For more than a century, hundreds of acres of land in Oshawa have been a vital part of Canada’s automotive industry.But where assembly lines and paint shops stand today, a decade or so from now there could be condos, office towers and shopping malls.In November, General Motors stunned the city, announcing it would stop production at the end of this year. This week, the last Chevy Cruze rolled off the line at a GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio, the first of five plants across North America scheduled to be shut down in the wake of the November announcement.While a public relations and political battle is waged over the fate of the Oshawa plant’s 2,600 workers, real estate experts say the facility’s prime location — near highways and public transit — and the Greater Toronto Area’s hot real estate market, make it an irresistible target for developers.“You’re looking at some mixture of condos and retail, probably,” said John Andrew, a professor at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University. “Nobody’s coming in and building a large factory. That’s really not happening these days.”Before the ultimate fate of the GM land in Oshawa — adding up to 15 million square feet or 344 acres — is decided, there could be some short-term use, said Avi Behar, president and CEO of The Behar Group, a Toronto real estate brokerage. GM could rent parts of the plant or land out for other industrial users. They could sell it to another company to take on cleaning up the land, having it rezoned, then flipping it at a profit to a developer.“I think that ultimately this will be mixed use of some kind, including condos, office space and some retail,” said Behar, whose brokerage is selling another sizable parcel of Ottawa industrial land, albeit not owned by GM.So far, the company hasn’t tipped its hand on the future of the site beyond the end of the year, but spokesman David Pat ...
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