Sarnia, Ontario

SARNI A , ONTAR IO Park Beach,” Harwood adds. “It’s a North American accreditation – there’s a lot of environmental stewardship that’s attached to applying for that designation and we are measured a couple of times during the year to make sure that we’re living up to those standards. Finally, we have an active Sarnia Environmental Advisory committee that is involved in Go Green Environmental awards. So, we’re trying to work with our community to educate and reward those who are actively seeking opportunities to be as green as possible. That would include the 700 trees that we plant each year for phragmites control. Yet another project is the repurposing and redevelopment of two city blocks that used to be home to the Sarnia General Hospital, which was vacated in 2012, and had been sitting vacant as a deteriorating brownfield site within a mature and established neighborhood. A group of five local businessmen, who call themselves the GFive Group, entered into a public/private partnership to get those buildings remediated, torn down, and then redeveloped. With the city’s investment of $5.35 million dedicated toward remediation and demolition, the GFive Group took on the demolition process with the intent of redeveloping those two city blocks into a productive, mixed-use community. “The GFive has now completed the total demolition of that site and have since almost completed their backfill materials,” Berkvens reports. “They’re now in the process of creating a site plan agreement with the city to do some medical offices or different offices for the site. They’re also looking to do 11 residential lots on Essex Street. It was one of the streets scheduled for reconstruction, so we moved that project ahead in the schedule to work with them to service those 11 lots and to totally reconstruct the street. It’s a $1 million project; they’re contributing to it, but we’re also benefitting by separating our sewer system in that area and updating the water system.” Bayside Mall in the downtown core, developed back in the 1980s, sits on about nine acres of city- pictured Just one of the lovely gardens in Sarnia’s Canatara Park.