Retail News

[drpgq]

I think that for a store like Chapters, if there actually was one downtown, it probably wouldn't do too badly. The problem is that, since Chapters/Indigo is virtually a monopoly, why have another store and split your business, when you can cram everyone into your existing Ancaster store. Sure you might lose some customers, but your margins will be great. If there was a Borders and Barnes and Noble competition arrangement, one of the chains might take a chance. The same thing with Future Shop/Best Buy. I despise having to go all the way to the far end of Upper James (I much preferred the location near Limeridge Mall), but downtown there's not one, so one is forced out into the middle of nowhere.

I do think that a Starbuck's downtown is probably inevitable, but I would guess the first location would probably be on James South near St. Joes.

[omro]

Ultimately it's all "chicken and egg".

The local government needs to be the egg.

If I were benevolent dictator for Hamilton, I'd take a big bulldozer to the downtown city centre shopping thing and replace it with something far more open and attractive, rather than dark and enclosed, offering a multiplex cinema and more than just one floor of drab retail. I'd probably come up with some way to integrate an LRT/BRT transit node within or beneath this space to make sure people get there.

Of course all that would cost a fortune, so perhaps my spell as dictator wouldn't be seen as that benevolent when you got your tax bill

[the dude]

i'm not going to make any grand statements about downtown employment because i can't back them up with numbers. what i can say is that i've got a few friends [engineers and mbas] who work downtown, some for kpmg [which you can add to the list of good downtown employers]. as others have stated, there's plenty of room for more retail in the core. now, i happen to believe these businesses should be of the unique and independent variety but then beggars can't be choosers...

oh, amexcanada also has an office downtown. if i'm not mistaken several hundred work there. some of those jobs are in customer service but there are also jobs offering a decent salary out of that office.

[raisethehammer]

According to Statscan, the highest income earners who live in Hamilton earn their income downtown, not the GTA.
We're expected to the believe the latter due to the media always telling us great TO is and how sucky Hamilton is. The fact is, there are a lot of offices downtown.
I was downtown all evening for dinner/art crawl last night as well as the night before and there were suit/tie guys everywhere. We had dinner at LaCantina last night and a whole host of suit/tie guys walked by heading into Corktown from work. You could tell they were coming home with the briefcase in one hand and umbrella in the other.
When you look at the restaurants downtown and ones with reasonably high prices, you realize that there are folks with income living in the core.
We need to lure a few retailers downtown to get the ball rolling. 2 or 3 located close to each other on King St would be awesome.

[FairHamilton]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

We need to lure a few retailers downtown to get the ball rolling. 2 or 3 located close to each other on King St would be awesome.

Have you written (or consider writing) to those retailers you want to locate in downtown Hamilton and work to convince them they should investigate the area?

On this board, we all know your stance so now should be the time to communicate it to the retailers.

[flar]

Originally Posted by FairHamilton

I'd argue that if they already drive to the retailers then the retailers have no interest in getting closer, as they already get their business.

Then why are they trying to build more power centres near the core?

It seems that retailers are just realizing the Hamilton market now. There are 5 power/smart centres currently under construction or just opened that I know of (Heritage Green, Rymal Road, Clappisons Corners, Wilson & 403 Ancaster and Centre Mall). There are two more proposed in lower Stoney Creek and another at the Mountain Plaza Mall, with another attempt on the land near the Innovation Park. That's a lot of new retail.

I've posted the statistics before, Hamilton's income structure is comparable to other cities in Canada and the median and average incomes here are also comparable. The difference between Hamilton and other cities is that the poor here are extremely visible because they are highly concentrated in the area NE of downtown.

Also, lets can this idea that Hamilton is the poorest city in Canada. The poverty rate in Hamilton is 19%. Ottawa is also 19%. The poverty rate in Toronto is 21%. The poverty rates in Winnipeg and Quebec City are 23%. Calgary's poverty rate is 20%. Montreal is 27%. This is according to Stats Canada.

