See the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QL3ToGShHo
Council held a special workshop focused on the future of the Grand Trunk rail lands. The goal was to help council understand the costs, risks, and processes involved in redeveloping the site. No decisions were made at this meeting.
Purpose of the workshop
The mayor opened what he called a “special council meeting” and welcomed everyone to “the Grand Trunk workshop,” saying he was “really excited about today” because “it’s the beginning of council starting to chart its path forward.” He stressed that this first session was about learning, not deciding: “What it’s not is we’re not making decisions today. This is just your time to gather intel, get educated, get some information, ask your questions… and then we’ll continue to have this process over the next couple of months, and then there will be a point where we are making some decisions.”
Staff reminded everyone that, while the site does not yet match the community’s long‑term vision, it already plays an important role: it now hosts a University of Waterloo campus with around 800 students, a transit station identified in the 2018 master plan, and surface parking that currently supports Stratford’s tourism and busy summer season.
What experts told council
Development and finance experts explained how private developers and lenders look at complex sites like Grand Trunk.
• They use a detailed financial model called a proforma that adds up all expected income (for example, apartment rents or home sales) and all costs (construction, professional fees, financing, and land) to see whether a project is viable.
• Private projects typically need profit margins of roughly 12–15% to be attractive; under about 10%, banks often will not finance them.
• On challenging sites, land value is not a fixed price but whatever is left over after realistic costs and required profit are accounted for. On some brownfield or heritage sites, that “leftover” can be very small or effectively zero.
They emphasized that Grand Trunk must be planned as a complete site, not just a single building: environmental cleanup, the historic Grand Trunk building, potential community and cultural facilities, housing, public spaces, parking, and new infrastructure all affect each other. The Grand Trunk building itself is both historically important and contaminated and deteriorated, which makes it difficult for private developers to take on without some level of public or philanthropic support.
Information council needs before decisions
Experts strongly recommended that Stratford:
• Develop a clear vision for what success at Grand Trunk looks like (for example, how much housing, what kinds of public spaces or community facilities, and how the heritage aspects are treated).
• Build a single site‑wide financial model that shows how different choices (such as adding or scaling back a community facility or heritage intervention) change the overall feasibility and the need for public funding.
• Assemble a full data room before approaching the market, including environmental and soil reports, servicing and infrastructure capacity, and market demand information.
They indicated that much of this technical work and structuring could be put in place in roughly 90 days, assuming some additional site investigations.
Environmental and planning experts also outlined the provincial brownfield rules that apply to contaminated sites and encouraged council to think in terms of long‑term “reinvestment”: weighing upfront city spending on the site against future benefits like more residents living downtown, stronger local businesses, and increased property tax revenue over time.
What happens next
This was the first in a series of workshops. Council, staff, and invited experts will continue this work over the coming months, including at a follow‑up session where more site‑specific technical information and options for the Grand Trunk site will be brought back for further discussion.
THIS TEXT IS A RESULT OF NOTES TAKEN AT THE MEETING. ERRORS MAY OCCUR. IF YOU SEE AN ERROR, LET US KNOW.