Quote:
Originally Posted by markbarbera
WB had already assembled the land they require for their redevelopment plans at King and James. It is only a matter of time before the redevelopment starts. It is easy to make a logical leap that the lack of a publicly presented plan means there is a lack of a plan, but that doesn’t mean that is the correct conclusion.
With regards to the wringing of hands over the excessive amount of empty lots in downtown Hamilton, I would suggest the anxiety is misplaced. The city is on the cusp of a redevelopment explosion. Developers that have been hedging their bets on when to redevelop now see that the stars have aligned for Hamilton. We can see that in the redevelopment of the lands Vranich assembled at Bay between Main and King. A couple years ago, he was painted as the evil pariah turning the downtown into parking lots. In the past year, those parking lots have been transformed into redevelopment worth over $100m.
If you look back to Toronto in the 1980's, it's downtown was pockmarked by many open land not unlike Hamilton is today. At the time, many people in Toronto were as worried about the health of their inner city in the same way many of us worry about Hamilton today. The key is to remember that the empty lots are not to be viewed as a blight; they are the sign of an impending renaissance, kind of like our city is dotted with cocoons nearing the stage of chrysalis. The city is finally shaking the economic pains it has endured since the 90's. I am confident that, in ten years's time, we will see what has started at Bay and Main spread across all the lands that have been assembled by developers like Yale and WB.
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There may very well be a plan that the public doesn't know about. And it may only be a matter of time before the developer acts. But it's easy to make a logical leap about how much time will be involved.
I too have confidence we are seeing some real change downtown. But it's still in its infancy and there's a long way to go, and markets can change quite fast. So when someone proposes to knock down buildings that have been productive land uses without communicating a clear idea that anything will replace them right away, never mind what it will be, I think there's reason to be anxious.
All these lots do represent opportunity. But some of them have sat vacant for
decades. Over that time, the lack of productive land uses on those lots has contributed to the decline of the downtown - fewer attractors and businesses meant fewer reasons for people to visit, fewer economic interactions, fewer people working there, fewer residential units (many of which were above businesses in buildings that were demolished), and fewer reasons for anyone to care... meanwhile the social problems became magnified because of the decline of everything else, exacerbating the poor image of the area. There were other causes of the core's decline, but I think the empty lots were a prime reason so I have a hard time looking at them as anything but a blight.
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I should have typed faster. 
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