Only smaller cities have lower poverty rates, places like Regina, Halifax, Victoria, K-W and London.

[BCTed]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

According to Statscan, the highest income earners who live in Hamilton earn their income downtown, not the GTA.
We're expected to the believe the latter due to the media always telling us great TO is and how sucky Hamilton is. The fact is, there are a lot of offices downtown.
I was downtown all evening for dinner/art crawl last night as well as the night before and there were suit/tie guys everywhere. We had dinner at LaCantina last night and a whole host of suit/tie guys walked by heading into Corktown from work. You could tell they were coming home with the briefcase in one hand and umbrella in the other.
When you look at the restaurants downtown and ones with reasonably high prices, you realize that there are folks with income living in the core.
We need to lure a few retailers downtown to get the ball rolling. 2 or 3 located close to each other on King St would be awesome.

You keep clinging to this StatsCan number, but I do not know exactly what it means and I am not sure that you do either. There may be a lot of offices downtown, but there are also a lot of empty offices downtown. There are very few corporate head offices downtown --- the presence of most big companies tends to be satellite/admin/call centre type of stuff. There may be some heavy-hitter suit and tie guys, but they are few and far between.

Lots of retailers have closed down in downtown Hamilton because of lack of support, so I do not blame them for being shy. You just mentioned this "Write Impressions" shop closing down. Downtown just does not have the right composition of people to support all that much at the moment.

[BCTed]

Originally Posted by the dude

i'm not going to make any grand statements about downtown employment because i can't back them up with numbers. what i can say is that i've got a few friends [engineers and mbas] who work downtown, some for kpmg [which you can add to the list of good downtown employers]. as others have stated, there's plenty of room for more retail in the core. now, i happen to believe these businesses should be of the unique and independent variety but then beggars can't be choosers...

oh, amexcanada also has an office downtown. if i'm not mistaken several hundred work there. some of those jobs are in customer service but there are also jobs offering a decent salary out of that office.

You mention engineers and MBA graduates. I know a good load of both and I cannot name a single one who actually works in Hamilton. drpgq studied engineering in Hamilton and I do not believe that he works in Hamilton. Ask him how many of his classmates ended up earning their keep in Hamilton. Ask him if engineering relatives of his (a sister, perhaps? ) ended up earning their keeps in Hamilton. The same is very true for business school graduates. Some lawyers and doctors may end up making their money within the city limits, but law and medicine are pretty much necessary parts of any town's infrastructure.

[the dude]

Originally Posted by flar

Also, lets can this idea that Hamilton is the poorest city in Canada. The poverty rate in Hamilton is 19%. Ottawa is also 19%. The poverty rate in Toronto is 21%. The poverty rates in Winnipeg and Quebec City are 23%. Calgary's poverty rate is 20%. Montreal is 27%. This is according to Stats Canada.

i've said this before, so forgive me but i lived in ottawa for two years and encountered a staggering number of street people on my daily commute. does anyone think ottawa's poor? aside from a few poverty activists, no. so why does hamilton get that treatment? my guess is it's likely the general disrepair of downtown/barton street and the view from the bridge. it's a negative image we won't shake until our core turns that figurative corner.

[drpgq]

Originally Posted by BCTed

You mention engineers and MBA graduates. I know a good load of both and I cannot name a single one who actually works in Hamilton. drpgq studied engineering in Hamilton and I do not believe that he works in Hamilton. Ask him how many of his classmates ended up earning their keep in Hamilton. Ask him if engineering relatives of his (a sister, perhaps? ) ended up earning their keeps in Hamilton. The same is very true for business school graduates. Some lawyers and doctors may end up making their money within the city limits, but law and medicine are pretty much necessary parts of any town's infrastructure.

