A decade after the last Ford Crown Victoria rolled off the line at the St. Thomas Assembly Plant just outside London, Ont., construction crews have begun preparing the former Ford Motor Co. site for a new industrial use.
Broccolini, a developer that has built fulfilment centres in Ontario and Quebec for retail giant Amazon. com Inc., bought the 622-acre (250-hectare) swathe of land last summer and is transforming the site into a warehousing hub.
As desirable Ontario land grows increasingly scarce, shuttered factories are more likely to be redeveloped for uses other than manufacturing, according to a recent study by the Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing.