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By jason (registered) | Posted September 19, 2013 at 17:06:11 in reply to Comment 92333
Thx for the feedback Bill.
There's too much here to counter, so I'll just make a handful of points:
Clearly you read the headline, but not much else by the sounds of it. First off, I don't live on any of these streets so there will be no 'parkette' at the end of my street. Secondly, the community is anything but NIMBY. We supported the Greek apartments, the student boarding house near Head/Strathcona and are currently working with Shoppers Drug Mart on new condos at King/Dundurn. Furthermore, as stated in the article and comments more than once - we are more than happy to sign off on the new secondary plan, including the planned demolition of homes near King and Dundurn, Main and Dundurn, Dundurn and New streets, Main and Locke and adjacent to a few side streets along King and Main. We see neighbourhood change coming and are totally fine with that.
This may come as a shock, but not all of us live with such dismissive attitudes towards neighbourhoods that aren't "Cross-Melville" or "Chedoke South". If you can honestly look all the photos in this piece and call them 'non-descript' houses, you probably need to just go hang out with Hamilton's elite and leave us to plan the future for our mixed-income neighbourhood, thx.
York is pedestrian unfriendly, not because it doesn't contain a wall of 10 storey buildings, but because it has 2 lanes more than it needs and no street trees, benches or patios on the sidewalks. The wide sidewalks mean there is ample space for trees to be planted close to the road on both sides. The street only needs 2 lanes each way for cars, which can free up the curb lanes for protected bike lanes or a combo of curb-side parking and bike lanes. The few restaurants and cafes which exist on the street would actually be more inclined to spill onto the wide sidewalks with slower traffic, trees and the buffer of parking/bikes between the sidewalk and live traffic lanes. Planning a complete street is not rocket science.
I agree that many of the 2 storey slab buildings could have an extra couple stories added onto them, with small side/rear parking areas. In fact, we have made that exact suggestion to the planners over and over. For some reason they are fixed on block-busting many of these streets to make space for 10 storey buildings. But whether a building is 2 stories or 4, the street itself along with the sidewalks are what make it pedestrian friendly or not. Democracy Coffee on Locke is in a 1-storey building. And it's pedestrian-friendly as all get out. Should we demolish it for 10 stories??
The demolition of York was a horrendous mistake. Making more mistakes isn't the way to fix it. It's done and now we have a corridor with a great tree canopy after the decades of growth. And despite the York demolitions, many of the homes I'm picturing and talking about DID exist when Dundurn was being occupied and the Crystal Palace was hosting events at Vic Park. Your logic is baffling - because we demolished buildings on York, that means the homes that are remaining actually don't have any historic value anymore. Why don't we bring this identical model of development to Bay/Guise and James in your neighbourhood. Let's demolish all homes 4-6 homes deep on Macauley, Wood and MacNab from the Bay St and James St sides. We now have space for a corridor of 10 storey buildings overlooking the harbour right around the bend on Guise from Macauley and Bay to Macauley and James. Sound good??
Since you clearly skipped most of the article and comments, I feel the need to repeat that we asked the planners at the meeting the other night to increase York and Queen corner to high density. They said no. They want it medium. We want these homes on the few blocks of the south side of York to be low density instead of high. They continue to say no. We even discussed an exchange idea - these blocks in place of leaving the largest parcel (between Ray and Pearl) as green space, but they want to leave the one block as open green space on York. To start your comment with a 'NIMBY' accusation is simply not accurate at all. York can be fixed without wiping out stable, century homes. If we don't learn from history, we don't ever learn.
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