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  #81  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 3:32 PM
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Originally Posted by ryan_mcgreal View Post
I'm sure it's possible with some imagination and commitment from Yale, but as I wrote earlier in this thread, the underlying problem is baked into the design: the JS roof today is engineered to be segregated from the pathways that people take through the city.
That's not a huge issue if you're taking the whole roof out and what's underneath out and inserting into that space a two level mall. There are multiple access points to the current JS Mall from street level and the parking zones. From the inside there will be escalators and elevators, so it'll be no different from any other two level mall.
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  #82  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 4:06 PM
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That's not a huge issue if you're taking the whole roof out and what's underneath out and inserting into that space a two level mall. There are multiple access points to the current JS Mall from street level and the parking zones. From the inside there will be escalators and elevators, so it'll be no different from any other two level mall.
Jackson Square itself is designed to be segregated from its surroundings (the rooftop is just a reflection of this overarching mentality).

I'd rather see JS punched open at as many points as possible all around the block. At a bare minimum, every store against an exterior wall should have a prominent street presence (like, y'know, windows) and a direct entrance onto the street.

This is slo-o-o-owly starting to happen with a few restaurant patios and one or two stores (e.g. Grand and Toy); and the redevelopment of the Library and especially the Farmers' Market will really make that stretch of the megablock more permeable.

Perhaps the worst offender is the Hamilton City Centre (formerly the Eaton Centre), which is not only largely impermeable but also cloaked in a teeth-gnashingly cartoony facade, complete with a fake clock tower and fake flags.

If I'm reading the building correctly, the stores on the main level aren't even level with the street, so it would be very difficult to have street-level access to whatever happens to occupy the space (all the more reason it should persist as offices once the City moves out).
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  #83  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 4:27 PM
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HCC is a prime candidate for bulldozing.

If you took out JS Plaza and thus opened up the roof and scooped out what was on the level below, then you'd be able to insert a two level mall with tons of light into that existing shell. That wouldn't in anyway stop the streetwall from being redeveloped and would allow for a much lighter, brighter, bigger shopping experience downtown.
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  #84  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 7:09 PM
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What if there were a wide, curving ramp at a gentle grade going from the street in the vicinity of King and James up to the rooftop? I mean, maybe you'd have to take out some of the first floor retail space to accommodate it, but then perhaps you could have shops with front doors going into them along the one side of the ramp?

Maybe this would make the rooftop appear more inviting. Of course, to really make it a success you'd have to have more shops up there, as someone else mentioned in this thread.
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  #85  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 7:10 PM
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Or they could put windows and doors in and have a few steps leading up to each entrance..
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  #86  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 7:13 PM
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Originally Posted by rousseau View Post
What if there were a wide, curving ramp at a gentle grade going from the street in the vicinity of King and James up to the rooftop? I mean, maybe you'd have to take out some of the first floor retail space to accommodate it, but then perhaps you could have shops with front doors into them along the one side of the ramp?

Maybe this would make the rooftop appear more inviting. Of course, to really make it a success you'd have to have more shops up there.
The wide stairway right beside the main entrance at King and James leads up there, but there are always a bunch of "street-involved youths" sitting on the steps, so people are scared to go up there.


Still, there is no reason to go up there...
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  #87  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 7:26 PM
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There's the proposed "Grand Stair-Way" from York to the Jackson Square rooftop. It's a case study. Basically demolish the Goodlife building and build a giant ramp.
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  #88  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 7:33 PM
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  #89  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 8:02 PM
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Originally Posted by Jon Dalton View Post
During the last art crawl me, astroblaster and drpgq were on the jackson square roof as the Artopia show was winding down around midnight. In a space normally deserted or filled with punks, we looked over King and James with dj music pumping and people milling about. It was an unusual juxtaposition of nightlife seemingly transplanted from Toronto or Montreal with the backdrop of the glass CIBC towers, One James and Gore Park. Maybe it was the alcohol, but I thought for minute I had seen a glimpse of redemption for this woeful expression of 1970's antiurban megalomania. Now, how to make that happen more than once a year?
This was magic, I agree. I don't think it was the booze. This place was vibrant that night. If stuff happened there regularly, the space wouldn't be half bad. But nothing happens up there.

