A rare piece of industrial land along Windsor's border with LaSalle has sold for $20 million.
Real estate company CBRE has announced the sale of a 50-acre piece of land on Morton Drive off Ojibway Parkway.
The land went on the market last summer after CBRE approached the owners of Windsor Salt about potentially selling the unused piece of property that, until now, had been used for farming purposes.
The process to sever the land from the Windsor Salt property was completed over the last few weeks, and the deal was finalized earlier this week.
Brook Handysides, Senior Vice President and Sales Representative with CBRE Windsor office, says it's extremely rare to see a piece of greenfield property like this on the market.
"Because this was part of the existing mine site, it already had in place MD2.5 heavy industrial zoning," he says. "When you have that level of permitted uses, it could be anything from warehousing to an assembly plant built on this property."
Handysides says the ability to purchase land of this size within the city limits is also rare.
"When you're within feet of the two sides of the Gordie Howe Bridge connecting. You're within 18 months of trade flows actually crossing that major piece of infrastructure; you've got I-75 and Highway 401 right at your doorstep," he says.
Handysides says they saw a lot of interest when the land went to market.
"From both owner-operators as well as investors who could see the use in it and the potential value lift as these infrastructure projects come to completion," he says. "Ultimately, the transaction partner we picked was a regional investor."
Handysides calls the property a "gem" that was underutilized in terms of the mine's operations.
"Freeing that up for future private development only adds that much more impact for our community, more available land for future development," he says.
The purchaser of the property, or what will happen to it, has not been disclosed.
The completion of this sale represents the single largest transaction to take place in the Windsor market in 2024.