64 Main St East | ? m | 18 fl | Approved

[urban_planner]

Acutally the city does have a main st widening in they official plan and this was an issue with the Hamilton Grand.

This also played a part in why the Hotel and Main and Walnut never went up.

[Dr Awesomesauce]

How many different ways can we shoot ourselves in the foot?? Another absurd day in the life of this city.

[BCTed]

Originally Posted by pEte fiSt iN Ur fAce

How many different ways can we shoot ourselves in the foot?? Another absurd day in the life of this city.

The city did not shoot itself in the foot.

[jgrwatson]

Originally Posted by urban_planner

Acutally the city does have a main st widening in they official plan and this was an issue with the Hamilton Grand.

This also played a part in why the Hotel and Main and Walnut never went up.

Official Plan? Does the OP not speak to broader city policy, not specifics like main street widening? I could maybe see it in the Zoning By-law. But again, that seems unlikely.

If you find the mention, I'd love to take a look!

Also, the walnut hotel probably fell through for a number of other reasons...

[LikeHamilton]

Did anyone else notice that Harry’s display at the art crawl was only pushing the Stinson School Project and the hotel in Niagara Falls NY? I did not have time to stop and talk but it not look like he was pushing the Hamilton Grand at all.

[mattgrande]

Yep, I noticed that as well. I had high hopes for this project. Too bad.

[thistleclub]

The Hamilton Grand hoarding also seems to be more generic in its sales pitch. You might almost believe that Stinson Realty was selling the Main/John lot.

[matt602]

I have no doubt that he has completely dumped the Hamilton Grand. There's no way he can afford to push all 3 projects at once. To be honest I have trouble believing that he can even break even on the Niagara Falls hotel.

[LikeHamilton]

Their web site is still up and there is a Facebook page for it but they have not been updated since May.

[thistleclub]

Canadian investor acquires N.F. landmark (James Fink, Buffalo Business First, Sept 16, 2011)

Hamilton developer Harry Stinson has taken control of the Hotel Niagara’s redevelopment effort, with a pledge to bring the vacant, 12-story building back to its former glory.

For Stinson, who has tackled historic development projects in his native Southern Ontario, it could be the first of several local investments.

He said he is working on a possible plan for the Hotel Niagara but is keeping it close to the vest for now, adding, “The building is too important to be talking about in terms of vague visions.”

[SteelTown]

Suites from $89,900
Offices from $59,900

We are pleased to announce that the Hamilton Grand project is proceeding.
An intimate 5 storey building in a suitably historic style, the Hamilton Grand is located on a prime downtown corner, with phenomenal visibility and only a 1 minute walk to the GO Train station.
Retail/commercial units are available on the first floor, office units on the second floor, and apartment/hotel residential suites on the third through fifth floors. The residential units will participate in a fully-managed rental program, offering furnished accommodation daily, monthly and even annually. The target market is single professionals, primarily academic and medical, given that the largest employment sectors in Hamilton now are the tens of thousands of people associated with the local hospitals and universities (now vastly eclipsing the steel mills).

Public sales (if required) will commence in late January, but we are offering you an advance opportunity to reserve a suite.
Please let us know if you would like an "Early-bird Price List", and start the New Year off with great deal!

Regards,
The Stinson Team

[Jon Dalton]

The Hamilton.... grand? Go ahead with 5 floors but change the name!

Seriously. I argued the merits of lower rise (mid-rise?) a few pages back, and I'd rather see more of these around downtown than one tower that floods the market, remaining undersold and underoccupied. Sound familiar?

[drpgq]

Personally I'd prefer a few more stories of residential on top, but I would rather it go forward then sit empty for another 10 years. There's still plenty of lots downtown for some denser development.

[bigguy1231]

This Stinson guy is a joke. A prime piece of real estate at one of the busier intersections in the city and he is going to build what is shaping up to be low income housing.

Let's just run this fly by night shyster out of town. We have enough of our own under funded shady developers in this city without importing Toronto's rejects.

[mattgrande]

Any word on if it'll be up to the sidewalk, or is it going to be pushed back for future Main street expansion?

