Roadblock to Revitalization Removed from Nanaimo's Downtown Core

When visitors and residents recall their highlights of Nanaimo, they might mention the city’s gorgeous waterfront walkways, its quirky arts and music scene, or its exceptional access to trails and waterfalls.?

But if those same folks were asked to describe their initial impressions of Nanaimo's downtown after passing through it on the Trans Canada Highway, it’s fair to assume they’d have little praise for the city’s urban gateway, also known as the Terminal Corridor, or – as I like to call it – the ‘Terminal Trench.’

What's (not) going on here?

When I first started commuting downtown, the Trench was an area I actively avoided. Even if there was a reason for me to venture 'down there,' it's certainly not any appealing route to take as a cyclist or pedestrian. Many of the empty lots and commercial buildings in the Trench have long been vacant or occupied by businesses that catered exclusively to cars - and it makes sense. With a highway street front that seems to discourage pedestrians by (lack of) design, it's no wonder that other kinds of businesses tend to struggle here.

Since then, the Terminal Corridor has always felt like a blank canvas of missed opportunities. I had so many questions: How could a city’s main thoroughfare be so devoid of intentional design, so utterly boring to the senses? Doesn’t this make our city 'look bad' to people coming off the ferry? With so many travellers passing through, why haven’t property owners and developers seized the opportunity to create a street that inspires people to park, walk, and shop??

Of course, what I didn’t know then is that Nanaimo’s Terminal Corridor has been haunted by an invisible technical and regulatory ghost that’s been impossible for property owners to overcome...

...until now.

Messy History Hiding Beneath the Surface

Nanaimo is a classic case of a community in transition from reliance on resource extraction to one built around services and tourism. In striving to revitalise the city's downtown core, volunteer groups of property owners, civic leaders, entrepreneurs, and other professionals have long been gathering to debate issues around design and development, especially in the Terminal Corridor. But for decades, regardless of what anyone thought about what should happen there, every project was bound to face the same hidden barriers.

Like most other cities in North America, downtown Nanaimo is built on top of pre-existing settlements of Indigenous peoples, in this case those of the Snuneymuxw First Nation. From their main winter village at Sti’ilnup (Departure Bay) to numerous seasonal villages spread throughout the surrounding islands and coastline, Snuneymuxw People have long been familiar with seams of shiny black rock embedded in the ground throughout their territory.?

Prior to the arrival of European coal barons, however, these black rock formations were considered sacred. One Snuneymuxw knowledge keeper once shared with me that coal is connected to Qul-lhanumutsun (the Orca), one of the Coast Salish Peoples' most revered and respected beings. For this reason, coal was not traditionally burned for fear of offending friends and allies at sea. Instead, the coal was left in place.?

This all changed when European newcomers started cruising the Salish Sea in the late 1700’s. As Snuneymuxw’s communities were gradually decimated by diseases introduced by foreign traders, the Nation’s dwindling population was repeatedly resettled – by force – as industrialists continued to find more and more coal to exploit beneath their feet.?

It is striking to imagine the sudden and violent transformation of the landscape that Snuneymuxw People would have witnessed as coal mining began in the early 1850’s. As entire islands were logged, mines drilled, and coal removed from beneath the surface, Nanaimo’s early industrialists made impacts both above and below the surface that would leave lasting impacts on the City’s future.?

It is here that the ‘Terminal Trench’ predicament begins.?

An Urban Core (Literally) Built On Coal

While coal miners worked long hours in underground shafts throughout Nanaimo and the region, mine owners needed to find a way to deal with the massive amounts of rock waste by-products brought to the surface, commonly known as coal tailings.?

Apparently, they didn’t look far.?

With Nanaimo’s busiest mine shaft located within the heart of present-day downtown, officials chose what seemed to be the simplest option for waste management at the time: they dumped the coal tailings into the sea.?

Fast-forward a century, and the original native shoreline of Nanaimo is nearly impossible to discern without a map (see Figure A below for reference). After just a few decades of coal mining, virtually the entire original inner harbour was filled with coal tailings, in some cases over six metres thick. Over time, this process created ‘new land’ on which to build Nanaimo’s downtown core that we know today.?Had this process not happened, present-day patrons of the Vault Cafe would find themselves sitting on the shoreline, and residents of Cameron Island’s tower would require a bridge to get to work and back.?

Figure A: The hash blue lines indicate the original shoreline of Nanaimo’s harbour prior to infilling with coal waste. A cross section of subsurface materials between points A-A is provided in Figure B, below.

In today’s environmentally-conscious political climate, it is difficult to imagine a more inept solution to waste management on a mine site. Nevertheless, while it is obvious that long-term consequences were not top of mind for coal barons in the early 20th century, the fact remains that a significant area of downtown Nanaimo sits atop soils that are considered "contaminated" by modern environmental standards. This includes low lying areas like Victoria Crescent, Port Place Mall, as well as the notoriously underwhelming section of Terminal Avenue that forms the ‘gateway’ to the city’s downtown core.?

Figure B: This cross section depicts the subsurface materials found under the length of the Terminal Trench (see Figure A for exact locations). The blue dashed line above indicates the height of the water table, which is permanently contaminated by coal tailing in the top layer of material.

Good Intentions Need Exemptions

In the early 2000’s, the BC government passed legislation aimed at preserving the integrity of drinking water resources, particularly subsurface aquifers. One of the outcomes of this legislation was a new, game-changing regulation affecting property owners and developers: Since then, in order to (re)develop any piece of land in BC, the proponent first needs to prove that underlying aquifers will not be affected by any contaminants that might be present on the site.?

