Assessment of Site Infrastructure

Environmental
Design and
Management
Limited

Land Use Plan &
Re-development
Strategy

3 .0

ASSESSMENT OF SITE INFRASTRUCTURE

The SYSCO site is located adjacent to downtown Sydney, and encompasses 445 acres of land. As one would expect of property that has been operated for 100 years as a heavy industrial facility, there is a large amount of infrastructure (buildings, rail lines, roads, etc.) available to help re-position the property for its future use. This section provides a summary of existing infrastructure.

3.1 Buildings

During the growth of the steel plant over the last hundred years many buildings were constructed. Based on a general review of the buildings left on the site upon the closure of the mill, eight main buildings were deemed to have long term re-development potential. These buildings represent almost 500,000 square feet of space, and are illustrated on Figure 3.1. They include:

Steel Melt and Castor Shop	185,300 SF
Rolling Mill Building	133,300 SF
Rolling Mill Run-out Building	43,100 SF
Rail Head Hardening Building	45,900 SF
General Warehouse Building	25,350 SF
Rail Finishing Mill - 8 Bay Extension	26,700 SF
Administration Building	16,200 SF
Liquid Air Building	13,000 SF
Total	488,850 SF

The oldest of these buildings is the General Warehouse, built in the mid 1960’s. Both the Steel Melt and Castor Shop and the Rail Head Hardening buildings were built in the early 1970’s, although in the late 1980’s the Rail Head Harden building was upgraded. The remaining buildings were constructed during the last expan-sion of the mill during the early 1990’s. Many of these structures have high ceiling clearance, large loading doors and overhead cranes.

Appendix B provides more detail on the individual buildings that were seen to have re-use potential.

3.2 Road and Rail

Approximately two-thirds of the SYSCO property is comprised of slag, resultant from a century of filling in Muggah Creek. As a consequence, most roads were laid out on the slag without a standard road base. Less than half of the existing roads on the site are paved, and most are not full width. Therefore, while current roads do exist, it would take a minimal amount of effort to remove the roadways should a more efficient route be determined and the existing roadway desired for another purpose. The existing road network is shown on Figure 3.1.

There are dozens of rail spurs on the SYSCO property. These are also displayed on Figure 3.1. Most rail spurs on the property were used to move raw materials and finished products between buildings within the mill, or to and from the wharf for export. Once the facility was converted to a mini-mill, scrap steel was trans-ported from the wharf to the electric arc furnace building by rail.

The majority of the rail lines on the property are in fair to good condition, al-though some spurs will require significant work if they are deemed desirable for re-use. There are two main lines on the property: the East Main Line and the West Main Line. Of these two lines, the West Main Line is in better condition, with fewer sections of the line in only fair condition. The East-West connector allows passage between the two lines, and is in fair-to-good condition.