Picton is the largest town in Prince Edward County (PEC), an area hard-hit by the ongoing housing crisis. Picton’s Base31 is a former WWII British airforce base with significant heritage from this time, occupying the last substantial area of developable land in Picton and of the few large areas of PEC that can be developed without impacting farmland or forest and the last major opportunity to address the housing and community development needs for the area. Urban Strategies has worked with the site owners and area stakeholders in creation of a vision for the site’s long-term redevelopment, including the development of an innovative community hub centred on the “Revitalization District” around the existing base buildings anchoring a series of primarily residential villages that provide a range of housing forms and tenures to meet the needs of the area and connected by green fingers that provide access to natural areas, greenspace, and recreation.