Highwater, Jon Dalton, I agree, we should work with what we've got. Dreaming and whining about bad planning decisions isn't going to help us that much in the short term.

I think a good first step would be for this space to be used in someway that coincides with the art crawls.

Is anyone in contact with the people who ran ARTOPIA? That might be a good place to start the conversation.
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  #90  
Old Posted Jun 29, 2009, 10:11 PM
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I went onto the roof of JS today and I have to say I thought it all a little bit sad. It fails as a useful space on so many levels. It's not attractive as a park. It's not structured for gatherings. It's not is attractive environs. It was just a smokers oasis.

I'm now convinced. Take it out. Block off/bulldose the stairs ways. Open up the roof. Insert a modern, large, light bright two storey mall in it's place, giving tons of natural light to the areas below. Bulldoze HCC once the council move out.

However, I'm still with my earlier freak meteorite strike idea from earlier in the thread, but since that won't happen, best to make do a bit of alternative thinking for the existing building.
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  #91  
Old Posted Jul 4, 2009, 4:22 PM
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Admit mistake - time to demall downtown

July 04, 2009
TERRY COOKE
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/Discover/article/594177

Maybe we should just tear down Jackson Square and concede that building a suburban mall smack in the middle of downtown was a bad idea in the first place.

Pondering that possibility is an admission that the 1960s Urban Renewal Program has failed to deliver any of its promised benefits to Hamilton.

That type of transformation is exactly what is happening in downtown Rochester, New York. It is a city similar to Hamilton in many ways, and therefore local planners and civic leaders might want to pay attention to what they are doing.

We took our three kids there last week to visit the National Museum of Play in downtown Rochester. It is simply the best children's museum in this part of the world and we had a wonderful adventure.

During our stay, we were astonished by how much the place looked and felt like Hamilton.

I was also intrigued by the city's attempts to turn back the clock on their own unhappy experience with urban renewal.

Rochester, like Hamilton, is a mature industrial city perched on the shore of Lake Ontario. They too have relied economically on a couple of major employers (Kodak and Xerox) that have been in decline for several decades.

Each city has made some headway at diversification, focusing heavily on post-secondary education, the knowledge sector and a vibrant arts scene.

Both cities still have great inner city neighborhoods, and many downtown architectural treasures with tons of potential for adaptive reuse.

But the suburbanization of the two cities in the past few decades has decimated retail activity in each city core.

Urban renewal came a little earlier to Rochester than it did here. Rochester opened the first downtown indoor mall in the United States in 1962. Like Jackson Square, their Mid-Town Plaza was hailed at the time as a planning marvel that would reverse the decline of the core by providing climate-controlled comfort and lots of parking to the shopping public.

But lo and behold, middle-class shoppers looking for chain store stuff and free parking continued to opt for malls closer and more convenient to the suburbs where they now lived. And conversely, those niche retailers who historically thrived on downtown pedestrian traffic watched their businesses shrivel, as much of that action got sucked into the indoor malls.

Now, more than 50 years later, the city of Rochester is going back to the future. The financially failing Mid-Town Plaza is being demolished to return downtown to a traditional grid pattern of smaller block streets, which will accommodate new office towers, housing developments and storefront retail.

And they are also considering excavating and rewatering the historic Erie Canal, which was decked over in downtown Rochester decades ago for highway construction. It now presents a unique opportunity to create an authentic tourist draw for restaurants and hotels similar to the famous Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas.

Given the painfully slow pace of progress in Hamilton on relatively easy and inexpensive changes like one-way street conversions, I am not sure if we have either the political will or the wallet to consider anything as radical as Rochester. Plus we have a rather full civic plate pursuing a Light Rail Transit System and a Pan Am Games bid.

