To me it's more like Hamilton was once truly the Ambitious City with find residential and commercial architecture, but then like nearby Buffalo, when thousands of good paying factory jobs evaporated the city lost its mojo and started accepting mediocrity.

Hopefully it's onward and upward from here on out!
Probably gonna be a while until we see any truly groundbreaking designs..

..also the city's been going downhill since at least the 80s - 90s - 2000s was probably its worst era - the renovation of the lister block sparked literally all the urban renewal in the city.
 
Sidewalk is going in. Moving quickly through exterior finishings.
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Probably gonna be a while until we see any truly groundbreaking designs..

..also the city's been going downhill since at least the 80s - 90s - 2000s was probably its worst era - the renovation of the lister block sparked literally all the urban renewal in the city.
I'd argue the conversation of James Street to two way was what really got it going.
 
I'd argue the conversation of James Street to two way was what really got it going.
Considering all gentrification started to spread out FROM the lister block id argue for the lister block - for the longest time the lister block was the iconic symbol of hamiltons decline - once that got renovated the possibilities really opened up - king william used to be a crap hole - esp the part from james to john - now look at it.
 
Considering all gentrification started to spread out FROM the lister block id argue for the lister block - for the longest time the lister block was the iconic symbol of hamiltons decline - once that got renovated the possibilities really opened up - king william used to be a crap hole - esp the part from james to john - now look at it.
You're talking two blocks, James Street was literally abandoned from King right up to Barton.
 
King William is a joke. It’s a fancy outdoor food court, nothing more.

The saddest part is how the City has abandoned the supposedly-pedestrianized Gore Park to favour the Insta-friendly Fancy Food Court.

Resources going into closing KW from through traffic most of the year while Gore Park remains an idle-lot for Skip/Uber drivers, despite a multimillion dollar ‘pedestrian makeover’ just a few years ago! SMH

Wouldn’t want photos of the Gore Poors in your social media shots!
 
King William is a joke. It’s a fancy outdoor food court, nothing more.

The saddest part is how the City has abandoned the supposedly-pedestrianized Gore Park to favour the Insta-friendly Fancy Food Court.

Resources going into closing KW from through traffic most of the year while Gore Park remains an idle-lot for Skip/Uber drivers, despite a multimillion dollar ‘pedestrian makeover’ just a few years ago! SMH

Wouldn’t want photos of the Gore Poors in your social media shots!
You're talking two blocks, James Street was literally abandoned from King right up to Barton.

James st was never as bad, or as abandoned, except maybe the block south of king william - but even that had tenants in it, it was just run down looking.

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Gore park ihas become a place for the unemployed to lounge, which makes many others a bit uneasy to.. linger there.. and to be fair there isn't much reason to BE there - it is not the beautiful victorian park with huge trees it once was, with iron fences around it and heaps of flowers that women with baby carriages used to go to to get a restful respite - its much too open now - and large open spaces like that rarely attract the crowds they THINK they will - but trendy food places always attract people because people need to eat. People don't need to sit by a fountain. Gore park needs the RBC makeover to make it what it once was, or maybe just more concerts - I know they do some concerts on the pedestrian makeover part. They should also restore the wrought iron fence that used to surround the park.


I also don't think its really gore parks fault - 3/4s of all buildings in the gore are either boarded up, vacant or under renovation. I think once THAT is fixed things will get better. It used to be a lot livelier because the bus stops used to be all along the south side, giving people a reason to be in the park. There were also the restaurants on the south side, chesters etc. We realy need to fix everything around it so that this once again FEELS like THE core of downtown. Once the existing trees grow up )emerald ash borer did not help the park sadly) it will once again hopefully feel more "park"ish, like gage park does. It also needs to be restored back to a "victorian" park, in looks and atmosphere.

We also need to up the standard of the people who frequent downtown. But that goes without saying. You compare the downtown of the 50s to now and its remarkably different in the "class" of people - say what you want about king william but it gave a calibre of expensive class back to the downtown that hasn't been there for a looooooong time. A feeling of dressing up to go downtown.
 
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Anyone know how far they are on the interior? How many floors did they end up renting out before the semester started? Or are they having students move in throughout the semester?
 
Looks like parking garage is ready to open soon. Curious how many spaces will be available for non-students.

Good that they will have parking for the public to use for things like sporting events and concerts though.
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Interesting. Hadn’t considered that this may be open to the public - the lot for the medical school across the street isn’t as far as I know.
 
Interesting. Hadn’t considered that this may be open to the public - the lot for the medical school across the street isn’t as far as I know.
I didn't even know there was underground parking there until pretty recently. But the surface lot has visitor parking, the website doesn't differentiate between the requirements for the surface lot or the underground, so I would assume the same goes for visitors? One wonders if part of this is to replace the parking that will be lost by a potential future development of the lot across the street, though I assume their second grad residence will have to start first probably, though maybe they have some other more education focused element proposed for across the street first.


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huh, interesting. For some reason I thought it was permit holders only.

At $20 a day though, it's basically the most expensive lot downtown by a decent margin.. so I'm guessing that it doesn't see a lot of non-monthly users.
 
huh, interesting. For some reason I thought it was permit holders only.

At $20 a day though, it's basically the most expensive lot downtown by a decent margin.. so I'm guessing that it doesn't see a lot of non-monthly users.
I'm assuming the largest use case is for evening events where people want to park close to FOC or FOH where it's $7. I'm assuming that is what McMaster is trying to capture with this property too.

The underground parking isn't well advertised or seen from the street though which is interesting.
 

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