Hamilton’s last dairy resurrected for ‘The Oaks’ affordable housing
The rich 83-year history of the city's last dairy evokes images of horse-drawn wagons, and skimming cream off the top of milk in glass bottles delivered door to door.
But the recent history of the old Royal Oak Dairy building at 225 East Ave. N., near Barton and Victoria, is one of vandalism and squatters setting fires with scrap wood and plastic to cook their food.
A new era is dawning at the property, resurrected as The Oaks" affordable and supportive housing project.
The challenge of homelessness is all around us, and we're happy an actual building is now there for people to live in," said Graham Cubitt, who until recently was director of projects and development for Indwell, the affordable housing charity that developed the site.
Cubitt is now president of Flourish, a new not-for-profit housing company created by Indwell.
This spring, likely in April and into early summer, the first 108-unit phase of the project will open for tenants. The final 31 apartments open in 2023.
The building sat there for years doing nothing, now for it to be home to so many people is deeply gratifying," Cubitt told The Spectator. The building is beautiful, and taking shape in a really compelling form."
Tenants in Indwell housing have low or fixed incomes, with many receiving assistance through the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and paying about $500 monthly rent.
Indwell also offers support for tenants coping with illnesses and physical disabilities.
An Indwell fact sheet notes that the Christian-based charity has 2,720 people on their waiting list for apartments. There are several thousand households on the city's waiting list for affordable housing.
Thirteen of the new units will be for Indigenous people, who Cubitt said are disproportionately represented in the homeless population.
The environmental cleanup of the site was extensive, he said.
It was a complicated brownfield site, with the old dairy, factory loading docks, oil tanks, boilers, asbestos, and a lot of garbage."
More damaging than detritus left by squatters was the impact of scrappers who ransacked the building over the years, stealing transformers to recycle the copper.
Cubitt said scrappers drained oil from transformers on-site, exacerbating the cost of the cleanup.
The total cost of acquisition and redevelopment of the land was about $52 million. Indwell finances projects from a combination of donations and government funding.
Cubitt said a local private developer who had purchased the land sold it to them at a good price.
Indwell's reach has expanded dramatically in the last 20 years. They had seven affordable housing tenants in Hamilton in 2001, and now have 700 tenants in the city and beyond.
Cubitt said seven new Indwell projects are currently under construction, with 11 more in various stages of development, that will potentially result in 720 new units next year across six municipalities.
As for The Oaks, Hamilton's Invizij Architects designed the building, intended to offer the ethos of an old dairy, including repurposing the former horse stables into 13 apartments.
Royal Oak Dairy began in 1898 on East Avenue North as a one-horse operation, run out of the basement of owner George Hamilton's home.
By the 1930s, the city had 23 dairies. Royal Oak was the last one standing, closing in 1981.
It was also the last dairy to use horses, The Spectator reported: A mare named Flo made a ceremonial final delivery to city hall on June 10, 1960."
Jon Wells is a feature writer at The Spectator. jwells@thespec.com