The innovation district

City of Kitchener Staff will pitch a new economic development plan to City Council on Monday.

It would see the former public works yard on Bramm Street become a business park that could create up to 15, 000 jobs and attract 4, 000 residents to the King and Victoria area.

Executive Director of Economic Development Rod Regier told 570 News part of the decision to put the business park there is because  the Region and Province have invested in LRT and GO service intersecting at King and Victoria.

Regier said Waterloo Region now has almost as many people commuting here from Toronto as there are people commuting to Toronto for work.

Regier says as more people from Toronto commute here for work, the next stage is advocating to the province for full two-way GO Train service, part of the challenge for us is just to articulate the vision. Do we have a vision that’s big enough and ambitious enough to justify the level of Provincial investment that would be required.”

Regier said if approved by council, parts of the strategy would get underway immediately, “the Bramm yards is a fairly complex project, it’s a large piece of real-estate relative to some of our other downtown projects and it’s going to take 10 – 15 years to implement, so this is not a short term strategy.”

Regier said the first thing would be to start the master planning process and as some of the other real estate developments in the area are complete, (for example the Breithaupt Block and the Tannery Block B) the city will prepare the Bramm Block to enter the market.

Regier said the cost to implement this plan within the existing resources the department works with, “we do think that it challenges us to re-allocate our efforts are re-focus on the next set of challenges.”

The Bramm property is already being converted to surface parking to support the downtown office intensification.