Raise the Hammer

Just goes to show you how out of touch are mayor is on the priorities for this city. $2million for something so this unnecessary addition to city hall - and people wonder why Hamilton has among the highest taxes in Canada.

Keep city hall in the former city center and just redevelop that. It would have a bigger impact on the downtown.

I hear this argument all the time about the 'bigger impact on downtown'. City Hall IS downtown. I've met staffers before and we meet at the hall and take the 2 minute walk to Jackson Square for lunch or the 5 minute walk to King William for a coffee. I bet the walk from the back of the City Centre to the Bread and Roses cafe is only a minute or two shorter than walking from city hall. The Honest Lawyer in Jackson Square? Probably the identical travel time by foot from both places.
Let's not make it sound like City Hall is at Main and Dundurn or something.

Plus, why should we reward a landlord who does nothing other than hang ugly banners, lose top-notch tenants and draw in crappy dollar store tenants to his facility??
City Centre needs to become a mixed use facility facing James Street with a university or tech firm located inside and perhaps a new condo tower built at the James/York corner in place of that cartoony clock tower with metal flags.

Converting permanently to city hall is city centre's only chance at becoming anything other than what it is now. We can wish all we want for a mixed use development there but all the wishing in the world is not going to change the fact that once the city leaves, it's going to be an empty wasteland for years to come. Why would a condo developer build atop this existing building when there is a never ending supply of already-cleared prime land being used as parking lots within a 2 block radius?

It's not about the distance walking to the honest lawyer, it's about putting city hall back to the true centre of the city where people already gather - as opposed to forcing people to treat a renovated forecourt at 71 main west as a new "centre" (which is pure fantasy).

Jason,

It is not that the landlord is only drawing "crappy dollar store tenents to his facility", but thanks to all the subsidized housing, homeless shelters, drunk tanks, methodone clinics and halfway houses that we stuck in the downtown crappy dollar stores are all that downtown residents can afford.

What middle class person would want to live/shop in a neighbourhood full of bums and lowlifes?

If you want to see how the downtown should look go to Lock Street district or Westdale - not a damn slum that we have in downtown Hamilton.

A neighborhood full of "bums and lowlifes"? You don't go downtown much, do you? I mean, like James North, King E., King W., James South, etc. Not King E. and Wentworth. Westdale is hardly the way I'd like to see downtown go. A Second Cup and a gaggle of rowdy students?

Anyway, off topic. I'm glad the useless glass enclosure was voted down. What a waste of money compared to facing the building in marble or additional forecourt improvements.

"A Second Cup and a gaggle of rowdy students?" You don't come to westdale much, do you?

I live in Westdale. He's not far off.

Right Highwater, they forgot to menion effete welfare lovers....they too live i Westdale decrying their daddy's riches.

"What middle class person would want to live/shop in a neighbourhood full of bums and lowlifes?"

I would. Seriously, I'm much more offended by the sterility and banality of Hamilton Mountain than I am by our downtown.