Eastgate Square Mall Redevelopment | ?m | 6 fl to 42 fl | Planning

[Chronamut]

It's not an issue of residential - it's an issue of a lack of businesses - there are many buildings, newly built ones even that are currently vacant.

And I know the adage if you put residents in will the businesses come? The issue is also that hamilton has some of the highest property taxes.. back in the day everyone lived above the businesses downtown and you could diagonally park in front of the businesses - now we've widened lanes, taken away that parking, suburbanized, and gotten rid of a lot of the residential areas above the businesses - many of those are being repurposed to loft style businesses but we don't have any of the major businesses we used to have.

We used to have fur shops, jewelery shops, cigar shops, china shops, several department stores, right in the downtown - shops that represented wealth and class - we had the eatons center that the city pretty much built itself around - we had wealthy families and businesses that represented prestigious companies and manufacturing downtown - the reason people aren't flocking downtown is because aside from some money loaning places and a few restaurants here and there there are no actual places to actually shop at. You need CLASS over glass. You want people flooding downtown give them expensive places to shop. Not just expensive places to live - oh and places downtown they can work to actually afford the places downtown. Otherwise they're just gonna commute to toronto.

Putting more people in is just going to cause more congestion if there is nowhere for them to go - is everyone just gonna hang out at the starbucks in the connaught? One HALF of the core side is STILL boarded up, one side is still being renovated, the other side is partially empty. You need QUALITY businesses in the core that reflect a need for people to actually come downtown versus go elsewhere or buy online. I mean restaurants are fine and all but we can't just be the place of online restaurants, breweries, art galleries that can't stay open because we don't have the rich buying base to buy the art, and the jackson square theatre - hell even the bowling alley didn't do so well in the eatons center.

So what can we put in downtown that all those people are going to want to do instead of just migrate to toronto and make hamilton another bedroom community?

Some people mentioned an actual grocery store, thatd be one, maybe a fitness center, some actual entertainment districts, some legit stores that aren't just chains maybe, some high quality clothing stores, can't really do department store type places but maybe something along those veins..

And filling the buildings up with closed off businesses like architecture firms doesn't really help for people who want to be able to walk into these buildings, we need to make those buildings top areas LIVEABLE again - some have gone a good way in that department - I would like to see some more art galleries pop up along king to branch out supercrawl and more entertainment - I know there is tomahawk throwing and some entertainment stuff at the old theatre entrance building a ways down - the core has to once again be the CORE for living and businesses - businesses that define hamilton as hamilton.

everything west of king and james is kinda a writeoff - so its only really east of there and that stretch along james

I really hope they don't just let that boarded up section rot until it falls down..