But urban experiments like the demalling of downtown Rochester are happening all over North America and show real potential to renew older cities.

Part of that process involves admitting some of the planning mistakes of the past and debating how we can best correct them, not only in Rochester but also here in Hamilton.
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  #92  
Old Posted Jul 4, 2009, 4:30 PM
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Without meaning to be counterintuitive just for the sake of it, can I throw something out here? I think in Canada we need largish climate-controlled spaces due to our winter, there's just no getting around it. When I see older folks spending time in the library and then going over to either of the food courts, I see it as a good thing.

No?
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  #93  
Old Posted Jul 4, 2009, 6:17 PM
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Originally Posted by rousseau View Post
Without meaning to be counterintuitive just for the sake of it, can I throw something out here? I think in Canada we need largish climate-controlled spaces due to our winter, there's just no getting around it. When I see older folks spending time in the library and then going over to either of the food courts, I see it as a good thing.

No?
Agreed. I quite like the whole Jackson Square/City Centre/farmer's market/library/hotel/office tower/building setup.

I do not believe that razing Jackson Square would somehow directly lead to "new office towers, housing developments and storefront retail." There is already room for that stuff even with Jackson Square in place and it is just not happening. The Midtown Plaza is being demolished because there are already plans in place for a new complex to occupy that space --- it is not being demolished strictly for the sake of de-malling. There are no guarantees that this project will work as hoped, as the scale of the new complex seems to be continually ratcheted down.

Look at Toronto, where the Eaton Centre seems to be doing just fine. And much of the city's downtown is connected by the PATH network of shops and services which also seems to be working very well and is a great way of getting from one area to another without getting wet or being exposed to extreme cold.

Also, a couple of nitpicky things. The complex is the "Midtown", not the "Mid-Town." Given that it was built in 1962, now is not "more than 50 years later."
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  #94  
Old Posted Jul 5, 2009, 5:46 AM
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Originally Posted by rousseau View Post
Without meaning to be counterintuitive just for the sake of it, can I throw something out here? I think in Canada we need largish climate-controlled spaces due to our winter, there's just no getting around it. When I see older folks spending time in the library and then going over to either of the food courts, I see it as a good thing.

No?
I tend to agree with your thoughts on this issue. I know that seniors sure raised a ruckus when it was announced that the Mountain Plaza Mall would be razed for a big box center. It has acted as a community center for many seniors. Both of my parents used to go their daily. They would have their coffee, meet with friends do a little shopping. It's too bad it will all be gone later this summer.
As for Jackson Square, I think Yale properties would have something to say about it before the city could ever hope to raze it. So the issue is really a non issue.
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  #95  
Old Posted Jul 5, 2009, 5:57 AM
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Inner village

Just a thought.
There is the old city hall vs city mall discussion.
Is there a way to renovate the city centre into condos or senior housing and it would be like a inner city village.
Morning walks. the farmers market and library and the upper deck for the summer or put in a partial atrium for winter and rain.
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  #96  
Old Posted Jul 5, 2009, 7:01 AM
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Just a thought.
There is the old city hall vs city mall discussion.
Is there a way to renovate the city centre into condos or senior housing and it would be like a inner city village.
Morning walks. the farmers market and library and the upper deck for the summer or put in a partial atrium for winter and rain.
If you want to bring alot of people into the area, convert the mall into a Wal-mart. Like it or not it would be a huge catalyst for commercial and residential developement in the area.
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  #97  
Old Posted Jul 5, 2009, 1:57 PM
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If you want to bring alot of people into the area, convert the mall into a Wal-mart. Like it or not it would be a huge catalyst for commercial and residential developement in the area.
While I'm still inclined to feel that the city missed a trick when it decided not to buy the HCC, I don't agree with the wal-mart idea.

