OMB blocks Tecumseh from expanding Oldcastle industrial park

Oldcastle is its own community — and has the Ontario Municipal Board decision to prove it.

An OMB ruling this week prevented the Town of Tecumseh from expanding the Del Duca Industrial Park, currently home to some 400 tool-and-die and other companies, onto 50 acres of adjacent farmland at the northeast corner of Concession 8 and North Talbot Road.

“It’s just fantastic,” Oldcastle resident Judy Wellwood-Robson said Saturday of the decision. “The OMB said Oldcastle is a community. We’re thrilled.”

Wellwood-Robson, whose family has owned land in Oldcastle since 1830 and who helped found the group Friends Of Oldcastle Development, better known as FOOD, wants to see more homes sprout in the area.

“The town had an industrial-only plan,” Wellwood-Robson said. “What we have been fighting is the town was basically saying Oldcastle is not a community, therefore provincial policies of strong, balanced, sustainable communities did not apply to Oldcastle.

“The OMB said, ‘No, Oldcastle is a community. The residents have proven that.’”

Oldcastle, home to several hundred people, sticks up like a camel’s hump into Windsor to the north. For 40 years, industry has steadily grown in the area, so much so that area residents worried the two remaining clusters of homes — one on North Talbot Road and one on Oldcastle Road — would simply vanish in the future if industrial creep continued.

“Our greatest fear was that our community would disappear,” she said. “Our whole plan is to build a strong, sustainable, balanced Oldcastle, much like any town.”

In the ruling, Sarah Jacobs wrote that after considering submissions in the November hearing, the OMB board determined that the proposed Oldcastle industrial development was “not consistent” with provincial policy mandating that “development sustain healthy, liveable, and resilient communities.”

Jacobs wrote that the board could envision a mixed residential-commercial plan fitting provincial policy.

“I’m disappointed,” said Tecumseh Mayor Gary McNamara, noting that the Del Duca family already had plans for development, which creates jobs and increases tax revenue for the town. “I’m sure that the applicant, the Del Ducas, are extremely disappointed because they certainly had tenants ready to build on those lands.

“So we’ll have to regroup.”

Tecumseh’s new $7-million sewer system along Concession 8 allows for more development, industrial or residential.

McNamara said he only wants to ensure that good-paying jobs will be around for the region in the future. Stopping expansion of industry could stop expansion of jobs.

“It will not only hurt Tecumseh it will hurt the region,” he said. “It has regional significance.”

The OMB ruling does not end the debate, however, since it says that residents and town administrators should seek a resolution and that the issue could be revisited in a year.

Wellwood-Robson hopes FOOD can form a committee with town officials, looking at more homes near the industrial development along the nearby 401 corridor.

McNamara said council will discuss the Oldcastle ruling when it meets Jan. 30, and that the town has not abandoned the idea of attracting more industry.

“We hope to work toward a resolution and re-visit this in a year,” McNamara said. “At the end of the day we have to find some sort of consensus where we all have to look at the greater good, the greater need, not for individuals but for the big picture.”