Residents, developers clash over height of Jamesville project in Hamilton’s North End

A plan to build a 447-unit, mixed-income community in Hamilton's North End has taken shape.

The Jamesville blueprint calls for 160 affordable units in a pair of seven-storey buildings and 287 market-rate, stacked townhouses on the roughly 5.4-acre property.

Ninety-one boarded-up CityHousing townhouses are to be bulldozed to make way for the project.

The project partners have initial political approval for land-use changes to allow taller buildings and await a final nod at council Friday.

But Coun. Jason Farr - who notes he's worked on the file for 12 years - has aired concern an Ontario Land Tribunal appeal by area residents could stall the project.

I'm just hopeful not, but that's all I can say," the Ward 2 councillor said after listening to delegates at Tuesday's planning committee.

Six storeys - not seven - should be the maximum height for the area as established by past planning decisions and policy, representatives of neighbourhood groups argued.

The six-storey height is very important to the future characteristics of the North End neighbourhood," said Bryan Ritskes, a member of Harbour West Neighbours. It's a fact of life" that approval of seven storeys will lead to developers aiming higher.

Both affordable buildings - operated by CityHousing and Indwell - could easily" be six storeys, said Ritskes, who noted the citizens' group has appealed area planning decisions in the past.

There's no pressing need for seven storeys."

But scaling back by one storey would shave 23 units from the affordable rental buildings - including 14 Indwell apartments.

That's more than we'd like to give up," said Graham Cubitt, the nonprofit's director of projects and development, pointing out the initial goal was 120 units.

As the design was refined, the Indwell unit count settled at 114, for which the target rent is about $550 a month, Cubitt said, noting many Indwell tenants rely on disability pensions.

CityHousing will retain 46 rent-geared-to-income apartments in its future building, while 45 are to be replaced through a project planned for Bay and Cannon streets.

The plan is to construct both of Jamesville's affordable buildings to highly energy-efficient standards and place them midblock on the property, which sits between James, MacNab, Ferrie and Strachan streets.

The lower-rise towns, meanwhile, are meant to serve as a transition to the lower-rise homes that border the denser redevelopment in the neighbourhood.

The plan, which includes one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom units, features a pedestrian throughway from James to MacNab and a corner parkette to double as a gateway" to the North End.

Representatives of the North End Neighbourhood Association echoed Ritskes's opposition to seven storeys and raised other issues, such as a lack of play areas for children, loss of trees and potential for green roofs.

Cubitt said the hope is to start construction in 2023, pending the final land-use approval and site-plan deliberations with city planners.

Obviously, we'd not like to delay the construction of the project at all because the housing crisis is real today."

If an OLT appeal is launched, hearings are likely a year away based on the tribunal's current schedule, legal staff said.

It would be a real shame," Frank Giannone, president of Fram Building Group, one of the private developers, told The Spectator.

Giannone expects demolition of the hollowed-out townhouses to start next month and hopes to start marketing the units by the end of the year. Two-bedroom, 800-square-foot townhouse units would go for roughly $500,000, he said.

The evolving Jamesville plan has been the subject of extensive public consultation, which is part of the reason - along with a complex deal melding affordable and market construction - that it has taken this long, Giannone said.

Definitely, the consultation process takes time," he said. But we listened to the community as much as we could."

The boarded-up homes have been an eyesore after the city started relocating tenants from 1960s-era subsidized complex in preparation for the redevelopment. The last tenants moved out in 2019.

While the units sat empty, there have been calls to house people in them amid a homelessness crisis, Farr noted during Tuesday's meeting.

Sean Botham, CityHousing's development manager, said the rapidly deteriorating" vacant units weren't suitable for habitation. So there'd be major upgrades to assets that would be torn down."

Additional funding would also have been needed to provide social support services for some people who are homeless, he added.

The Jamesville project mirrors other CityHousing efforts to strike land deals with private developers to build denser, mixed-income communities rather than renovate aging complexes.

The Roxborough project, which includes a new 10-storey CityHousing building, is under construction in the east end.

Teviah Moro is a reporter at The Spectator. tmoro@thespec.com

Jamesville housing development

The Hamilton Spectator