November 27, 2009

KRISTAN BOGNER PHOTOS

The E&N Roundhouse complex in Victoria West was built in 1913 to provide the railway with a modern yard facility.

FEATURE | Demolition & environmental engineering

Rebirth is on track at contaminated Victoria railyard

JEAN SORENSEN

correspondent

VICTORIA, B.C.

Brownfields are an opportunity, not a negative, says a Victoria-based developer who has been rehabilitating brownfield sites since the ’90s.

“I look at brownfields and I see opportunity and that opportunity outweighs the negative,” says Ken Mariash of Bayview Developments, who is focused upon returning a neglected railway heritage site into a thriving community focal point in B.C.’s capital.

The old E&N Roundhouse design for this once bustling and large rail yard is being undertaken by architectural firm Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden Architects, which received a Brownie Award from the Canadian Urban Institute in the category of Excellence in Project Development: Neighborhood Scale. The recognition of the proposed mixed-use community to house 1,500 at built-out plus retail, hotel, and commercial shops, many in refurbished heritage rail building, came at the CUI sponsored 2009 Canadian Brownfields conference in Vancouver Oct. 26-28.

The Roundhouse complex in Victoria West was built in 1913 to provide the railway (originally started by coal baron Robert Dunsmuir and later acquired by Canadian Pacific in 1905) with a modern yard facility.

The facilities feature five heritage buildings including the 10-stall Roundhouse with a steel turntable, a large backshop for repairs; a carshop for rolling stock maintenance, stores building and outbuildings such as a tool shed, sand house and section house.

When redeveloped the 10-acre site will include commerical and retail components as well as 1,500 housing units.

The historic buildings exemplifying early brick construction while the foreshore proximity plus the addition of commercial and retail is expected to create a nucleus community on the west side of Victoria. The project has also been designed to draw individuals into open areas, reminiscent of earlier days when the yard was busy with trains and men.

“It will give this area a focal point,” says Mariash. Preservation of the historical aspects of the site is also expected to draw in tourists to the area.

Clean-up of the contaminated lands is expected to begin in spring 2010, Mariash says. The rail yard, which is almost 100 years old, contains hydrocarbons from the rail tracks and from underground storage tanks. As well, there are heavy metal contaminates associated with shop activities.

The site also has many fill-in areas from early construction phases consisting of scrap metal and cement, organic debris, sand, clay, silt and gravel. The soil remediation is expected to cost $10 to $20 million with a similar amount being spent on restoring the historic buildings to current seismic and building code standards.

Mariash has hired SNC-Lavalin/Morrow Environmental to provide the environmental engineering on site and has received provincial approval in principal to proceed.

“We went and reviewed the previous work and identified where additional work had to be done (to bring the site up to current standards required for remediation and construction),” Morrow Environmental engineer Alana Duncan says, adding previous studies not comprehensive or current. “There were data gaps and a number of contaminated site regulation changes and the site had to meet the new regulations.”

Duncan says there is “quite a lot of soil to be dealt with” on the site, but the remediation treatment of contaminated soil will hinge upon the end use of that area in the final site design.

“It depends on whether the area will be commercial or residential and whether there is under ground parking. It is all based upon risk assessment.”

The prescription laid out by the company currently is monitor excavated soils on site (if not trucked out to a disposal facility) and also use a soil vapour barrier in conjunction with a passive vapor recovery system at each building potentially exposed to any remaining contaminates on site.

Bayview had been developing the adjacent 10-acre parcel for the past decade so it was a natural progression to move forward with a plan for the E&N lands.

“By the time both 10-acre sites are finished, it is going to add 1,500 new homes,” Mariash says

Mariash is not deterred by the challenge of the clean-up, the restoration of the heritage structures or the development of the buildings that will be sited there despite the obvious challenges.

“We have done tougher projects,” he says. “We want to restore the area and bring it back to life again,” he said.

A train rests in the old roundhouse which developers hope will become a tourist destination.

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