Posted Dec 14, 2024, 5:04 PM
|
 |
Ham-burgher
|
|
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Hamilton
Posts: 7,397
|
|
Anyone think it will last the winter? Past Spring 2025? Into next fall???
There must be people squatting within. They're in future "grave danger" too if there is asbestos loose within, but probably not so worried about their longer terms. Demolition would have to account for dust, including anything toxic, so the city will have to act relatively quickly if this thing is at all likely to come down on its own in the coming months.
‘In grave danger’: Hamilton heritage committee backs Tivoli demolition plan
What’s left of the old James North theatre is not feasible to save, staff and consultants say.
Teviah Moro
The Hamilton Spectator
Dec. 14, 2024
https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilto...301ff66fa.html
A highrise developer’s plan to demolish what’s left of a historic but badly deteriorating downtown Hamilton theatre has won the reluctant approval of the city’s heritage committee after a rash of landmark losses in the core.
What’s left of the former Tivoli Theatre off James Street North is at risk, with clay tiles, old bricks and supporting wood and steel all compromised after years of water seeping in through a rickety roof.
“The building, as it is today, is in grave danger of actually collapsing,” Paul Sapounzi, managing partner of +VG Architects, the developer’s consultants on the project, told the heritage committee on Friday.
Some of the decorative plaster work, interior elements designated under provincial heritage legislation, disintegrates with a touch of the hand, said Sapounzi, who also noted asbestos is floating through the air inside.
“The plaster cannot be saved. The backup to the plaster cannot be saved. The clay tile cannot be saved, and then there’s the brick that is problematic and how it’s tied to the building as well,” he said.
...
On Friday, the heritage committee backed staff’s recommendation to allow Aventus to raze the Tivoli, but subject to certain conditions the developer must heed.
They include a conservation plan for the remaining heritage elements, a blueprint to commemorate the heritage of the site in the redevelopment and a security payment covering the estimated cost of the required work.
...
Aventus plans to build two towers, at 35 and 40 storeys with 875 residential units between them, and 716 square metres of commercial area, as well as an event space paying homage to the old theatre.
The original plan was to integrate the Tivoli into an “iconic building” with the two towers connected by a “sky bridge,” planning consultant Edward John told the heritage permit review subcommittee last month.
But 18 months of study presented “challenges at every turn,” the product of the years the vacant building languished without heating and cooling, making its incorporation “untenable,” he said.
...
But valuable design elements, such as the ceiling, plaster work, proscenium, colonnades, statues and decorative wall features, remain inside.
The “good news,” Sapounzi said on Friday, is that plaster statues and medallions in the theatre are still “substantial enough” that they could be saved for display in the future development.
...
|
Prev
Hybrid Mode