After decades of sitting vacant, the sale of the former Holmes Foundry property in Point Edward has finally closed.
South Coast Developments Limited has officially purchased the 16-acre site from Point Edward Gateway Inc. The property was listed for sale at $7-million, and sold for $5.75-million.
The closing will allow for environmental and remediation work to be completed at the commercially zoned property at Christina and Exmouth Streets.
The buildings on the site were demolished in late 2021.
South Coast Developments President Tyler Pearson said he has strong ties to the Sarnia-Lambton community, having grown up in the area.
"The site, as we all know, has sat derelict and abandoned for the better part of three decades," said Pearson. "From my perspective, it truly is one of the best remaining large-scale development sites, not just in the Village of Point Edward, but I would go so far as to say southwestern Ontario as a whole."
Pearson said they've conducted a number of studies and have done their due diligence on the property for the better part of a year.
"We've done a number of housing studies, seniors studies, and hotel studies," he said. "At the end of the day, the outcomes from all of those studies strongly support an investment that would be modeled around a mixed use development. Inevitably, housing would take up a large piece of that puzzle board. We look at a site like this truly as a puzzle board. It's our job to conduct our diligence on a number of pieces and figure out which ones fit best together," said Pearson. "Housing, if I had a crystal ball, will certainly make up a meaningful portion of that site. I'm hopeful that will be welcome news to people there because we know house prices as of late are running away. With some additional supply coming online down the road, hopefully that will give a little bit of relief and be welcome news to anybody looking for affordable housing."
Pearson also said it's a "very sound investment" with many opportunities.
"We think there's just tremendous opportunities and a tremendous amount of optionality that exists on the site. That's why we ultimately pulled the trigger on it. It's still very early days and there's still lots of heavy lifting to be done. We'll continue to forge forward and hopefully get shovels in the ground sooner than later."
Point Edward Mayor Bev Hand said she's extremely excited to be able to move onto the next phase of development.
"I'm very pumped and happy to get to the final sale, and in time for Canada Day," said Hand. "For so many years, it's been a blight to the community because it's the first thing you see when you come over the bridge or onto the highway and it was an eyesore. It was always something we wanted to work on but it took this long."
News of a potential buyer was brought to light in January of this year after a conditional offer from an unnamed purchaser in July 2019 never materialized.
Chrysler closed the former engine block manufacturing site in 1988 and spent $7-million cleaning up the land before selling it in 1989 to the D’Andrea Group.
Ten years later, the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation purchased the property from the group, hoping to build a casino there.
In 2002, John D’Andrea was convicted of fraud in connection with that sale.