Housing developers building a new ‘company town’ in Prince Edward County

About two hours east of Toronto, developers are building a town that will include concert venues, creative work spaces, shops, community gardens, sports courts, parks and walking trails alongside about 7,500 homes.

 

On the outskirts of Picton, the project, when completed, will more than double the current population of 4,700 residents. Construction workers will be among the town’s first inhabitants and developers will be the boss.

 

“We have become a pretty significant employer in the area,” said Alexandra DeGasperis, vice-president of DECO Communities, which has partnered with Tercot Communities, PEC Placemaking and Rockport Group on a project known as Base 31. One of the group’s first priorities is to create worker housing for the labourers who will be building the town.

 

“We’re really hoping that by next summer, we can have that up and running … so we’re not taking away worker housing from other employers.”

 

As the housing crisis has led to a worker shortage, some developers and employers are reinventing the concept of the company town, setting up living spaces — temporary and permanent — to house the local workforce. But unlike the Canadian company towns of the early 1900s that sprouted around pulp and paper mills and aluminum refineries, today’s employers are filling a need to attract and house retail, service and skilled trades workers.

The new town in Prince Edward County is just one example. As home costs soar across Canada, post-secondary institutions including University of British Columbia, University of Toronto and George Brown College are looking at creating new housing on land they already own to recruit and retain faculty and staff. In downtown Niagara Falls, a 30-storey highrise the city approved earlier this year is expected to appeal to hospitality workers because a majority of the 456 units will be priced at $475,000, which is considered “affordable” and the mayor noted they can walk to work. Across the border, in Orange County, Fla., the Walt Disney Company is proposing to build about 1,400 townhouse apartments that it calls “attainable housing” geared to local workers.

 

“It’s becoming a real struggle for people to live where they work,” said Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto. “Especially in smaller communities where housing prices have skyrocketed ahead of people’s wages, I think you are going to see more employers provide housing for their workers.”

 

Picton and its surrounding area of Prince Edward County are a prime example of this disparity.

 

The median after-tax household income between 2010 and 2020 increased by 36 per cent while the average house price during that same timeline increased by 135 per cent. Although the average home purchase price has come down since a peak in 2022, it remains high. Last January, it rang in at $1.116 million.

 

According to a Chamber of Commerce survey from last spring, 32 per cent of 1,041 employees didn’t have sufficient housing. The top industries in the county include: construction, health care, retail, accommodation and food service.

 

DeGasperis and her partners have purchased more than 300 hectares of land surrounding a decommissioned airbase that once teemed with tens of thousands of young pilots and gunners from across Canada and the British Commonwealth who were dispatched there to train for the Second World War.

 

While a core section of the site formerly known as CFB Picton has been converted into a concert venue with seasonal shops and galleries, by next summer a small army of construction labourers will be calling revamped barracks home as they work to build one of the most ambitious residential projects this area has seen. The work will take place over the next 10 to 20 years.

The developers have committed to building at least five per cent of 7,500 units as affordable housing, a term that the provincial government has yet to define, plus “attainable” housing, which DeGasperis described as “townhouses that won’t cost a million dollars.”

 

It’s critical to identify their needs and challenges, and the realities of housing a worker population — especially one influenced by the tourist industry — in relation to the broader community,” DeGasperis said.

 

Housing workers has been a problem since Canada’s earliest days.

 

Since the late 1800s and up until the 1980s, many large companies took it upon themselves to provide not just a steady paycheque but quality shelter for their workforce.

 

Canada’s most successful company towns in places like Powell River, B.C. and Arvida, Que., saw companies build entire neighbourhoods for workers. They created hundreds or sometimes thousands of single-family homes with dozens of different models.

 

“It was important to create a feeling of differentiation and thus belonging to ensure workers would stay as inhabitants,” said Lucie K. Morisset, a Canada research chair in urban heritage.

 

For-profit developers entering the real estate market in the 1940s and ’50s copied this concept.

 

“Nothing resembled these first suburbs that surrounded the older urban centres during the thrifty post World War 2 boom more than the houses of the Canadian Company Town,” says Morisset, a professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal who recently took her exhibition on Canadian company towns to France.

 

The neighbourhood underway at Base 31 will include a constellation of villages, each with its own character, park network, amenities and variety of housing models, all of which will lead to the revitalization district that contains the base’s historical buildings, DeGasperis said.

 

“We’re looking at single-family homes, townhouses, apartments, condos, secondary suites, live-work units.”

 

She added the project will “push the boundaries … to create some really unique typologies that can really hit affordability and attainability on the head.”

 

Community feedback on the development highlighted the urgent need for daycare and affordable children’s programming. DeGasperis said they’ll be ready.

 

The development aims to appeal to not just local workers but also people from across Greater Toronto who can work from home.

 

“We’re seeing that sort of trend,” said De Gasperis, 35, a former lawyer who notes her own friends have picked up and left Toronto for the County and its surrounding communities looking for more space and a more easygoing lifestyle.

 

 

 

This article was first reported by The Star