These 10 Hamilton Mega Projects will soon transform the city
- Thomas Lewington
- 13 Feb 2023
It’s no secret that Hamilton is growing at a rapid pace, but many people are unaware of the big changes that are coming to the city in the next five to ten years. Here are our top 10 Hamilton Mega Projects that will transform this city forever:
1. Film Studio District
Hamilton’s upcoming Film Studio District will become the city’s hub for television, gaming, animation and music.
This economic cluster will be located adjacent to the West Harbour GO Station. It will include hundreds of new residential units as well as a public plaza, retail storefronts, patios, a skating rink, and more.
The first building in this district is Bayfront Studios, which is already operational and involved in some high-budget projects. For example, Zac Efron filmed the remake of Firestarter there!
2. Hamilton City Centre
The recently closed Hamilton City Centre will soon be torn down to make way for a massive residential project in the downtown core.
The mall closed down at the end of December with plans to transform the area into 4 mixed-use towers with over 2,000 residential units and over 32,000 square feet of commercial space. It will also include an extension of King William Street’s restaurant row which will be reminiscent of Toronto’s Distillery District.
The project is expected to be the largest in downtown Hamilton in 30 years with an estimated cost of over $1 billion!
3. Eastgate Square Mall
Stoney Creek’s Eastgate Square Mall has unveiled plans to be the future home of a massive residential community with towers as high as 40 storeys.
Harrison Equity Partners have proposed redeveloping the southern portion of the mall into a huge residential complex and rebuilding the mall on the northern portion.
The proposed plan includes 5,000 residential units covering 10 development blocks. It will also serve as the end point of Hamilton’s upcoming LRT line.
4. LRT
Hamilton’s LRT will bring fast, reliable, and safe transportation to Hamilton with ground breaking on the project this year.
The project has received $3.4 billion in federal and provincial funding. The LRT line will feature 19 stops and travel from McMaster University to Eastgate Square Mall.
Hamilton will join over 150 cities in the world with LRT including Toronto, Mississauga, Waterloo, and Ottawa.
5. Pier 8
One of the city’s largest ports is going to be transformed into a vibrant urban waterfront community.
Hamilton’s Pier 8 will be home to about 1,500 residential units, 140,000 square feet of commercial and institutional space, and over 1,400 parking spaces.
40% of this new site will be publicly accessible open space. The boardwalk promenade has already been completed and is available to the public now!
6. Waterfront Industrial Park
About 800 acres of Stelco’s prime waterfront land will become a state-of-the-art industrial park and shipping container yard.
Slate Asset Management purchased the industrial land last summer for $518 million.
This new development is expected to create 23,000 new jobs and $3.8 billion dollars for Ontario’s economy.
7. Lime Ridge Mall
Hamilton’s Lime Ridge Mall has been one of the Hamilton Mountain’s prime destinations since it opened in 1981.
While it has been renovated multiple times over the years, Cadillac Fairview has announced their plans to transform the Hamilton Mountain mall in a big way. Their plans outline a mixed-use development including 320 residential units within two 12-storey towers.
The complex will feature 96,000 square feet of retail space including a dining district, a two-level parking garage, and an amenity deck with both hard and soft landscaping.
8. Hamilton Innovation District
The West Hamilton Innovation District will be located in the area surrounding McMaster Innovation Park, which is located next to the Highway 403 ramps. Future buildings in this area will include the CCRM Building, which is set to be Canada’s largest and most advanced biomanufacturing facility for cell and gene therapy, a new headquarters for Gowlings law firm, a six-storey Hyatt Hotel, and the adaptive reuse of the Glass Warehouse to become the heart of the new McMaster Innovation Park campus.
The district will expand via an extension of Frid Street into what’s been dubbed the Annex. This area holds the former Hamilton Spectator Building which was sold to McMaster to become a life sciences innovation megahub. Investment management company Forge & Foster also owns many buildings in the Annex with big plans to adapt their buildings to fit into this district, too.
Great tenants like Gravity Climbing Gym, Steel Town Cider, and Skygauge Robotics are already making this former industrial area much more vibrant. Metrolinx will also have a large presence here as their future LRT Storage Facility will be located in the southern portion of the district.
9. Hamilton Airport
Did you know that Hamilton International Airport is Canada’s largest overnight express cargo airport? As a result, huge businesses are opening up in the area including Amazon’s 800,000 square foot fulfillment centre, DHL’s 238,000 square foot fulfillment centre, and a $30 million expansion by KF Aerospace.
Panattoni, Broccolini and Rice Group have collectively purchased at least 275 acres of land for warehousing infrastructure. To accommodate all of the new jobs, home builders like LIV Developments and Sonoma Homes have acquired massive parcels themselves to build new communities.
In 2021, over 2,700 jobs and $1 billion in valuation were directly attributed to Hamilton airport’s cargo business alone! This number will continue to increase several times over in the years to come.
10. Hess Village
Hamilton’s Hess Village has plans for 15 towers bringing a combined 5,000+ residential units to the area, which will completely change the foot traffic of this neighbourhood. Projects include Television City Condos which will be two 32-storey towers, a proposed 3-tower project from developer BentallGreenOak, the 23-storey APEX Condos at Queen & Main Street, and the 30-storey McMaster Graduate Student Residence at 10 Bay Street.
In addition to these large towers, three boutique-style buildings will be part of the landscape including the 14-storey Radio Arts building, another 14-storey tower in the adjacent corner of the same intersection, and 222 Main St W which will be 23 storeys tapering to 18 storeys.
Vrancor Group will have a big presence here and they have broken ground on two of the sites already. One will be the new 30-storey tower at 213 King Street W and the other will be at the corner of King & Queen Street which currently has a crane on site.
Which mega projects are you most excited for? Let us know in the comments below!
Header image courtesy of Waterfront Shores Corporation
Comments 1
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Janice Brown
17.02.2023 9:13 pmWho is Bentall Green Oak and where exactly is this development ?
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- Apex Condos
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- Hamilton
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- Hamilton City Centre
- hamilton innovation district
- Hamilton LRT
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- Hess Village
- Lime Ridge Mall
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