While a brilliant act of forward-thinking, this province-wide legislation also created new challenges. Being far more restrictive than previous protective measures, many parts of the province were now considered “contaminated,” regardless of whether an aquifer was present or not. This effectively doomed many urban areas that were previously considered prime for redevelopment, leaving individual citizens with the burden of applying for exemptions.

Without exemptions from provincial drinking water regulations, many areas of the province either remain ‘undevelopable,’ or require very costly remediation efforts in order to be put to good use. Old gas stations are some of the most common sites that need remediation prior to development, but they're just one example.

As with any legal process, applying for an exemption from the Ministry of Environment is very expensive and time-consuming. The process is typically led by a team of environmental consultants who are contracted to drill down to sample soil and water, test for contaminants such as arsenic or lead (both of which are commonly found in coal tailings), and compile detailed reports. If any concentrations of contaminants are above the allowable thresholds in BC’s Contaminated Site Regulations, the source and extent of the contamination must be mapped (see Figures A & B, above, for examples), and the site must be remediated to suit any redevelopment. ?

This process is not only a huge expense – it is a massive gamble for developers. With the Province's thresholds for safe drinking water being so restrictive, there is always a chance that a site’s contamination will be too costly or technologically impossible to remediate, potentially bankrupting a project before the foundation is ever poured.?

Acknowledging Our Misguided Past

Of course, with Nanaimo’s history in mind, it does not take an expert to comprehend that there is no feasible way to remove the coal-based contaminants within the Terminal Corridor without completely removing all the coal tailings that were dumped into the inner harbour over 100 years ago.?

This inconsistency between modern environmental regulations and the realities of Nanaimo’s colonial history has been the most significant barrier to change to Downtown Nanaimo’s Terminal Corridor in recent decades.

Thankfully, over ten years ago, a group of concerned citizens set the wheels in motion to achieve a lasting win for the Terminal Corridor. They did this by joining forces to seek an area-wide exemption from the Ministry of Environment, significantly reducing Downtown Nanaimo’s most significant environmental barrier to revitalization.

Early on, these volunteers recognized that any meaningful redevelopment strategy for the Terminal Corridor would need to start by addressing the historical infilling of the harbour. Rather than waiting for individual property owners to tackle such a massive historical challenge on their own, these volunteer members of Downtown Nanaimo’s Business Improvement Association’s (DNBIA) Planning Design Development Committee decided to establish a collaborative approach, involving all the essential private and public partners.?

Removing Roadblocks Through Collaboration and Volunteerism

Starting back in 2011, volunteers knew that achieving an exception from the Ministry of Environment would be a long-term mission, requiring the collaboration of not just the City of Nanaimo, but every property owner in the Terminal Corridor. Getting all the stakeholders on board would involve extensive door-to-door knocking, pamphlet sharing, and countless conversations with property owners whose own environmental records would be essential to proving the source and extent of the contamination. As a result, what might have appeared to be a simple scientific assessment became a trust-building project requiring many years of patience and persistence.?

Gradually, by combining pre-existing data with new soil and water samples from throughout the Terminal Corridor, volunteers and consultants were able to save costs while demonstrating the full extent of coal contamination and – most importantly – its historical origin.

With a total project price tag of over $250,000, fundraising was a critical factor for this volunteer initiative. Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation (which is no longer in existence) and property owners agreed to pitch in, understanding that a special exemption from the Ministry of Environment would significantly increase the property values while removing obstacles to redevelopment. To make up the balance, volunteers applied for Provincial Brownfield Grant in 2012, ultimately winning $217,000 (the largest awarded that year). The City of Nanaimo was essential in bringing the project to completion by injecting additional funds during its final phase.?

Hidden Wins

While the DNBIA was dissolved in 2017, these same volunteers refused to let this project fall flat. Instead, they went on to found a non-profit society dedicated to keeping important projects moving forward, regardless of the situation within City Council at any given time. This group, now known as The Planning Design Development Nanaimo Society (PDDN), is still composed of volunteers from a range of backgrounds; people who have a passion for the health and vitality of Nanaimo’s downtown and the people who live, work, and play there.???

Finally, in June 2023, nearly ten years since the exemption project began, members of PDDN gathered to celebrate one of their greatest achievements as a volunteer group. Based on the studies compiled through volunteer-driven efforts, the Ministry of Environment issued a determination that exempts most properties along the Terminal Corridor from the drinking-water and aquatic life standards of the Contaminated Site Regulations (see Figure 3 below). In simple terms, properties with the Trench no longer need to meet an impossible standard in order to move their site forward for sale or redevelopment.???

A decade long process completed, and a massive win for every Nanaimoite!

Figure 3: The red line depicts the extent of the area-wide exemption from drinking-water and aquatic life remediation requirements in Nanaimo’s Downtown Core, as of June 2023.

What's Next for the Terminal Corridor?

Once I learned about the barriers hidden beneath surface of the Trench, everything started to make sense. I gained hope, knowing that apathy and pessimism were not entirely to blame for the lack of action. Insurmountable environmental regulations were clearly the biggest obstacle here.

With solutions in sight, I started imagining what might be possible if the Trench was transformed into someplace beautiful; a place that could boost pride-in-place for Nanaimo's downtown; a facilitator of new ideas and opportunities for downtown's arts & culture scene, and the local businesses that support it.

Turns out, I'm not alone!

Part 2 of this article now available here.