Brantford Colborne Point | ?m | ?s | Vrancor Development

[Hipster Duck]

The thing to remember is that Brantforders are quite proud of their local built heritage in other areas. The Dufferin Park neighbourhood, for example, has some of the best preserved High Victorian mansions in all of Ontario and some of the highest home values in the city. This thinking does not extend downtown, however.

 

[adma]

Which probably also says something about an attitude that "heritage" is best as a self-generated POV than as a form of imposed municipal-planning, er, "welfare"...

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

what a waste. is there no way to stop this?

 

[Braddale]

I had the day off on Friday, and drove down to see for myself what is about to be torn down...its shocking to say the least.

They are going to demolish at least 30 per cent of the original downtown, all the buildings would fit in perfectly on
Queen West ( think the Dukes fire site).

Its a real shame. I encourage anyone to take a drive down there before its too late to see for yourself. I was glad I made the trip but kept thinking what a waste.

 

[ShonTron]

I stopped in Brantford before heading off to Bogota (pics by the end of next weekend). There's a case for selective demolition if there's a plan for something new. The new development on the north side of Colborne, which incorporates a public skating rink as well as (leased!) retail, including a decent coffee joint, offices and residential at least adds streetlife and does enliven the area, even if the architecture is too cliched po-mo.

Look at this:

Some of the buildings on the south side of Colborne are worth saving. Downtown Brantford is a lot better than 5-10 years ago, with all those silhouetted boarded storefronts on both sides, and the empty hulk of the old Eaton's Market Place.

WLU helped turn the place around, and Clarence Square, with heritage buildings all around is lovely (and healthy). But the old downtown core can't all be po-mo. It'd be like Cornwall otherwise, arguably Ontarip's ugliest city with few heritage buildings left, much like those New York cities on the other side of the river. It's also reminiscent of nearby Hamilton's 1950s-1970s era of largely failed block busting.

(More pics here)

 

[Towered]

It's tempting to say that this is the unfortunate result of the typically uncultured suburban/hicktown mindset, but there are plenty of examples of smaller cities in Ontario that take pride in their heritage buildings, like St. Mary's, Stratford, Niagara-on-the-lake, etc. Hell, Markham is even planning to build some new retail strips in that old style. I don't think this would happen in any of those places. Seems like Brantford is aspiring to become more like a dreadful place like Barrie.

 

[JasonParis]

I wrote a letter to all of Brantford City Council, Heritage Canada and the Brantford Expositor. I also publicized this via FB, Twitter, etc.

The Brantford Expositor actually published a version of my letter here...

http://theexpositor.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2439240

Curiously, the only person I know from Brantford (a distant friend) wrote me saying "stop wasting your time, I LIVE and WORK in Brantford unlike you and these buildings are an embrassment. The sooner they are gone, the better!"

 

[jswag]

"I think the worst mistake we could make is to have a solid plan. Let's just take it down and look at what we have got. Then we can start deciding together what should go there."

Unreal. When I read that quote from the mayor on Saturday I nearly fell off my chair! Not only are they disregarding decades of planning, but they are demolishing these buildings WITHOUT A PLAN. How in God's good earth, is that a good solution?This is the problem with small-town mayors, is they are either an expert in one thing, with little regard for anything else, or they are just a citizen with no expertise. This is the case here I think, this gentleman has absolutely no knowledge of urban planning or heritage conservation.

Curiously, the only person I know from Brantford (a distant friend) wrote me saying "stop wasting your time, I LIVE and WORK in Brantford unlike you and these buildings are an embrassment. The sooner they are gone, the better!"

I can understand the sentiment here, as the photos show a nasty-looking streetscape at the moment. But there seems to be little to no discussion of the alternatives in Brantford, and the fault lies with the leadership. Citizens should have been given a chance to understand the potential of these buildings, but it appears no opportunity was given.

Sad, sad time for Brantford.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Unreal. When I read that quote from the mayor on Saturday I nearly fell off my chair! Not only are they disregarding decades of planning, but they are demolishing these buildings WITHOUT A PLAN. How in God's good earth, is that a good solution?This is the problem with small-town mayors, is they are either an expert in one thing, with little regard for anything else, or they are just a citizen with no expertise. This is the case here I think, this gentleman has absolutely no knowledge of urban planning or heritage conservation.

