Bradford transportation company breaks ground on 1.1 million square foot business park

The Highlight Motor Group officially broke ground in Bradford Thursday on what will eventually become a 1.1 million square foot business park.

"This is a large expansion. It's a 350,000-square-foot building. They're building a headquarters. They're moving their actual headquarters out of Vaughan up to Bradford West Gwillimbury," said Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor James Leduc.

The transportation company, which already has 1100 employees across North America, believes it will boost South Simcoe economically.

"We're going to create over 2000 jobs, and actually considering there's going to be more warehousing built as part of our Highlight Bradford Business Park plan, I think in a ten-year term we might achieve up to 3000 jobs here," said Highlight Motor Group President & CEO Kirk Kalinitchenko.

The county says expansion like this is essential for a region that expects to double its population of half a million people by 2050.

"It's why Simcoe County works so closely with MTO to build the arterial highways to work in this area, and the future jobs for our children is just outstanding," said Simcoe County Warden.

Highlight Motor Group, which has invested locally in the Nature Centre at Scanlon Creek, says the 100 acres of 400-facing real estate in Bradford was the perfect location for their new warehousing and office space that they believe will set new industry standards.

"It's still affordable for the business interpreters like myself to buy land and build a facility. Also, it's located right in the middle between the GTA and places like Barrie and Orillia," said Kalinitchenko.

"We've put hundreds of millions of dollars into these lands, and now we're starting to see the benefits by companies coming here. So we have a few big companies actually coming here, and as we build these things, it brings in other business. Other subsidiary businesses that actually follow these businesses," said Leduc.

With infrastructure work beginning in the next few weeks, people driving on the 400 can expect to see the new state-of-the-art business park sprout by spring 2025 before the highlight motor group intends to move in 2026.