Brownfield News readers may have a sense that Canada is just stepping out of the starting blocks on redevelopment, but there are number of projects and methods already underway here. We'll explore those and take a look at a brownfield evangelist, Brian Villemaire, an associate broker with Royal LePage, the country's largest commercial real estate firm. With this issue’s focus on railroads it’s a good time to look at one of Canada’s larger redevelopment projects—the Canadian National locomotive repair shops in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Moncton has long been the railroad’s East Coast hub and the repair shops once employed some 6,000 people who fixed and rebuilt locomotives from throughout the road’s eastern region. As diesel engines replaced steam, employment at the shops dwindled from its peak in the ’40s and ’50s and the shops were closed in 1986. The land sat idle until the Canada Lands Company assumed responsibility for remediating and redeveloping the site in 1995. Work on the 300-acre site, which stretches from downtown to the city’s outskirts, started in 1997 after studies of past uses and potential reuse by the Lands Co. were completed. Remediation at the site included removing asphalt roadways and concrete foundations, removing and treating soils contaminated with machine oils, greases and fuel, tracking degreasing solvent residues, excavating previously landfilled scrap metals and wood, surveying surface water and storm sewer drainage and uncovering original streams. ...

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