Opinion | Why can’t Hamilton have nice things? We need to invest in the core
- Margaret Shkimba
- 24 Jan 2020
This article first appeared on The Hamilton Spectator
The recent decisions by the province to cancel the LRT and by city council to reject plans for a Mountain arena have exposed, once again, the deep division within the city arising from the Hamilton escarpment.
The escarpment is our most wonderful feature. We are truly blessed living in the curve of the horseshoe, between two Great Lakes and down the highway from a natural wonder of the world at Niagara Falls. The spectacular beauty of our geography can be hard to see past the industrial smokescreen and urban congestion it’s hidden behind. If we don’t take the time to stop and look at it from time to time, to really look at it, we forget what we have overcome to create this beautiful and unique city in which we live.
What we know as Hamilton grew from the settlement of Loyalists in the years after the American War of Independence. Settlement centred below the escarpment, I think for obvious reasons. Travelling up and down the escarpment has always been a challenge. Development on the Mountain, as we’ve come to call the upper city, was delayed as the lower city expanded east and west. As Hamilton grew in size and industrial importance, settlement expanded further east and up to the Mountain suburbs with new housing and commercial developments to serve the growing population.
It’s new on the Mountain, but below it, not so much. The lower city is badly in need of redevelopment. It’s time. It’s overtime. If Sewergate hasn’t educated you to the need of improvements in the lower city sewer system, you haven’t been paying attention. LRT is about redevelopment as much as it is about improving transit.
People will debate over the moment that the decline in the core began. For me, it’s simple. I put it to the construction of Limeridge Mall and the departure of the Mountain shopper from the downtown. Once Limeridge opened we saw the nature of retail in Jackson Square decline. There used to be quality retail in Jackson Square, and by that I mean franchise stores carrying brand names.
As the shoppers fled the downtown for free parking and better shopping at Limeridge, the downtown began its long and inexorable decline and discount stores became the norm. The overdevelopment of retail space by Cadillac Fairview in building the Eaton Centre while shoppers were fleeing to Limeridge created the perfect storm to feed further downtown decline. When Eaton’s closed, the coffin on downtown retail was nailed shut. So I admit to a bit of bias myself when I consider the effect of Limeridge on the city of Hamilton and I’m not impressed with the recent attempts by Cadillac Fairview to hijack the city plan for downtown development in favour of reinventing the mall experience in a declining retail environment.
But this isn’t about how we got to where we are, it’s about the efforts to get somewhere else and whether we’re all on board with this entity we call Hamilton or whether we’re stuck in old grudges and ward jealousies that pit us against each other and stop us from coming together in what’s best for all of Hamilton.
In the discussions about the arena and LRT it’s distressing to hear councillors complain about the Mountain not getting anything. I can understand that coming from the average person who is obsessed with their piece of the pie. But if people look around, they can see there is nothing but new development happening on the Mountain. For years. It’s new, new, new everywhere up there as people continue to leave the lower city for what they perceive as “cleaner” living.
New is always nice. But the lower city isn’t new. It’s not nice, it’s old and needs attention. And it looks bad on all of us to have any part of the city run down and derelict. In fact, I would say we have become defined by what is bad about Hamilton. It only stands to reason that more of the lower city is in this shape than the upper city. City councillors who represent Mountain ridings should have the vision to see that and not whine and complain that the Mountain “never gets anything” in efforts to whip up ward jealousies and cement their next term. Hamiltonians need to see beyond that rhetoric to the truth that we are all Hamilton and Hamilton is us. Until we do, we don’t deserve the nice things.
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