This deserves a blog post. Below is a great tweet by Jason Thorne. Jason leads the department of planning and economic development at the City of Hamilton, where, full disclosure, we have a development project.

I have said this many times before on the blog, but the challenge with most "community engagement" is that cities typically hear from the people who disagree. Those voices are then taken as representative.

My gut tells me that we need to make it easier for people to agree. We need to reduce the barriers. Some will take the time to write a thoughtful letter. But most won't.

In December of last year, the City of Hamilton launched an RFP process to find a team (from the list of prequalified bidders) to develop a new urban community at Pier 8 along the waterfront. The ambition is somewhere around 1,500 new residential units and approximately 13,000 square meters of commercial and institutional space.

That process has narrowed the pool to 4 teams and 1 will ultimately win the exclusive right to develop the new community. Here are the teams, along with a link to their submission materials, including a short video that I understand was a requirement of the RFP.

- GulfDream (link)

- Tridel (link)

- Urban Capital / Core Urban / Milborne Group (link)

- Waterfront Shores (link)

This is a super exciting project for Hamilton. So I would encourage you to take a look at the presentation materials. At this point, you only have until Tuesday, April 17, 2018 to provide any comments to the City’s evaluators. If you’d like to view the boards in person, you can do that this Monday and Tuesday in the main lobby of City Hall.

This fall Slate acquired a retail center in Hamilton called Corktown Plaza. It is the block bounded by John Street South, Young Street, Catharine Street South, and Forest Avenue. It is just south of the Hamilton GO Centre in downtown.

It is currently a much used single storey retail plaza with a large surface parking lot facing John Street South. It’s still early days, but the long-term plan is to redevelop it into a mixed-use retail and residential complex.

Before putting pen to paper, the team is hosting a “pre-design community meeting” this Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7pm at the Church of Ascension down the street. Address is 64 Forest Avenue (accessible entrance at 258 John Street South).

Here is the invite (embedded tweet):

Kudos @SlateAssetMgmt for hosting a “pre-design” community meeting before “putting pen to paper” … a best practise in meaningful public engagement pic.twitter.com/w07paBeoyp

— Jason Thorne (@JasonThorne_RPP)

November 30, 2017

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The purpose of the meeting is to gather feedback from the community before beginning design. We want to know what’s working today, what’s not working today, and what would be ideal for the future. 

CORE Architects and GSP Group (planning) will be in attendance along with the Slate team. The format will be brief presentations followed by interactive breakout sessions. There will be trace paper on hand so that we can all put pen to paper.

If you live and/or work in the area or are simply interested in the future of Hamilton, please feel free to join us on Tuesday evening. If you can, send a quick email to rsvp@kga-inc.com letting us know you’ll be coming. But just showing up is also perfectly fine.