Raise the Hammer

I was very excited about the Canada Bread announcement. Finally something other than low density sprawl housing being built up there.
I hope the entire business park fills up (and don't kid yourself, it WILL be truck-dependent businesses, as per urban planning principles 101)

As for urban planning, this is exactly what we should expect from business parks. No transit or walking/cycling will be an option for employees, but we all knew that.

If the entire park fills up it won't change our city's image or economic problems. If you don't believe me, go check out Detroit or Buffalo. They are surrounded with booming suburbs and jammed pack business parks.
Heck, Hamilton's 'tech park' in flamboro and ancaster business park are both filled up and last time I checked we are demolishing buildings in Hamilton, not building any.

The days of building a booming city around freeways and factories are long gone.
having said that, I'll gladly take 600 acres of factory over 600 more acres of debt-producing sprawl. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it - I wish the entire Linc was lined with buildings like Canada Bread instead of townhomes.

Hamilton is in a very easy spot - we have hundreds, actually thousands, of cities we can learn from in moving forward. Business parks are fine and hopefully will fill up, but until we clean house at the EcDev department and get some people who actually have a vision for the city and urban neighbourhoods, we will flounder and stumble along with a poor economy and miserable future.

The best case scenario is to focus on the city, and the enhanced image and quality of life will help make it much easier to fill up our business parks. Portland's business parks had no problem attracting major tenants....the city is desirable.
Hamilton isn't. Canada Bread won't change that, despite being a welcome piece of great news in that part of town.

Comment edited by jason on 2010-02-18 12:24:50