Hazel on Hamilton
 

Enhance the airport and watch your city take off, Mississauga mayor advises

November 01, 2008
Meredith Macleod
The Hamilton Spectator
(Nov 1, 2008)

There is perhaps no one better in Canada to chat with about how to build a great city than Hazel McCallion. She's built a reputation as a firebrand, no-holds-barred workhorse during an astonishing 30-year run as the mayor of Mississauga. McCallion, 87, has a list of awards and credits that easily stretches taller than her tiny frame.

She's respected by citizens (who have elected her 11 straight times, often with more than 90 per cent of the vote), bureaucrats and politicians alike and has earned the affectionate nickname Hurricane Hazel.

So The Spectator sat down with Mississauga's veteran mayor to talk about Hamilton's road ahead.

"Hamilton has been a great city," she says, sitting in a wingback chair in the family room of her Streetsville home.

"But it's seen detrimental effects because it's depended on the steel companies in a major way. We have a very diverse economic base in Mississauga. No one industry can have a major impact like the car manufacturers in Oshawa and Windsor."

McCallion says much of Mississauga's growth is a direct result of Pearson airport, which sprawls within the city's borders.

She thinks Hamilton should put a priority on enhancing its airport and the lands around it. "Hamilton is already attracting business from Pearson. Any community that invests in their airport finds it's a worthwhile economic advantage."

McCallion has guided Mississauga's transformation from a collection of sleepy bedroom villages into Canada's sixth most populous city.

It's also one of the fastest growing. Mississauga has doubled in size in the last two decades.

In the 2006 census, there were 668,549 people living in Mississauga. That was an increase of 9.1 per cent over the 2001 population and twice as much growth as Hamilton saw.

But that's slow for Mississauga. During the 1980s and 1990s, it was booming by as much as 17.5 per cent between censuses.

What is particularly remarkable about Mississauga and one of McCallion's crowning achievements is that the city has been debt-free since 1978 -- the year she was first elected mayor.

To contrast, Hamilton is projected to be $348 million in the red next year.

McCallion stresses that she runs her city like a business. That means pay as you go, live within your means, save for the unexpected.

Mississauga has focused on developing its downtown, which McCallion says grew up out of a "hayfield."

Condo development is among the fastest in the GTA, thanks in large part to the city's decision not to set height or density restrictions in the downtown.

But McCallion refused to let Mississauga become a bedroom suburb to Toronto. "We promoted very strongly that businesses are welcome here, there is a welcome mat out for business," said McCallion.

The city kept taxes low and gave preference to building permits for businesses.

The city's economic development department is charged with getting projects through the bureaucracy as quickly and simply as possible.

"I tell business owners looking to come here to meet with our staff and draw up a schedule about how fast it can occur. We can meet the deadlines."

But Mississauga doesn't come cheap. The city has had the highest development charges in the GTA. Those funds go directly into infrastructure, and McCallion says that has allowed the city to keep its roads, water and sewer systems in good shape.

"We're not in the situation that Hamilton or Toronto is in. Of course, we're a young city, but down the road we will run into the same problems if we don't maintain our infrastructure now."

She says the provincial and federal governments have not pumped enough money into crumbling cities. She was part of a team who unsuccessfully lobbied Ottawa to direct one cent of the GST to urban infrastructure.

"I don't care what fund they take the money from, but we need money for infrastructure. We need it very badly."

She says transportation is the most pressing issue facing the province and if addressing gridlock doesn't happen quickly, McCallion fears for the future.

She's a member of the Metrolinx board and says the agency should have been charged with looking at transportation across the entire Golden Horseshoe.

"Transportation to the border is so important but the province is concentrating only on gridlock in the GTA."

She laments the lack of national leadership.

"When we had very little population in Canada there was a vision to build two rail lines across the country. Think about that. It changed everything and towns were built along the rail lines. We've lost that vision in Canada."