I actually do work in Hamilton, although in a bit of a round about way. After I finished my graduate studies, I wanted to stay in my fairly narrow subfield and considering that Canada (including Toronto, Oakville, Markham etc.) itself is not particularly friendly towards engineering PhDs, I moved to Germany for three years. Eventually I wanted to come back to North America (due in no small part to ridiculous levels of tax in Germany for a single person with no dependents). At the time, there was some merger talks with another small US company and if it went through, I could have relocated at their location, but if fell through (thankfully in hindsight). So then I just told my present company, I was moving back to North America no matter what and based myself out of Hamilton with the idea of eventually going somewhere in the US. I go back to Germany for about five times per year now, which is pretty convenient for traveling. So yes, I actually do work in Hamilton, doing some extremely cutting edge work that is not done anywhere in Canada (except in my apartment near St. Joes).

One of my sisters is an engineer in Ottawa working at Alcatel, it is true. However from what I've seen over the years, the Ottawa tech scene is not what it once was.

It is true that Hamilton isn't great at retaining the engineers it either trains at Mac, or its own inhabitants that get their degree elsewhere. I do know a few working here however and I've heard that Arcelor and US Steel employ one or two. I would say the problem isn't just restricted to Hamilton however, as I knew a fair number of friends that didn't go to Oakville or Toronto, they went to the US. Canada in general wastes a lot of its technical talent.

However, I'm more optimistic than BCTed on Hamilton engineeringwise I think.
I really think the Mac Innovation Park will eventually (and it will take time) become a great success. Being close to and associated with the university is something that some hightech (although not all) companies want and need, and that they can't get at some Rudy Reimer business park on a service road off the QEW in Burlington and Oakville. It has worked for KW, and I've seen it work in various areas in the US too.

[the dude]

i thought we were just talking about downtown. overall, i don't think the employment situation is that bleak for engineers or mbas for that matter. between dofasco and stelco, literally hundreds are in their employ.

[BCTed]

Originally Posted by the dude

i thought we were just talking about downtown. overall, i don't think the employment situation is that bleak for engineers or mbas for that matter. between dofasco and stelco, literally hundreds are in their employ.

Sorry, we were just talking about downtown and I unintentionally warped things a bit. Dofasco and Stelco are exceptions to my earlier comments about knowing no engineers with Hamilton-based jobs.

[raisethehammer]

Originally Posted by BCTed

You keep clinging to this StatsCan number, but I do not know exactly what it means and I am not sure that you do either. There may be a lot of offices downtown, but there are also a lot of empty offices downtown. There are very few corporate head offices downtown --- the presence of most big companies tends to be satellite/admin/call centre type of stuff. There may be some heavy-hitter suit and tie guys, but they are few and far between.

Lots of retailers have closed down in downtown Hamilton because of lack of support, so I do not blame them for being shy. You just mentioned this "Write Impressions" shop closing down. Downtown just does not have the right composition of people to support all that much at the moment.

I'm not 'clinging' to anything. Simply trying educate people like you who spout off nonsense with no facts.
The statscan numbers are very easy to understand. Nobody else on here is having a hard time understanding what they mean. Please figure it out.

FairHamilton - yes, I've emailed various retailers that I think would fit downtown - Second Cup (I never go there, but understand the image of the place), H&M, MEC (that's long gone now) American Apparel etc....
I think if more and more people contact these stores and let them know that we rarely shop at them (unless we happen to be in a city which has them) but would shop at them regularly if they were here, maybe they'll start to investigate more closely.
I am aware of Staples, CanTire, Walmart (crap), Rogers, Shoppers, LCBO, Williams Coffee Pub all looking to locate downtown. So, we'll see what happens.

[BCTed]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

I'm not 'clinging' to anything. Simply trying educate people like you who spout off nonsense with no facts.
The statscan numbers are very easy to understand. Nobody else on here is having a hard time understanding what they mean. Please figure it out.

Can you at least make some effort to stop being an out-and-out jerk?

