Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce
I had relatives living in the Barton area many moons ago - Holton Ave. It was very much a secondary downtown. Had everything you could possibly need.
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Sadly those days are long gone, and barton st is now a giant symbol of decay.
Turn that around though, along with cannon st, and you will have committed a revitalization feat of staggering proportions.
The problem becomes however, what do you do with the "undesirables" that currently live there, and where do they go? The issue is the people - the druggies, the crack addicts, the prostitutes, the drug dealers etc who keep those streets in those conditions - every city has a slum that these people eventually percolate into. Barton St, Cannon st, heck even parts of kenilworth st, are where a lot of them end up.
It's easy to say just have people come in and gentrify it - but in the meantime they still have to sit next to these people. This article was just written this year and it's called "how I survived barton st" - not so great - there is text detailing how it has been bad since the 70s:
https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9273371-how-i-survived-a-walk-down-hamilton-s-barton-street/
and then there are the shootings:
https://hamiltonpolice.on.ca/news/update---barton-st-shooting/
And then there are the people on barton st who WANT to keep it 🞵🞵🞵🞵 and vandalize people who try to make it better - this place was vandalized three times before it even OPENED. Within 3 weeks the anarchists had amassed 10,000 in damages to the store. All one has to do is google barton st to come up with a plethora of stories.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/meltwich-vandalism-1.4803663
There was a story of a woman along barton st that operated a chip wagon and she got tired of having to be accosted by the same druggies and hookers, and of being robbed by all the young people she hired to work at the place. She said she raised more money in donations to food banks than she actually got in sales.
So yeah, there is a lot going against barton st - it's a slum that wants to stay a slum.So the issues are a lot bigger than people are led to believe. Even a slow creep from the more prosperous places along barton st is going to be met with fierce resistance because to them it is symbolic of
gentrifying the area to kick them out.
To bring this back on topic though I am glad kiwi condos is building this along the king william stretch - THIS street at least is embracing gentrification.
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It's a big challenge. Planners seem to talk about mixed-income as much as mixed-use as being keys to a balanced outcome in a neighbourhood's evolution, but the reality often differs from the talk.
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/life/homes/2010/10/22/condo_critic_hope_sails_into_the_suburbs/bayviewcondojpg.jpeg)
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