Raise the Hammer

The concerns are legitimate --

For West Harbour itself, a moderate reasonable densification should be welcome -- e.g. European style height buildings is a great compromise, I think. Fortunately that's what I noticed in various master plans for West Harbour, buildings not much taller than the pre-existing buildings in that area, currently some discontinued very industrial buildings west of Sarcoa. So empty ugly bulk replaced with livable bulk.

For tall towers, I'm not against them, on one condition:

Any super-tall new CBD in Hamilton should occur maybe if U.S. Steel leaves. With that we also eventually build a shoestring unmanned Gage GO station platform. The U.S. steel land is a downtown-Toronto-sized parcel of land, and we might not have a U.S. steel in 20 or 30 years from now. The steelworks will still continue in Hamilton as we are always a steel city but not every single square kilometer of land will probably still be used for steel by 2035 or 2045 -- so tall towers may someday be built where a steel mill stood.

Who knows? Any discontinued steel mill (whenever it may happen) should be okay for densification, methinks. I've seen industry-works land turn into brand new towering downtowns in some other cities, in a 30-year to 40-year timespan (it's amazing, actually), so it's technically possible for Hamilton; we have to increase the number of jobs locally --

I can understand taxpayer waste but taxpayer waste falls with increasing densification. That's borne out in other cities, so I admit that selective densification, and some zones of allowed CBD's may need to be allowed in a few decades from now.

City apparently owns land on Gage next to the railroad there now (almost right in the middle between West Harbour GO and Stoney Creek GO) -- purchased by the city already for a soccer field and currently used as stadium parking for the moment. But there's extra excess land for a simple unmanned outdoor pedestrian GO platform in addition to the soccer field -- at Gage less than 10% cost of West Harbor (and this will finally provide GO train access to stadium too, where it could have been at West Harbour). Combined with a north-south Gage HSR bus that also connects to the LRT, we can let developers give a tall-towers boom on a future discontinued pier -- far away from West Harbour.

Who knows? Maybe this won't happen -- but the door is open. I wouldn't encourage closing this door, as long as we lobby hard for proper densification.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-08-07 15:56:23