"According to Statscan, the highest income earners who live in Hamilton earn their income downtown, not the GTA." ---- you have posted this statement multiple times and it means absolutely nothing on its own. Without definitions and thresholds, it could could be interpreted to mean almost anything --- The extreme case could be that the highest-earning two individual Hamilton residents make their living out of downtown Hamilton, while the next 30,000 work in Mississauga.

Have you posted a link to this StatsCan data in the past? If not, please do so. If you have, then can you extend me the courtesy of posting it again?

[drpgq]

I'm sorry for confusing the downtown employment versus engineers, but generally downtowns don't have hordes of engineers (including Toronto and Ottawa where they're all in Kanata). Depends on the definition of downtown as well. Will the Mac Innovation Park be considered part of downtown? Strictly speaking probably not, however the jobs there will be close enough to have some spillover of positive effects I would think.

[raisethehammer]

Originally Posted by BCTed

Can you at least make some effort to stop being an out-and-out jerk?

"According to Statscan, the highest income earners who live in Hamilton earn their income downtown, not the GTA." ---- you have posted this statement multiple times and it means absolutely nothing on its own. Without definitions and thresholds, it could could be interpreted to mean almost anything --- The extreme case could be that the highest-earning two individual Hamilton residents make their living out of downtown Hamilton, while the next 30,000 work in Mississauga.

Have you posted a link to this StatsCan data in the past? If not, please do so. If you have, then can you extend me the courtesy of posting it again?

you seem to have enough time to waste driving us all nuts on here, so go find it yourself.

[omro]

I was googling and found this, but it's from 2005 based on 2001 data, so it's not feeling that current.

link

Not wishing to start a fight or get told off, but I'd like to see the article/stats as a 15min google (I was watching a film at the same time ) didn't seem to come up with much beyond this. I could have just been putting the wrong words into google though.

[raisethehammer]

this stat here has slightly changed in the 2006 census, but you can even see in this one that the city centre incomes were high (second highest in 2001).


Average Earnings by Distance of Job from City Centre*, Hamilton, 2001
Average Annual Earnings
0-5 km
45,100
5-10 km
43,700
10-15 km
43,000
15-20 km
47,600
20-25 km
41,500
25km+
36,900

[omro]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

this stat here has slightly changed in the 2006 census, but you can even see in this one that the city centre incomes were high (second highest in 2001).

Average Earnings by Distance of Job from City Centre*, Hamilton, 2001

Average Annual Earnings
0-5 km 45,100
5-10 km 43,700
10-15 km 43,000
15-20 km 47,600
20-25 km 41,500
25km+ 36,900

That fact is true, so what you're saying is indeed correct.

However, viewing the argument from the both sides, it does depend upon a relative definition of what's considered a "high" income.

Just under that same table it does state:

In 2001, the highest average earnings could be found 15-20km from Hamilton’s city centre. However, the second highest average earnings were in the city centre itself. Compared to other major Canadian CMAs, Hamilton’s city centre average earnings are among the lowest:

Average Earnings in City Centres*, Selected CMAs, 2001

Average Annual Earnings
Toronto 63,400
Calgary 55,700
Ottawa-Hull 51,600
Vancouver 51,300
Montreal 47,400
Edmonton 45,700
Hamilton 45,100
Quebec 41,000
Winnipeg 40,000

*City centre is defined as the census tract where the city hall of the core municipality is located.
Source: Heisz and LaRochelle-Cote, p. 27, Table 2.2 in Statistics Canada – Catalogue No. 89-613-MIE, No. 007

[BCTed]

I am now assuming that this data was pulled from this document:
http://communitystudy.ca/pdfs/E&C%20Bulletin.pdf

There is something sketchy to me about the 25+ km number. Nobody is commuting from Hamilton to Toronto to work at a $35,000 job.

If we are cherry-picking stuff from this file, let's not forget: "Of the top 9 CMAs (by population), Hamilton has the lowest percentage of managerial skilled jobs in its city centre, and has the second lowest percentage of university skilled jobs."

This is something that the city should work on if it wants a downtown revival.