I spent this morning in the suburbs bouncing around to a few different meetings. I then came back downtown so that I could get some actual work done in the office. And then after that, I was around downtown getting a bunch of different things done.
I am mentioning this to you all because today I was reminded of how different the metabolic rate can feel in the city compared to the suburbs. There are even studies suggesting that people walk faster in larger cities.
Some businesses, of course, require a lot of space and the economics simply do not work in the core of the city. We all get that. But if you’re competitive advantage is human capital, then this is something to think about.
I feel like I spent most of my morning driving around, which I’m not complaining about, except that I could have probably had 3x as many meetings in the city during that same period of time. If you multiply that out over time, then we’re talking about a material spread in overall productivity.
And we haven’t even touched on those fortuitous urban encounters, which do happen and do provide all sorts of benefits. As much as we’re all connected like never before – through things like, well, this blog – there’s nothing like shaking somebody’s hand and looking them in the eyes.
Tonight I went a photography heli tour with @normandthegang.
I took almost 500 photos, including a bunch of aerials of our development sites. And we got lucky with a pretty spectacular pink sunset.
Here is a photo that I took of the CN Tower with my Fuji X Series (35mm prime lens):
Lake Ontario actually looked like that. This is not post-production chicanery. Follow me on Instagram to see the rest of the photo series.
Thanks again for the invite Norm. That was a lot of fun.
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)
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
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.