It's lowest common denominator thinking, which is all very well and good, but Hamilton's town centre, with its mix of dollar stores, payday loans, discount clothing, and similar store frontage already caters for that and what a brilliant job that's doing of making the town centre a draw for people with more money to spend. We need to raise the bar in the downtown, not keep it low.

You have to remember that certain types of people attract certain types of people and those same types of people repel others. The more low income people you have in one place as a cluster, the fewer moderate to high income people will go there.

For JS to succeed as a mall, it needs to have a major facelift, both inside and out. It needs to be a proper mall, with a wider range of names and brands. Limeridge is the most successful mall in the area, no? Look at the diversity of names and brands there vs JS. JS needs to be bigger and brighter inside, I still like my idea of taking out the roof terrace park and slotting in a two storey modern mall with lots of skylights. JS needs to be closed, emptied, gutted, redone, new tenants attracted and relaunched. A full scale relaunch has often done wonders for brands and shops.

Since that might never happen, perhaps there could be a way to even have small boutique spaces initially (HCC anyone?) representing those brands that people normally find in malls, to encourage people to go there from the downtown rather than going to Limeridge. Perhaps these could offer, beyond just a limited selection on display, a some way to see more of the clothing range and have it delivered there to collect (catalogue shopping is very popular in the UK, Tesco introduced catalogue shopping at most of it's larger stores, order one day, come back and collect with your next shop).

Another UK example, this Mall (Wikipedia entry) failed miserably as a classic Mall. Total flop. I can remember going there when it was a Mall, it was dead, no one could be bothered to go there, because it was just too samey. Then is closed, was redeveloped and reopened as a designer outlet centre. It's packed now.
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  #98  
Old Posted Jul 5, 2009, 4:07 PM
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Originally Posted by omro View Post
For JS to succeed as a mall, it needs to have a major facelift, both inside and out...I still like my idea of taking out the roof terrace park and slotting in a two storey modern mall with lots of skylights.
I agree, I think this is a great idea. I also think that a revitalized Jackson Square will have a, sorry to use this word, symbiotic relationship with the neighbouring retail streets--with more people seeing the mall itself as a destination, the whole area wins.
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  #99  
Old Posted Jul 5, 2009, 10:40 PM
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Originally Posted by omro View Post
.

It's lowest common denominator thinking, which is all very well and good, but Hamilton's town centre, with its mix of dollar stores, payday loans, discount clothing, and similar store frontage already caters for that and what a brilliant job that's doing of making the town centre a draw for people with more money to spend. We need to raise the bar in the downtown, not keep it low.

You have to remember that certain types of people attract certain types of people and those same types of people repel others. The more low income people you have in one place as a cluster, the fewer moderate to high income people will go there.

.
It may be the lowest common denominator but it's still better than what we have right now. To suggest that Wal-Mart only attracts those on the low end of the economic scale is elitest and just pure snobbery. If you look around and see where they locate Wal-Marts you would see that they are mainly in middle and upper middle class areas of the city. People with money shop at the Wal-Marts of the world, thats why they have money.

If you take a look at where the Wal-Marts are located you will also see large retail complexes that have the higher end retail outlets as well. Success attracts success. Love them or hate them Wal-Mart is a success.

As for Jackson Square, I tend to agree with you, however it is private property and there really is nothing the city can do to compel the owners to upgrade or renovate.
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  #100  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2009, 6:33 PM
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I like JS, the hotel, cinemas, restos, retail, office towers, arena, market, library. It's all good.

Besides you couldn't bulldoze JS without destroying the connection to all those other destinations mentioned. Realize with have 6 months of crap weather. And besides this City thinks 'demalling' means tearing it down and turning it into a Power Center.

Besides there are plenty other high priority areas to focus on.
1. Rebuild York Blvd streetwall
2. Rebuild King West north side
3. Canon St Chinatown
4. De-drive thru Bank of Montreal (Bay & Main)
* I refuse to do any business with BMO because of that stupid bank bldg.
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