Raise the Hammer

Cheap as dirt, that's our motto!

Great so the attendees can visit the Royal Connaught Casino afterwards.

Perhaps the conference can be held in the block-long parking lot on the south side of Gore Park.

Thank you for posting this good news, Ms. Sharp. Engaged Hamiltonians will look forward to the presence of and input from members of the Ontario Association of Architects at your 2015 conference. As you can tell from the earlier posts, there are many hot button architectural and planning issues currently brewing in Hamilton some of which may still be in play by the time your conference comes to town.

Comment edited by RenaissanceWatcher on 2012-12-29 22:38:38

Maybe a famous Hamilton Architect can provide a guided tour of buildings that been removed for parking lots. Dave Premi may need some work that day. Considering he likley won't have an office by then perhaps he'll have the time.

Forget Premi, the City needs to call on Bruce Kuwabara who had this to say about downtown/Gore Park a few years back on RTH:

He suggested focusing on the area around Gore park: bringing in a hotel and restoring the buildings for multi-use (live/work spaces). He would also like to bring back a cinema and open up the Farmers' Market to the street. Gore Park should be seen as a "cool" place to be, full of interesting and unique spaces.

He called Gore Park "one of Canada's great urban spaces." He believes that when Gore Park is once again the true City centre for all residents to shop, work and play, the downtown will be solidly on the road to recovery.

A big part of this is to bring back quality shops (instead of the mostly marginal, not to mention exploitative, shops there now).

His comments suggested that generations of Hamiltonian politicians have not really been urban people, and they haven't really appreciated or understood urban living.

The Current's host ended with a comparison of Hamilton and Brooklyn. Brooklyn is now one of the hottest areas of New York, despite having long been seen as the poor cousin to Manhattan. Hamilton has the ingredients in place for a similar renaissance. What is needed now is political will and enthusiastic residents.

The bit about bringing quality shops is right on target. The problem is with the core being the way it is that will not happen. The core is full of poor people who try as they might just don't have the resources to shop at those kind of stores so they will not open there. This can only happen by having housing units that are desirable by people with money, with disposable income. That is what fuels so much of our economy. That is why all the high end stores open in Toronto that's where the people with money to buy their goods are.

And how did poor people come to live in the core?

Because we systematically destroyed all those "housing units that are desirable by people with money, with disposable income." by calling them dilapidated and quickly issuing demolition permits.

Instead of preserving them and fixing them to attract those with money who are no longer trilled with living in glass high-rise condos of large cities, with huge maintenance fees and zero social life—we in fact sold ourselves the unsustainable dream of soaring glass-towers.

And when the money to rebuild on what was smashed down, never showed up—as it most often does, we turned the lands into profitable parking lots.

Then our genius politicians & bureaucrats surrounded the resulting wasteland of parking lots with social services to serve the poor and addicted from across the province who were shipped here in bus loads—this was the only way or renewal gurus knew how to jump start our local economy.

So now, to bring your favorite high quality shops into the core and attract housing units that are desirable by people with money, you are suggesting we smash everything that remains standing in the core.

Fortunately, our planning department and local politicians are in total sync with your thinking, and we may very well see your dreams taking shape soon.

But now what are you going to do with all those poor people who have come to live in the core? Ship them back to where they came from?

Mahesh P. Butani

The viability of a hotel a few years back is undoubtedly different than today, with one hotel recently added and another online in the coming year. The business case on that option will be soft. (Especially since Tourism Hamilton's own estimates have two-thirds of local tourism down to "visiting family".) There should be a business argument for a more creative solution, with private sector showing us some of the wizardry they have on payroll.

Hamilton is no Brooklyn. It is no Montreal. It is Hamilton.

In order to work the Manhattan-Brooklyn analogy, Hamilton becomes a borough of Toronto. Mississauga would presumably be Queens, and Oakville the Hamptons.

The illustration is undone by geography, however. Wall Street is as far from Park Slope as it is from Greenwich Village – a 15 minute drive. Hamilton is about as far from Bay Street as Trenton, NJ is from Wall Street – an hour and change.

I know that these comparisons are intended as flattery, but IMHO they do not offer any real insight into cities' complex sociopolitical dynamics and convey a fairly finite and utilitarian appreciation of culture.

Not that there aren’t already enough reasons to question “Brooklyneque renaissance” speculation, for anyone who cares to look:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2012/09/25/the-hollow-boom-of-brooklyn-behind-veneer-of-gentrification-life-gets-worse-for-many/

Experts will tell us information we already know, and key players at city hall will continue to ignore it.

Yep with Hamilton having a rising in home prices is going to end up peoples moving the other way like Toronto high home prices

David Premi wants heritage protected unless he is working for the developer who wants it demolished. Hmmm! Double standards always impress me.