Raise the Hammer

"If you gonna be a square, You ain't a gonna go nowhere..."

Learn how to mambo... may have been a better option here with the swing space, but instead we have painted ourselves into a corner yet once again with our propensity to "grandstand".

Mac is not playing high stakes poker. This is a distinct reality at Innovation Park - make no mistake about it:

McMaster Centre for Primary Care $60 Million value - Hamilton, Ontario

TCA in association with Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects

New building to house a primary healthcare teaching clinic and the Department of Family Medicine’s education, research and administrative functions. Located on a high profile corner site at the McMaster Innovation Park, this building is intended as flagship healthcare facility and a high quality workplace.

Mac is just doing business as any corporate entity would. It hedges the odds. There are not playing checkmate here. They don't need the core to build their medical centre. The core needs them. However much we want to dis-believe, Mac's timeline is real. They risk loosing their financial commitment, much as the City recently lost out on its two delayed projects.

Mac's Plan B is distinct and real. The city has no Plan B.

It is time to smarten up and do what it take to fix our Tooney Tuesday attitude in order to avoid jeopardizing yet another opportunity we have in the core.

The new task force will not come up with any new location in the core that has not already been analyzed to death. The unproductive grandstanding on the part of Clr. Jason Farr and Andrea Horwath will be part of their political legacy. Both of them clearly knew what the low down on the BoEd move was over 2008-2011 - yet they waited till the last minute to swarm the deal. Why?

Instead of slagging the staff, some of our Councillor's would do the city a big favour by making an effort to understand that the city does not stand to loose a single penny in the swing space deal which was presented to them yesterday. In fact if anything it showed the private sector that the city staff had finally come up to speed with the business world in fast-tracking economic growth and facilitating negotiations.

After the Public Health vacates the "Right House" it only stands to reinvent itself financially in a far more stronger way, by availing itself of the residential conversion loan to convert the very large already restored commercial building into the best downtown residential rental/condo property in the core.

It's present business does empty the core past working hours. The Gore stands to gain as well as the owners of Right House with this move. The Filmwork Lofts around the corner was restored and sold out within six months.

The Councillor's need to promote the Public Health move from Right House as the single greatest opportunity for bringing in a sizable live/work residential component into a historic property in the heart of Gore Park. There is indeed a win-win-win for all in this.

The glass as always stands half-full for the core - depending on how you look at things.

Mahesh P. Butani

Comment edited by Mahesh_P_Butani on 2012-02-29 14:56:40