And back in Hamilton, McCallion says the city has to find a way to get beyond the hard feelings and resentment left over from amalgamation in order forge a new path of what it can be.

She points to Hong Kong, a former manufacturing hub that was crushed by Chinese competition, and Elliot Lake, an Ontario town devastated by closures of mines, as examples of communities that found a new way.

"Hamilton has lost a lot and the mayor and council can't do it alone. You must get the people involved and ask them, 'What do you want your city to be?'"

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About Mayor Hazel McCallion

* Mayor of Mississauga for 30 years.

* Made a member of the Order of Canada in 2005.

* Often called Hurricane Hazel for her no-nonsense style.

* She drives a sleek Buick with Mayor 1 on the licence plate. She refuses a driver, even after crashing her car into a light pole in 2006.

* Mother of three, grandmother of one.

* Her year-old Shiloh shepherd is named Missy for her favourite city. Her previous dog was named Hurricane.

* She ranked second in the 2005 international World Mayor poll, behind only Dora Bakoyannis of Athens.

* In 2006, Reader's Digest named her the best city mayor.

* She has an elementary school and a university library named after her.

* In 1991, she became the first mayor of a major municipality to submit the city's annual operating budget to residents for input.

* Four types of Hazel McCallion bobblehead dolls have been made.

* A cellphone ringtone featured McCallion's voice saying: "Answer the phone! This is Hazel McCallion calling from the great city of Mississauga."

* In 1979, in just her second year in office, McCallion presided over the aftermath of the derailment of a 106-car train carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals. A ruptured chlorine tank forced 230,000 people to leave their homes. No one was killed or hurt and McCallion has since called the orderly evacuation "the Mississauga miracle."

* Before becoming mayor, McCallion and her late husband Sam founded the Mississauga Booster newspaper, which is now published by her son.

Really I can take or leave Hazel. While I applaud her work in running a municipality as a business, I shudder at the thought of the suburban sprawl created in Mississauga.

I guess if your definition of a 'great city' (The Spec's description) is a car dominated low density city who's downtown is anchored by a mall surrounded by 4 and 6 lane roads. And a city lacks that any walkability and street life, even with an increasing number of high density condos (btw, also located on 6 lane roadways) then Mississauga is truly a great city.

I think Hazel and the City of Mississauga dodged a bullet when gasoline stopped it's climb in price. At least dodged a bullet this time.

Hamilton is to Mississauga as apples are to oranges, actually make that Hamilton is to Mississauga as apples are to something completely different that fruit.

Toronto was full, it expanded to fill its boundaries. There were (are) obviously some empty spaces, but there was no nice flat open farmland like there is (was) in Mississauga. Toronto's airport happened to be there. Mississauga is Toronto in all but name. It's surburban through and through and I laugh when people claim that it is one of Canada's largest cities. It simply would not exist if not for Toronto.

It's easy to have a balanced budget with constant massive development for 30 straight years. Talk to me in 30 more years when all their nice shiny infrastructure is crumbling like Hamilton's and there is no longer double digit growth. Then we'll see how balanced their budget is.

now this is a thread that the mods should be deleting! Lol.

I saw the headline in the Spec, the bit about the airport and Hazel's big mug and didn't bother to read the rest.
Give me a break.

She was mayor over one of the fastest sprawl-burbs in Canadian history.
Unfortunately, she looks like she's about to kick the bucket so she won't be around over the next couple decades to answer questions about the massive financial crisis about to hit mississuaga when all the sprawl services start to come to the end of their lifespan and need to be replaced.
I'm sure the media will blame the current mayor at that time instead of pointing the finger where it belongs.
She's a joke.

it's already starting...they had a larger tax increase than Hamilton last year.
it's only just beginning.

I agree with her on developing the airport land for jobs.

