Posted Dec 16, 2021, 4:15 PM
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Ham-burgher
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Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Hamilton
Posts: 6,518
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A Spec story from today has lots of photos:
Hamilton’s last dairy resurrected for ‘The Oaks’ affordable housing
The former Royal Oak Dairy began in 1898 as a one-horse operation, this spring it welcomes its first tenants.
https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilto...-the-oaks.html
Jon Wells
The Hamilton Spectator
Thu., Dec. 16, 2021
The rich 83-year history of the city’s last dairy evokes images of horse-drawn wagons, and skimming cream off the top of milk in glass bottles delivered door to door.
But the recent history of the old Royal Oak Dairy building at 225 East Ave. N., near Barton and Victoria, is one of vandalism and squatters setting fires with scrap wood and plastic to cook their food.
A new era is dawning at the property, resurrected as “The Oaks” affordable and supportive housing project.
“The challenge of homelessness is all around us, and we’re happy an actual building is now there for people to live in,” said Graham Cubitt, who until recently was director of projects and development for Indwell, the affordable housing charity that developed the site.
Cubitt is now president of Flourish, a new not-for-profit housing company created by Indwell.
This spring, likely in April and into early summer, the first 108-unit phase of the project will open for tenants. The final 31 apartments open in 2023.
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Thirteen of the new units will be for Indigenous people, who Cubitt said are disproportionately represented in the homeless population.
The environmental cleanup of the site was extensive, he said.
“It was a complicated brownfield site, with the old dairy, factory loading docks, oil tanks, boilers, asbestos, and a lot of garbage.”
More damaging than detritus left by squatters was the impact of scrappers who ransacked the building over the years, stealing transformers to recycle the copper.
Cubitt said scrappers drained oil from transformers on-site, exacerbating the cost of the cleanup.
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full story here
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