Developers want to build housing in Courtland, but Norfolk’s last rail line is ‘in the way’

A Norfolk County company that built an apartment complex for its Ukrainian refugee workforce wants to create more affordable housing — but the county’s last railway line is in the way.

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Titan Trailers — which designs and build customized shipping trailers — owns property north and south of an unused railway east of Courtland.

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The company’s vision, project manager Dave Holmes told The Spectator, is to build houses along the nearly four-kilometer stretch — once the railway line is removed.

“Basically we’re looking at some affordable housing for employees and others in the area, and that railway’s kind of in the way,” Holmes said.

“The track hasn’t been used in years, so we want to see it sold off and gone. And we’d like to buy it if we could.”

There are several parcels of vacant land along the rail line on either side of Highway 59 in Courtland. Townsend Lumber to the west still uses the rail line for hauling, but the agricultural co-operatives in central Courtland are gone, and the line east of the highway now runs through a residential area.

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Canadian National (CN) owns the entire Courtland segment of the shortline rail line, which once connected Elgin, Oxford, Tillsonburg and Norfolk County.

A lease with operator GIO Rail for the section of rail from Talbot Street to Fernlea Side Road — where Titan Trailers wants to build — ended in October.

At last week’s Norfolk council meeting, general manager of community development Brandon Sloan told councilors CN is “going through the discontinuance process as per Transport Canada guidelines” for the portion of the line east of Highway 59, but there are no guarantees it will be sold .

The municipality would have the first chance to buy the property should CN decide to give it up and Transport Canada agree to decommission the line.

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Even if CN decides to sell, it could take months or even years before the land changes hands, Sloan added.

Holmes and Titan Trailers owners Mike and Sandy Kloepfer hope for the shorter end of that timeline.

“We’ve got 110 employees that don’t have housing right now,” Holmes said.

Those workers include Ukrainian refugees who landed jobs at Titan and locals who still live at home because they cannot afford their own place, Holmes explained.

“It’s 110 out of our workforce of 275. It’s a big problem,” he said.

Holmes said the company would consider various housing scenarios “that people could afford” in the new subdivision, including traditional rentals and rent-to-own.

“Just to get them out on their own in a starter-type situation,” he said.

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This is not the first time Titan Trailers has gotten creative to house workers. The Kloepfers bought and converted a former tobacco research station in Delhi into an apartment complex for Ukrainian refugees who were hired to work at Titan.

Providing transitional rental housing at below-market rates helps new arrivals get on their feet and allows the company to add badly needed workers to address a years-long backlog of orders, the Kloepfers told The Spectator not long after Schafer House opened in August 2022.

Last spring, the Kloepfers convinced Tillsonburg council to endorse the “potential discontinuation” of the rail line east of Highway 59, provided Norfolk adds industrial land west of the highway.

Ripping out the rail line “would free up development potential for residential along the corridor” but would deprive future industry east of Courtland of rail access, Sloan noted.

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That is not an issue for Titan Trailers, since two of the company’s five plants are near the rail line west of the highway, Holmes said.

Titan Trailers is not the only landowner whose plans may hinge on the future of Courtland’s rail line.

In January, council heard a proposal to build 24 semi-detached homes on nearly four acres of vacant former industrial land adjoining the unused rail line.

And one year ago, council considered a proposal from Stubbes Property Development Inc. to build 13 single-detached homes on former agricultural land at the southeast corner of Byerlay Side Road and Highway Crescent, just north of the rail line.

At the Feb. 13 meeting, Coun. Chris Van Paassen pushed for council to decide whether the rail line is of use to the county’s future.

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“We’ve talked about it for a year and a half, but we’ve never taken a stance on it,” he said.

If the county does not intend to have industrial land east of Courtland, Van Paassen noted, “you don’t need to keep the rail line open.”

Courtland-area Coun. Linda Vandendriessche supports discontinuing the line, saying it is primarily a “holding spot” for rail tankers.

“I’d like to see an area like Courtland from (Highway) 59 east not have a rail corridor,” Vandendriessche said.

Norfolk is in the midst of a growth study that will look at how to balance adding more housing and industry to the tax base, Sloan told councillors. This review will consider the future of industrial land around Courtland and the role of the rail line.

The goal, Sloan said, is for Norfolk not to lose any industrial land and the accompanying job opportunities.

JP Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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