[SteelTown]

You can see the new rendering for the building in its website.....

http://www.hamiltongrand.ca/

Looks like the building is set back with a fatter sidewalk along Main St.

[coalminecanary]

I hope they push it back, we could use at least 2 if not 3 or 4 more lanes on main. Last time I drove from the 403 to gage park it took me 4 and a half minutes and the tim horton's drive thru was backed up into the right hand lane so I actually had to use my brakes once. If there were a few more lanes I bet I could do that run in 4 minutes or less, plus everyone waiting for coffee can have a dedicated lane to stop in. we'd save pollution too since the people trying to actually DRIVE can go a faster more efficient speed and won't have to use their brakes which wastes gas.

Actually what would also help is if we could get rid of the lights along main and just have stop signs facing all the cross streets. Or better yet, yield signs so we don't have to stop before turning onto main from the cross streets. OH WAIT even better is if every cross street had its own on and off ramps and merge lanes then we wouldn't have to use our brakes at all even when we get on and off main. If we could just do this even as a trial that would be great. I'm sure it will work so well that we can then move on to widening king, cannon, wilson etc. Oh also I hope we can convert wilson to one way from james to wentworth, it's so slow in that 2 way stretch.

Also I was driving on James during art crawl and these people kept crossing in front of me. I hope we can make james one way and also increase the speed limit to 60 or 70. Then if we built a pedestrian bridge at york and another one at burlington street, the people walking can use those and the drivers won't have to slow down. This would help cut the travel time from the waterfront to main street from 5 minutes to 2 and a half minutes. It should NOT take longer to drive from burlington street to main than it does to get from the 403 to gage park, it's ridiculous.

One final thing - I think it's great that the city is reserving more space for future road widening. It actually gave me another idea. If we took all of the vacant commercial buildings that abut the sidewalk, we could use the future fund to buy them all up and then tear them down. Then even in those spots where the buildings are too close to the road, we can eventually widen the roads there too,after we expropriate the properties. Another advantage of this is that any buildings that face onto the parallel streets will have larger spaces behind them so they can install parking lots behind those. So to park at a building on king william you could have a rear parking lot that faces king. This would solve the problem of king being too slow and at the same time solve the problem of not enough parking. Of course king is just an example here, if we did this on all the commercial streets then all of them would flow way better and all of the neighbouring smaller streets would gain that rear parking advantage. Then more people would shop downtown cause when they drive in from ancaster it will be way faster AND there will be somewhere to park!

[thistleclub]

This is fast becoming the Gore Building's corner lot cousin. Is this really the same Harry Stinson that's trading on being the visionary behind a no-plot-too-slender high-rise with an 11:1 height-to-width ratio?

Anyway, I agree with Mr. Dalton that the scale is more practical from a number of standpoints. Perhaps now Harry understands why his 100-storey glass spike was greeted with a pinch of skepticism.

[BCTed]

Originally Posted by thistleclub

This is fast becoming the Gore Building's corner lot cousin. Is this really the same Harry Stinson that's trading on being the visionary behind a no-plot-too-slender high-rise with an 11:1 height-to-width ratio?

Well, he's certainly aiming for slender suites. Most of the units in the diagram on the front page look barely wider than the elevators. (Of course, I do not actually have any idea if that diagram is meant to be to scale or not.)

Other fun with hamiltongrand.ca:
- The links to the old version of the project can still be accessed at the bottom of the page.

- The document title of the home page is "Untitled document."

- I do not know what "IFRAME" is, but neither of the browsers that I use seem to support it, and they are reasonably up to date.

[palace1]

The city mapping site shows the property at 64 Main St E to be approx. 137.75 by 98.5 feet or 13568 sq feet

So each of the 32 residential units per floor would be approximately 424 square feet.

When I checked out the floor plan the overall dimensions seem to be to scale, so assuming the common areas are also to scale I did some quick measuring and the units drop to an average of approx. 330 sq feet.

Sounds tiny to me but according to the Toronto Star "Slated to open in spring 2013 is the newest small thing to hit Toronto’s exploding condominium market — a 270 square foot studio in Canderel Residential’s DNA project on King St. W."