Sarnia's share of the cost of an oversized load corridor has been slashed thanks to a donation from a Toronto college with ties to Lambton College.
Cestar College of Business, Health and Technology is donating $4 million toward the estimated $12 million project.
Cestar College Director Adrian Sharma said they've had ties to Lambton College for a long time.
"We've had a relationship with Lambton College since 2011, and it's a unique relationship where it's a licensing agreement that brings the students contracted by Sarnia over to Toronto to get a metropolitan experience," said Sharma. "Because we've had this relationship for a long time, it was just our way to give back philanthropically to the City of Sarnia."
Sharma said they've been looking for the last two years for a way to give back.
"So it just looked like it made a lot of sense to us to give this money over there too without any liability to the City of Sarnia, and a little bit of a connection between Cestar and Lambton at the same time, and our students would see some sort of connection as well, that's why we did this donation."
Cestar's donation will be recognized with naming rights to the new dock facility at the end of Exmouth Street that will be built as part of the project.
Sharma said the partnership with Lambton College has certainly benefited both parties.
"It's created a lot of employment opportunities for people working both in Toronto where we're located, as well as the Lambton College school on its own, but it's given a lot of students an opportunity to come over here to Canada, get an education and either go back with better qualifications or choose to stay and contribute more to the economic growth for all of Canada."
The 26.7-kilometre load corridor route will extend from the Port of Sarnia, to Exmouth Street, Murphy Road, Confederation Line, Blackwell Side Road, Churchill Road, Kimball Road, and out to Brigden.
Around 120 jobs are expected to be created during the construction period, and up to 3,000 jobs after that.
Work on the venture is expected to begin in earnest next year.