Hamilton 152 King Street West | 41m | 12s | Vrancor + Equal Parts

Propose it to the city as a building code amendment! That would be great ! Sometimes its just a matter of noone ever drafting it up - most of our codes only get amended after something disastrous happens and they're like "oh, guess we should make a rule against that" - I mean they already bulldozed like 5 city blocks just to MAKE the whole jackson monstrosity..

I mean, as much as I love core urban, even their designs admittedly aren't doing this kind of frontage.. They're usually grocery stores or hotel-types or restaurants, which is great and all, I guess their foray into jackson is them testing the waters for that.. the issue is how everything is trying to be self-contained parking so we get most of the interior of the podium being used for driving into it for parking and then a small amt for some boutique cafe and then the rest some massive lobby. The lobby imo should be hidden and the commercial part focused to keep that "buy along this street" vibe.

Then due to their lack of vision they'll be like "hmm people aren't walking along here, we don't know why.. we put hotels, we put residential units, we put a grocery store, what ELSE did they want..?"

Yeah we need our weird ma and pa shops - this is the whole reason people moved to the suburbs, the mall did this first - putting these out of business, now we're just bulldozing the very buildings they'd set up shop IN. There is also a relaxing psychological effect when you can walk 10 steps and feel like you are at another business, vs walking an entire city block past an inaccessible building - and that's what these buildings feel like, a complete inaccessible waste of commercial space - when am I ever going to be in those buildings? Never! At least for the building they built across the street from the Tivoli they understood this.

I am more pissed at city planning than any developers - they just see an opportunity - they aren't imagining an overall vision. I mean, granted it doesn't help with phones and amazon the options FOR small businesses has diminished significantly, but still, we gotta have SOMETHING..
 
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I see no reason Darko won't be able to demolish these buildings. It seems this is likely his next project after the two on King Street complete as he's got nothing else ongoing in Hamilton. These buildings will likely be gone within 1 to 2 years.

He'll just do it, if he owns them; "permit" be damned (as others have noted it being part of his M.O.). Hopefully not, but I admit it's a fool's hope.

That stretch of King has always been unfortunate... first because of the parking lots and poor uses (like that used car lot at Caroline), and now because of the towers and lack of smaller retailers. It's sad that the city doesn't seem to care.
 
Propose it to the city as a building code amendment! That would be great ! Sometimes its just a matter of noone ever drafting it up - most of our codes only get amended after something disastrous happens and they're like "oh, guess we should make a rule against that" - I mean they already bulldozed like 5 city blocks just to MAKE the whole jackson monstrosity..
The city doesn't have building code, this would need to be amended into the zoning for this area. I strongly agree with Chris here, the City's zone for medium mixed use should have a provision about providing small scale retail frontage as a base, developers can then apply for variances where they want to include larger units or no units.
 

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