No, I think that does a disservice to all the citizen-educated mayors our there. My cat could make a better call than that one.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Curiously, the only person I know from Brantford (a distant friend) wrote me saying "stop wasting your time, I LIVE and WORK in Brantford unlike you and these buildings are an embrassment. The sooner they are gone, the better!"

This reminds me of some Yonge Street-related threads here, where people think that the only way to 'improve' the existing retail (whether it be dollar stores and sex shops or, as in Brantford, some boarded up windows) is to demolish the buildings and start over with some modern mega-block sanitized Disney Main Street New Urbanist mess that ends up looking like a chaotic mass of precast pillars and fake keystones, with Second Cups and a parking garage hiding underneath, and that invariably has lower quality retail spaces than what was lost.

 

[Conrad Black]

Just to play devil's advocate but this strip has been rundown and under-utilized for 30 years. I can see the locals getting tired of living with this. If there was money to fix it up and/or if there was demand for space here then I'm sure the locals would not be so interested in getting rid of it. But the fact is nobody has been able to make a go of it here for decades. And there's no reason to think that will change any time soon. They may be interesting buildings from our perspective but the Brantford leaders have to deal with economic realities.

 

[MisterF]

It's tempting to say that this is the unfortunate result of the typically uncultured suburban/hicktown mindset, but there are plenty of examples of smaller cities in Ontario that take pride in their heritage buildings, like St. Mary's, Stratford, Niagara-on-the-lake, etc. Hell, Markham is even planning to build some new retail strips in that old style. I don't think this would happen in any of those places. Seems like Brantford is aspiring to become more like a dreadful place like Barrie.

Barrie actually has a relatively vibrant downtown.

Just to play devil's advocate but this strip has been rundown and under-utilized for 30 years. I can see the locals getting tired of living with this. If there was money to fix it up and/or if there was demand for space here then I'm sure the locals would not be so interested in getting rid of it. But the fact is nobody has been able to make a go of it here for decades. And there's no reason to think that will change any time soon. They may be interesting buildings from our perspective but the Brantford leaders have to deal with economic realities.

There have been signs of revitalization, even if they're sproradic. Some of those buildings are occupied and in great shape. What the city is doing is eliminating any hope of revitalizing. All of the small cities in Ontario that have vibrant, healthy downtowns have one thing in common - the revitalized areas are centred on historic buildings. Even Niagara Falls, which has the only downtown in the province that was as bad as Brantford's, is starting to revitalize.

 

[adma]

This reminds me of some Yonge Street-related threads here, where people think that the only way to 'improve' the existing retail (whether it be dollar stores and sex shops or, as in Brantford, some boarded up windows) is to demolish the buildings and start over with some modern mega-block sanitized Disney Main Street New Urbanist mess that ends up looking like a chaotic mass of precast pillars and fake keystones, with Second Cups and a parking garage hiding underneath, and that invariably has lower quality retail spaces than what was lost.

Though within a UT context, I think a lot of that rip-it-down-and-start-over sentiment is less on behalf of something Disney/New Urbanist than a kind of Tyler Brule-meets-OMA-esque opposite number, i.e. "international" metropoli wouldn't put up with this decrepit anachronism; why should we?

 

[Second_in_pie]

Just to play devil's advocate but this strip has been rundown and under-utilized for 30 years. I can see the locals getting tired of living with this. If there was money to fix it up and/or if there was demand for space here then I'm sure the locals would not be so interested in getting rid of it. But the fact is nobody has been able to make a go of it here for decades. And there's no reason to think that will change any time soon. They may be interesting buildings from our perspective but the Brantford leaders have to deal with economic realities.

Has there been political will to try? And if there's no demand for beautiful historic downtown buildings, will there really be that much of a demand for new buildings downtown?

 

[SunriseChampion]

Is building new crap (and I mean crap!) the economic answer to what ails the business community there? I'm no expert but that sounds like bullshit to me. Tear down the old, replace it with new and expect business to start booming again. I'm no economist but I'm fairly certain that that's not how it works.