Deal for Hamilton west harbour creative industries hub on horizon
November 17, 2023 | Hamilton Spectator
Author: Teviah Moro
Long-awaited development and sales agreements for a consortium's plan to transform brownfields in Hamilton's west harbour into a creative industries hub are on the cusp of a major milestone.
A proposal that involves "fair market value" for the Barton-Tiffany lands and accounts for "many competing priorities" is before council, says Jeff Anders, co-founder of Aeon Studio Group, which operates Bayfront Studios.
They include site contamination, affordable housing, subsidized artist space and a flagging real estate market.
That uncertainty "somewhat complicates things," but the "creative industry's fundamentals are sound" and can weather the temporary storm, Anders told The Spectator.
Moreover, environmental work on the site is "probably a three- to five-year exercise," Anders said.
"And so by then, it will be a very different scenario."
The consortium also includes TAS, a Toronto-based firm that focuses on mixed-use projects and commercial community hubs, and Forge and Foster, a Hamilton real estate investment firm.
The vision for a 14-acre creative arts hub with production studios for film, television, animation, video games and fashion, performance spaces along with 750 homes near the CN Rail tracks has been years in the making.
In 2019, Aeon agreed in principle to buy the parcels where the city had bulldozed homes a decade earlier for a stadium that was ultimately built at the former Ivor Wynne site in the east end.
In 2021, the firm opened Bayfront Studios in an 80,000-square-foot former manufacturing building at 243 Queen St. N. across from the city-owned parcels eyed for the development.
The consortium had to forge a memorandum of understanding, hold public consultations and negotiate high-level purchase and development terms with the city.
On Wednesday, Anders told council the consortium had finished a "wave" of environmental and geotechnical studies and "have uncovered just how difficult a development site it is."
Despite the challenges, for city-owned land the partners don't yet "have the right to buy," they're committed to seeing the project through, he said.
"This is not some run-of-the-mill land transaction. It is an inspired city-building opportunity."
If approved by council, the deal would usher in tens of millions in economic activity, a thousand new jobs, 750 residential units, a portion of which is to be affordable, and clean up the lands, Anders said.
The proposal also "shares financial upside" with the city if the consortium increases the plan's density through zoning changes, he said.
Through a partnership with Centre[3], Aeon also offers subsidized studio spaces for artists in a building on Harriet Street, which is off Hess Street North by Central Park.
There is an "inherent skepticism" that innovative, ambitious projects like the creative industries hub are "actually going to happen," Coun. John-Paul Danko told Anders.
That's a "fair question," he responded, saying there's "no assurance really of anything" in such a challenging climate, but the consortium has "marshalled" additional capital and properties with a mind to take "incremental steps forward."
One of the greatest concerns is that CN could launch a land-use tribunal appeal against the project, as it has done with another proposed development in the North End in the general vicinity of the tracks, Coun. Cameron Kroetsch said.
Kroetsch, who's in his first year as representative for the area, said he was never "a fan" of the sole-source, sales-development arrangement, which he described as "very opaque" earlier on, but the process has improved since then.
"I think this is heading in a good direction and hopefully we can negotiate something that works for everybody."
Council had initially expected to duck into closed session for confidential discussions with staff on the proposal but postponed that session until next week due to Wednesday's lengthy agenda.
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