A county committee has endorsed a sweeping plan to redevelop the old St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital property in Central Elgin, Ontario, into a mixed-use neighbourhood that could house about 9,000 people. Elgin County’s Committee of the Whole gave its backing to an Official Plan Amendment on June 23, 2026, setting the stage for more than 3,500 homes, shops, parks and community spaces on roughly 168 hectares of vacant land.
The plan now goes to County Council for final approval at a meeting that has not yet been scheduled. The county’s summary of the meeting says the amendment lays out the long-term planning framework to turn the largely empty site into a complete community. The land has been mostly idle since the psychiatric hospital closed in 2013, when services moved to a nearby forensic mental health centre.
Central Elgin’s own council already approved the document in April, and a call for development partners wrapped up in May. The municipality sees the project as a direct response to the wave of jobs coming from the Volkswagen electric vehicle battery plant set to open in St. Thomas in 2027. That factory is expected to create 3,000 direct positions and as many as 30,000 indirect jobs across the region, pushing up demand for housing.
The redevelopment is also widely understood as compensation for Central Elgin’s loss of about 1,200 acres of farmland that were annexed to assemble the massive battery plant site. As part of that deal, the municipality received $15 million in cash and access to wastewater treatment capacity, bringing the total compensation package to roughly $80 million.
Heritage buildings on the former hospital grounds are being torn down by the province’s real estate agency, Infrastructure Ontario, which has been exempted from local heritage rules. Demolition work is expected to begin this year and is set to take about two years. Preservationist Jennifer Grainger has criticized the decision, saying it is unfortunate to destroy a local landmark with distinctive architecture and decades of history.
When fully built, the new neighbourhood could nearly double Central Elgin’s current population of just under 15,000. The blueprint includes a downtown-style main street, neighbourhoods with a mix of homes, a corridor for institutional uses, and a street network designed to support transit and walking.
