Downtown boom town: ‘Hamilton is the new Brooklyn’

The smiles on the faces of Judy Lam and Norm Schleehahn gave the glorious sunshine a run for its money on May 12 as the city's two top downtown revitalization leaders stood beside Hamilton's Gore Park fountain and turned slowly to take in the nearby forest of building cranes reaching into the sky.

Last year was the highest number of residential unit building permits downtown ever," Schleehahn, the city's director of economic development, said. The developers have really seized an opportunity." In fact, 2021 hit a record $2 billion in building permits across all of Hamilton, he said.

He and Lam, the city's manager for commercial districts and small business, are helping to usher in an unprecedented highrise building boom that's transforming Hamilton's downtown from a commercial real estate dead zone a little more than a decade ago to today's construction bonanza.

Looking around, it's not hard to see what Lam and Schleehahn are getting at, and the hard data makes it clearer.

In the last five years, there were 19 major building developments completed or under construction downtown - defined more narrowly for data purposes as Queen Street to Wentworth Street and Barton Street to Aberdeen Avenue - worth over $733.7 million in construction value. This building boom adds 3,482 new residential units and 41,870 square metres of commercial space to the core.

Here's a look at some of the projects currently under construction:

• The Cobalt Luxury Residences at King Street East and Hughson Street South are being built by LiUNA and include two 30-storey towers, 581 residential units and 1,192 square metres of commercial space. Worth: $140 million.

• A 34-storey building at 75 James St. S. at Jackson Street East is being constructed by LiUNA, Fengate and Hi-Rise Group and will contain 635 residential units and 390 square metres of commercial space. Worth: $180 million.

• The 14-storey Kiwi Condos at corner of King William Street and Ferguson Avenue North are being built by Rosehaven Homes and will boast 266 residential units and 493 square metres of commercial space. Worth: $55 million.

And, if all the projects awaiting approval get the green light, there will be 9,400 new residential units and 63,520 square metres of commercial development built in the core over the next several years.

Those include:

• Television City at Jackson Street West and Caroline Street South, a mixed-use development with two 32-storey towers and 642 residential units. Value: not available.

• The Moderne at King Street East and John Street South, a 36-storey, mixed-use project. Value: not available.

• Three 30-storey towers at 77 James St. N., at the site of the Hamilton City Centre. Value: not available.

To put the boom into perspective, the sum total of all residential units built downtown in 2011 was 10. Not 10 buildings, 10 apartments. Today we're talking thousands and thousands," Lam said. It's the most investment, especially in the residential, that we've seen downtown."

A little general urban history is useful. In the postwar years, downtown was somewhere Hamiltonians came to shop. But then there was an era of growth in the suburbs, along with the rise of suburban malls. The flight from the city's core was on. So, in the 1970s and '80s, the city worked to bring people back through the construction of Hamilton Place, Copps Coliseum and Jackson Square.

Twenty years ago, the concert hall, sports arena and downtown shopping mall were standalone facilities, which didn't attract a lot of residential development because that was still a bit of a taboo, said Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger. Public financing was available for the facilities, but private financing was not flowing in for residential development to augment them. You couldn't get a bank to hand out a loan for anything."

Urban planners now understand that a vibrant city core requires people to live there. Entertainment districts or commercial hubs alone will not sustain a downtown, and so, roughly 20 years ago, Hamilton began offering a slew of incentives - from interest-free loans to brownfield remediation programs - to entice developers to build.

A perfect example is the Kiwi Condos at King William and Ferguson, said Lam. It was considered a brownfield because there had been a dry-cleaner there and it was heavily contaminated. It sat there for decades not doing anything."

But with help from the city, the site was cleaned up and now a 14-storey building is going up.

An even larger project is the Cobalt Luxury Residences at King East and Hughson, the site of the former Delta Bingo, where two towers will offer 581 residential units. What's interesting is that LiUNA is doing rental, not condos," Lam said about this build. Rental apartments are in demand in the city core."

The interest of developers in downtown Hamilton started to grow about eight years ago because downtown Toronto had reached its saturation point, Eisenberger said. Then several other factors continued to fuel that shift - including a second GO Transit station downtown and the promise of light-rail transit, which made living downtown even more attractive.

Developers started to snap up land in the core like hotcakes, said Jeremiah Shamess, a senior VP of sales at Colliers International, one of Canada's largest commercial real estate firms, and founder of Colliers Private Capital Investment Group.

Why? Because developers are looking for value in rapidly revitalizing urban centres, Shamess said. Office space sells for about $1,000 per square foot in downtown Toronto, but $150 in Hamilton's core. Land itself is selling for $300 per square foot in downtown Toronto, versus $50 in Hamilton, he said.

Hamilton is the next Brooklyn," Shamess said. It's not the same analogy because Brooklyn is quite a bit closer to Manhattan than Hamilton is to Toronto, but (Hamilton) is a grittier steel town that has substance, an urban fabric, a streetscape, and a desirability."

Paul Morse is a Hamilton-based reporter at the Spectator. Reach him via email at pmorse@thespec.com