Town of Caledon Coleraine West Eco-Business Park

The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) will work with the Town of Caledon on the eco-business elements of its Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Plan (SNAP) for the Coleraine West Eco-Business Park in the town’s Bolton area. By leveraging TRCA’s experience, the town believes it can accelerate its own learning and adoption of eco-business principles, while reaping a range of benefits for the community, such as minimizing environmental impacts, attracting companies with a sustainability focus, meeting job creation targets, and maximizing land use for business competitiveness and profitability. The Town of Caledon is supporting this partnership with the TRCA by providing a financial contribution as well as a range of in kind services through staff and council review and engagement. The SNAP will aim to translate the goals of the town’s Official Plan (OP) into detailed action plans, and will include the development of a secondary plan, subdivision guidelines, development standards and approval processes, design guidelines, and zoning bylaws. They will build on Caledon’s current policies and draw from guidelines and policy tools developed for the Pearson Eco-Business Zone. To encourage continuous improvement in the operation and management of the eco-business park and to measure their success, this planning process will also define detailed sustainability targets and create a monitoring and operations plan to implement the identified actions. Overall, the plan will use a systems approach to address a wide range of sustainability goals within the Coleraine West Eco-Business Park, such as developing patterns that preserve natural and aquatic systems, encouraging efficient use of land, and integrating sustainable infrastructure and green buildings, resource efficient end-use operations and sustainable transportation. The Coleraine West Eco-Business Park will be the first greenfield eco-business zone in Ontario to develop integrated land-use policies from the overarching OP through all supporting policy documents and regulations. The project is also innovative through its work with a broader community of practice and use of a triple-bottom line lifecycle analysis in developing the SNAP. This comprehensive sustainable planning exercise will provide valuable lessons learned and tools that can be applied throughout the Region of Peel and beyond to support the transformation of employment areas into more sustainable business communities. (Project description from original funding application)