The thing I hate is that this stretch is virtually unwalkable- that whole mcmaster building is just a curtainwall thats not available to the public to shop from after a massively unwalkable area from the bus station to here. Downtown basically stops being walkable west of james or the bus station at most, you might as well just give up walking past this point in any sort of comfortable way. I mean I get that vibe might change with the LRT but still. This area just feels.. awkward. So pedestrian unfriendly feeling. Are we trying to make a walkable downtown or just cramming stuff into it.. if we destroy all the rowhouses and 1-2 story buildings all those storefronts just get replaced with massive unusable lobbies. It's not like we're replacing the old storefronts with new storefronts.
Oh absolutely. I hate this stretch. It is designated in the city's own plans as a pedestrian focused street, with the goal of creating a commercial and pedestrian friendly environment. The development along here has done anything but that creating what is much better than before, but still lacks life, and the removal of the last 10 small commercial units along this stretch will kill the "pedestrian focus" of the area.
The issue is that Hamilton has no actual policies encouraging/enforcing these concepts like somewhere like Toronto or even Grimsby may. I appreciate and welcome more vague regulations and laws around housing and development in general, but there are instances like this where Hamilton should be mandating small scale retail frontages along King St. Having a simple policy that says; "In pedestrian focused sections of street, building frontage should contain a minimum of 1 commercial frontage per 10 metres, with no commercial frontage exceeding 5 metres, and having a footprint no less than double it's frontage" and "In designated pedestrian focused areas, and designated TOC areas, no parking shall be ground floor parking, and a maximum of one entrance for parking access shall be provided if no other access is available, and if one is available from another street, no parking access shall be allowed."
This would be policy that actually supports transit and pedestrian focus, but instead Hamilton has largely vague platitudes without any enforcement, and I think in specific areas like this that really should be enforcing something a bit more strict considering the reality that much of the downtown had its commercial frontages razed and either not replaced or turned inward to a failing mall.
The McMaster residence for example not having a single outward facing commercial unit is criminal.
I suspect this development may have commercial and that's good, but 1 large restaurant to replace 10 sucks, and kills smaller business options (regardless of what you may think of a vape shop, a weird clothing store, and a jerk chicken spot).
