Want to build a waterfront restaurant or hotel? Hamilton has a deal for you
Matthew Van Dongen
https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-re...LI&li_medium=thespec_recommended_for_you
Hamilton wants to sell you some prime waterfront property — so long as you buy into council’s west harbour vision.
With little fanfare, Hamilton recently put four small parcels of vacant land between Pier 5 and Pier 7 on the market.
But don’t go shopping with a harbourfront mansion in mind. The city wants restaurants — there’s only one on the recreational harbourfront now — retail and maybe a boutique hotel to set up shop alongside a high-profile residential development already under construction on Pier 8.
No, the city can’t force a buyer to sell pier-side seafood, said waterfront project head Chris Phillips. But it can use zoning and sale conditions “to ensure that the uses the city is looking to have, based on its vision, are the ones that will be implemented,” he said.
The properties are small, ranging in size from a quarter to about a third of an acre each. They include two parcels on Guise Street, an empty concrete pier that roughly lines up with the end of James Street North and the stubby point of land that once hosted the police marine unit building.
The city is not selling land on the piers previously reserved for green space or an eventual “artisan village.”
Zoning for all blocks allows for retail and restaurants, with residential possible above floor-level business. Waterfront recreational rentals are also encouraged — and bait shops, too.
On the block closest to Pier 8, which includes the old police marine building, zoning allows for a boutique hotel with a four-storey height limit. The rest of the properties must host two- or three-storey buildings.
There are other conditions, too: construction must start within three years, you can’t flip the property for at least a decade and priority consideration will go to environmentally sustainable building plans. The former industrial pier land is being sold “as is,” so do your due diligence.
Bill Curran, a North End neighbourhood organizer, said he welcomed the decision to “finally” push ahead on the “glacial pace” of harbourfront development.
But the architect, who has argued for greater density on the waterfront, questioned whether the four-storey maximum height is going to attract “first class” developments or even allow for viable hotels or restaurants.
The harbour’s only full-service dining restaurant, Sarcoa, closed in 2017 in the middle of a legal dispute with the Hamilton Waterfront Trust and the city that was only settled last year. That city-owned building on Pier 8 remains empty and its future depends on the results of a new study that is also evaluating the feasibility of a 45-storey tower.
Curran added he was also surprised by the seemingly low-key marketing of “unique” waterfront land in the city, noting the properties are not even listed on Realtor.ca. By contrast, Hamilton issued a special request for proposals for its Pier 8 redevelopment and pitched the land at international conferences.
Phillips said the sale is being advertised throughout the GTA and via “targeted outreach to those who are uniquely qualified to develop this waterfront site.”
The city will only consider purchase offers after Oct. 31 — and there is no rush to offload the properties, added Phillips, who stressed the city wants to recoup “fair market value” for the properties. The city will not put a public price on that value.
The sale was actually supposed to start in March or April. The city presented the sale plan in public last December and council signed off on it in early this year — but the marketing process screeched to a halt alongside many other municipal plans during the COVID lockdown.
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