I know two companies from Missy that's seriously looking at Hamilton (BD is one). Invitrogen recently relocated to Burlington because there was no good land available in Hamilton. So really if we develop the airport land we would probably be stealing some of Missy's tax money. They are relocating to Hamilton because of two things, larger health sector in Hamilton and they deal with YHM for all of their cargo. Cheaper to ship to YHM and be next to the airport for their warehouse instead of driving your cargo from YHM to your GTA warehouse, high gas price is actually a good thing.

I agree Hamilton and Mississauga are apples and oranges, but there are a couple things the naysayers in this thread are maybe not aware of..

Mississauga has a LOT of high quality high-rise condos that would be the envy of any Hamiltonian looking for urban development in the core. Remember when we were all eagerly awaiting Stinson's high rise condo tower?

And the majority of Hamiltonians live in absolute urban sprawl. Even though its certainly not my cup of tea, we can't just ignore this. Mississauga is taking steps to urbanize its suburbia with high rise condos and is doing so successfully. Why can't Hamilton follow its example? Hazel is right.. lack of industry and business.

Mississauga's canyon of condos fans along Hwy 10 and Burnhamthorpe within a kilometer of the 403, at the periphery of the Square One parking lot – same parking lot that hosts its City Hall, the Living Arts Centre, its central library, art gallery, transit terminal and farmer's market. In order to properly simulate a similar scenario in Hamilton, you'd want to move take all of those services out of downtown and put them between Lime Ridge Mall and the Linc, seeding condo towers on the surrounding blocks, from Fennell to Rymal and Upper James to Upper Gage. It would be an interesting experiment, no question, especially with Summit Park etc to the southeast. Maybe a new city core is just the ticket.

Mississauga is blessed with proximity to Toronto, a hyperabundance of highways, a huge international airport and the lack of an historic downtown (they incorporated in 1974, the year after Square One opened) so they're ideally positioned to attract business and lure residential development. Now if downtown Hamilton had more farmland and a half-dozen 400-series highway exchanges...

I think the critical thing was that as she said the development charges have to cover the cost of servicing the land. No going into debt for growth.

I also believe that development charges have covered the cost of servicing land, plus. That means ongoing development was subsidizing everything else.

Now that development has slowed Mississauga will either need to find another cash cow, cut services, or increase taxes. Another option is to annex a neighbouring rural township that will provide more land for development and more subsidization. Living off development charges is a dangerous addiction......

do as I say, not as I do. She's so full of crap.
I wouldn't call Missy's condos 'high quality' or 'urban'.
Its more like vertical sprawl. Better than sprawling sprawl, sure, but most of the buildings are hideous, tacky and would look horrendous in an urban core like ours.

Steeltown - you make a good point about companies looking here for the health sector and cargo options at YHM.

If you notice most of the companies taking up Ancaster business park and other business parks like Waterdown are relocated GTA companies, not brand new companies.

Here are some Mississauga condos that would look great in downtown Hamilton.

You should check out One Park in real live. It's like a condo tower in the middle of a farmfield lol.

I think Hamilton should get going with building some condo buildings in the core. Maybe Harry Stinson went too big too fast for Hamilton but when you consider that a city our size with half a million people and only 1 condo complex in the core to speak of well that right there tells me we are under served in that department....taking Steeltown's info regarding GTA companies re-locating here because of the cargo hub at airport those folks look around our town for a place to move into and a lot of times they are too busy to look after a house and these people would rather just buy a condo because compared to a house it is low maintenance and when they look around downtown for condos and only find the one on James South well that doesn't really give them any options. Build them and they will come...just not at 100-stories like Stinson wanted to build.

Mississauga Condo Boom
Mississauga Developments

That's a nice looking building...something like that would look good in downtown Hamilton. Instead of building one 100-story building like Stinson wanted to do I would rather they build three 30-storey buildings or two 50-storey buildings instead.

I'd sure take any of those complexes over Cityview Terrace. I hope we don't see many more of those in the core. That's the first condo complex built in the core from the ground up in quite some time and that's what we get.

I liked One Park when I first saw it from a distance, but now I think it looks cheesy (and it really is in a "park" or more like an empty field).