Raise the Hammer

It never was about "access to cycling trails" . The users of such a facility will almost exclusively access it by car, with bikes strapped to the roof. Track bikes are highly specialised and rather unsuitable for riding on the road. The NCCH are afraid of having to bring their BMWs downtown and having to look at the people down there. Or shock letting them actually use THEIR track! How nice would it be to have a location in their back yard with plenty of free parking and no buses to drag in the riff raff.

Before anyone accuses you of belittling these guys, I hate to say it but this sort of mindset is still alive and well in Hamilton. Recently I read through the discussion forum on the Ticats website regarding the stadium and you should have read the stuff coming in from the suburbs. One resident said "the west harbour is a non starter. No way I'm going to park my car and have my kids walk through the north end of Hamilton. Not gonna happen. Sorry".

Yes, the same north end where someone just forked out $750,000 for a home on Ferrie St at Bay St North.
The same North End where over 1 million people purchased coffee, lunch, ice cream or a boat tour from the waterfront trust last year. The same North End where 100,000 people WALK to Bayfront park each Canada Day for fireworks and all don't get held up en masse while trying to leave the park at the end of the night.

To many of us, downtown renewal seems to happen at a snails pace, but consider this - when my wife and I moved downtown almost a decade ago we got our house for a song. Currently there are bigger homes on quieter streets with bigger properties on the Mountain that we could buy in a snap, but choose not to because we don't want to leave our downtown neighbourhood. And I'm talking very nice family homes on streets like Upper Horning and Wycliffe Ave. Homes that would be unaffordable for us in our current neighbourhood (no, we aren't in Locke South or Durand). A 10 year snapshot shows that quite a lot has changed in that time. We could afford a home on the Mountain or Stoney Creek, but we can't afford a slightly larger home in our own downtown hood.
But whatever you do, don't let your kids walk around here....or use your velodrome.

Comment edited by jason on 2010-05-18 22:00:51