Comment 51584

By -Hammer- (registered) | Posted November 15, 2010 at 20:27:41

This is just the problem Turbo, the "but that we need to be aware of" is the cause many issues. It's hard to attract long term residents to the city. Students out of college and McMaster are finding jobs outside the city, but can't afford the initial costs of living in Toronto, Oakville, Burlington...etc. They are commuting, and then moving away once those costs are affordable. Why? Lack of jobs, because companies aren't coming to Hamilton due to image issues that need fixing and a high tax rate compared to other municipalities. Once more, this is caused by sprawl that cripples both businesses and residents from staying here. So long as we are allowing sprawling, greenfield development, brownfield remediation, north end redevelopment and core renewal are a neigh impossible sells and as we both acknowledge, only serves to hurt the city further. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by allowing it.

I will admit, existing development is a harder sell, but there is quite a lot of incentive to renew a downtown property. The city is offering tax breaks (although more long term ones would be nice) and the property down there is fairly cheap to purchase, even compared to other greenfields and certainly to the redevelopments of the other municipalities. The problem is there isn't enough to deincentivize greenfield and sprawl development. Why spend the same amount of money on an existing area with a poor reputation when I can build from scratch here at the border of the city. Simply put, Hamilton should not be in the market at this point for new development, until we have dealt with the problem areas of the city and can support this sort of sprawling growth, which just isn't sustainable at this time.

Still waiting for the Randle Reef mess to get cleaned up, but hopefully not much longer!

http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/news/story/2012/12/18/hamilton-randle-reef-announcement.html

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