Confidential meeting about toxic coal tar contamination dooms Mayor Morgan’s proposal to redevelop parking lot into housing

Confidential meeting about toxic coal tar contamination dooms Mayor Morgan’s proposal to redevelop parking lot into housing.

A year and a half after Mayor Josh Morgan directed city staff to investigate if any core-area municipal parking lots could be redeveloped into high density housing— the initiative appears to be over.

On Tuesday, the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee (SPPC) recommended halting the search for a developer to buy two short-listed parking lots at 199 Ridout St. and 84 Horton St., but Londoners will likely never know the exact reasons why.

Members of SPPC spent an hour-and-a-half in a confidential meeting behind closed doors.

During the subsequent debate, councillors were careful not to reveal the confidential information that motivated their decision to recommend taking “no further action” on a Negotiated Request for Proposals (NRFP) procurement process that would choose a developer.

However, based on comments and questions during the public session, the decision was based in part on uncertainty about the severity of coal tar contamination, the cost and complexity of a clean-up, and the risk of legal and environmental liability in the future.

“My reason for previous support was around shovel-readiness, and this to me now speaks to another level of involvement,” said Coun. Corrine Rahman.

Coun. Sam Trosow’s questions to staff during the public session included, “Does this include questions about liability sharing (and) responsibility for further clean-up?”

And Coun. David Ferreira inquired about the potential for future studies, “An environmental report, [a] more comprehensive review of the subject lands. That would be the only thing that I would be interested in looking into.”

Even Mayor Josh Morgan alluded to the uncertainty of what lies beneath the parking lot, “There’s a lot of things that we don’t know about the site. What we do know [is] that through this process there’s interest from the private sector.”

A coal gasification plant and disposal pond were located at 199 Ridout St. and 75 Horton St. from 1853 until 1939, leading to significant soil contamination in the property west of Ridout Street.

The gas produced was primarily used for heating and streetlights.

The site was later covered with a parking lot and remedial systems were installed to manage the buried coal tar’s impacts and prevent discharge into the nearby Thames River.

Morgan used his strong mayor powers to order an evaluation of municipal core area parking lots for potential residential development in September 2024.

The lots at 199 Ridout St. and 84 Horton St. were shortlisted and three developers expressed interest.

Coun. Hadleigh McAlister expressed support for launching the NRFP to determine if any developers are still interest in purchasing the property.

“I think that there are some creative solutions that we could do with this site, and I want to see what options we can have with it,” McAlister told colleagues on SPPC.

Coun. Susan Stevenson argued that work on the initiative should stop, “It’s not going to preclude us from doing something further later, but this is a complex property.”

The committee voted (11-4) to recommend taking no further action.

“The implications of that is that it will continue to be a surface parking lot for the foreseeable future. It’ll continue to remain capped,” Morgan said after the meeting. “For me, I voted today because I’m willing to hear the proposals [from developers].”

The other municipal parking lots initially identified with development potential have also been removed from consideration for various reasons.

However, Morgan does not believe his mayoral direction ended in failure.

“There are more opportunities we might bring forward in the future. We just haven’t found a viable one yet. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t city property out there that can be properly developed for residential intensification,” he said.

Council will make a final decision on Jan. 20.