Building it back up
This block is key to renewal. It’s a focal point of the downtown, housing the grand Connaught. But like the Connaught, it’s mostly hollow today. Slowly, quietly, businesspeople are trying to pull it back together, believing vibrancy can be restored.
PAUL WILSON
Hamilton Spectator
Let’s take a walk around the block.
It’s an old one, bounded by King, John, Main and Catharine.
For nearly a century, this block has been dominated by one hulking feature — the Royal Connaught Hotel, with marble-pillared lobby, spectacular ballroom, cocktails on the rooftop garden.
And at street level, the Connaught housed many shops. If we strolled that stretch of King 60 years ago we would have passed Raphael-Mack Ladies Wear, Dack’s Shoes, R.B. McLelland’s menswear, Liggett Drugs, Powell Photo.
Immediately east, on what is now the Connaught parking lot, was a building called the Secord Block. Down at street level were Bert Rymal Appliances, Robertson and Turner Jewelers, The Travel Shop, Empire Shoe Rebuilders, Courtland Steam Baths.
Upstairs were all manner of enterprises, including the Studio of Popular Music. Chris Lovett taught there. Paul Daniels taught people how to sing. J.R. McLachlan, dentist, gave them a winning smile.
If we walked along John, the western edge of this block, we would have passed the Connaught’s coffee shop, then Nick Corrado’s tailor shop, Miss Emma Schuler’s hat shop, Sekeshon’s Fashion Salon. Over these stores, on floors two, three and four, was Connaught Bowling & Billiards, with 26 alleys, five tables and a lunch bar.
Next door, the Merchants’ Store Fixtures building. And at the corner of John and Main, the Bright Spot restaurant, a printing company above it.
Just east on Main, operations on the block included Livingstone Stoker Sales, Connaught Motor Sales, Lennox Service Station.
In short, it was a bustling block with a long list of businesses.
And how many enterprises operate on that block today? Precisely one.
“Call me crazy, but I love downtown,” says Murline Mallette. She and husband Gene have been running Liaison College of Culinary Arts at 27 John South for 10 years.
The location is handy for students, and the Farmers’ Market is handy for fresh ingredients. Mallette says they’re staying downtown. She believes the cancer around her is about to be cured.
So does her landlord, Glen Swire. “Call me crazy too,” he says. Swire is part of the family that first brought Colonel Sanders and his secret herbs and spices to town in the early 1960s.
Sometimes the colonel even slept at their house.
The Swires had Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets all over the city. Thirty years ago they decided they needed one downtown, and Swire put up the building on John South and opened a 92-seater in 1978.
At that time, the post office was right across the street. Everybody went there in those days, and hundreds worked there. That KFC closed in 1996 — downtown was deteriorating, the post office moved to Stoney Creek and McDonald’s and Wendy’s left their locations across from Gore Park.
Swire, 57, values Liaison as a tenant and has no plans to sell. “I’ve got another 20 years to hang on,” he says, but predicts downtown will be a better place inside of 10 years.
He’s heartened by what’s happening one door south, at John and Main.
Whistler-based Gibbons Hospitality Group has bought a 157-year-old stone building for $500,000 and is spending $2 million to turn it into a 900-seat club, complete with what could be downtown’s only rooftop patio. The London Tap House opens soon.
Matt Gibbons looked on the Mountain. “But it’s more of a strip-mall feel up there. The history’s down here.”
One door east on Main, the BFT Group (Building for Tomorrow) is putting the finishing touches on a $200,000 renovation of what long ago was the site of the Lake & Bailey flour mill.
Brent Coleman of BFT — a young local group — says it’s their first venture downtown. The building, purchased last year, has café, office, loft potential.
They’ve moved stairways, installed heavy structural beams, struggled to get permits.
Coleman is sure it’ll be worth it. “I think this block is key. Five years from now, it’ll look significantly better than it does today.”
One door north of Liaison College is the four-storey building that once housed that bowling alley and billiards.
It’s in bad shape and has been mostly empty for years. There was the seedy Crazy Horse Saloon, whose rough patrons caused Liaison many headaches.
The saloon’s recent death is good news.
Now the building — bowling lanes long gone — is for sale. Mississauga realtor Anastasia Tolias has the listing.
She doesn’t know much about Hamilton, but “I don’t like what I see in the downtown core … Everybody needs to come together and kick it up a couple of notches.”
She has the property listed at $800,000, ambitious indeed. The building’s owned by a numbered company.
Ted Mammas of Mississauga, one of the principals, says they simply bought it as an investment. They’re not interested in developing the building, just selling it.
So that’s four properties on the block. The fifth, last not least, the great beast, Lady Connaught. After she slipped into receivership in 2004, five local businessmen bought her for $4.5 million — Tony Battaglia, a founder of Hamilton airport’s TradePort; Plaza Hotel owner Oscar Kichi; Ted Valeri of T. Valeri Construction; Labourers’ International Union vice-president Joe Mancinelli; and Mario Frankovich, president of Burgeonvest Securities.
They said they would make the Connaught royal again. They thought it would be done by now, but the job of rebuilding has not yet begun. They can’t find the financing.
The plan morphed into a mammoth project that would see the Connaught buy the other four properties on the block, knocking them down and putting up two 18-storey condo towers behind the renovated hotel.
According to Battaglia, lead hand for the Connaught ownership group, two of the four parties were “totally unreasonable” in what they wanted. So that plan died this summer.
The current plan is to do the Connaught with offices on floors two, three and four and put guest rooms on the other eight.
“The cost of renovating is more expensive than a brand-new building,” Battaglia says, “and the final appraisal shows a value that’s lower than the cost. Lenders just can’t wrap their heads around that.”
So the search for money goes on.
Battaglia says the ownership team may have to ante up more money. And they may now have to go to second-chance lenders, who charge higher interest.
Battaglia says there’s been no surrender.
“I’m disappointed, but not defeated. I still think this is a great project.”
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