. Anything that happens to the site, we'd like it to celebrate the history and that can be done in a number of ways. This is one of the premier sites for employment within our area for quite a while. It's part of the culture and our fabric. It would be good to have something that celebrates that in some way.

Thisinterview has been condensed and edited.