Gore Park

[durandy]

Gore Park is packed today. The food trucks doing great business. So much potential there, it's just so freaking lame though with the painted herringbone bricks. It could be a great space. Also the band that's been playing for the last three hours has played the same Maroon five song four times, which is four times too many.

[palace1]

Originally Posted by matt602

I think it's a storage box for special events.

Too small for storage and they'd definitely put it somewhere less in the way.

It looks like there is a border of stamped concrete around it so there must be something hidden under there. (Too bad Google Streetview didn't do the North Branch of King Street)

Maybe it's the Park & Pay meter!

[SteelTown]

Hundreds of people showed up today at Gore Park. Eat St was filming today for Gorilla Cheese.

[SteelTown]

Originally Posted by SteelTown

• Video Link

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/ar...tack-on-couple

[realcity]

That sums it up. That is not rare. I should sit down there for a week with a flipvideo and then show why people feel "not safe" downtown. It's not a family friendly place. Hughson and King is probably the worst area, might be because of the Skid Hortons.

[SteelTown]

Looks like we have a big chunk of change ($650,000) to proceed with the Gore Park Master Plan....

"Having a private company fund the project independently will allow the city to drive other development, he said. “Now we will look to some of the other things on our wish list,” Norton said. This could include enhancing the public lighting in the downtown core, he said, or moving ahead with rebuilding of Gore Park."

[Jon Dalton]

Been reading what Jane Jacobs had to say about parks and it seems there is a lot of barking up a lot of wrong trees by planners and pundits here:

Here it is necessary to take issue with a common belief about cities - the belief that uses of low status drive out uses of high status. This is not how cities behave, and the belief that it is renders futile much energy aimed at attacking symptoms and ignoring causes.

Those who blame the most vulnerable users of Gore Park, also incidentally those with the least influence towards its current and future state, truly do not understand how cities work.

To summarize the rest of her observations, the success of a city park depends on a multitude of surrounding uses generating a diversity of users at different times of the day. Where one use is preeminent (office workers for example), periods of low demand generate a vacuum.

Gore Park needs more quality residential uses surrounding it. It needs more street level retail and commercial, and it needs to lose the high speed traffic cutting it off on one side.

[pEte fiSt iN Ur fAce]

^I read one of her books years ago about Philadelphia's various squares and why some were great places and others poor. Unfortunately I don't remember much in the way of detail but it sounds very similar to what you've pointed out here.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a little dry at times but her books are a must-read for anybody even remotely interested in cities.

[SteelTown]

Feedback to the Gore Park Promenade and Pedestrian Pilot Program

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GOREPARK

[SteelTown]

Fill out of the survey if you wish the Promenade was held during the weekend or wish it had longer hours.

[mattgrande]

So does this city usually publish the results of these surveys afterwards?

[SteelTown]

No.

[coalminecanary]

If you want to see the results you probably have to ask the guy who empties the garbage cans in city hall

[SteelTown]

I think the survey is being done by the Downtown BIA.

I'm pretty sure the Downtown BIA and Glen Norton are trying to compile a case to Council to make the Promenade permanent and redirect the $650,000 to improve Gore Park.

[SteelTown]

Staff recommends keeping the Pedestrian Pilot project until the Gore Park Master plan is built....

http://www.hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/...__PED12206.pdf

It's no longer a pilot project, it's permanent now. They are using the money from the Downtown Supermarket Incentive Program to make it a permanent feature.

[durandy]

"That the one-time total estimated cost of $120,000 required to procure durable, modular planter boxes and planting material for the Gore Pedestrianization Project be funded from the existing Hamilton Downtown Supermarket Incentive Program Project ID 8201203515, subject to the approval of operating costs set out in Recommendation (c), below;"

what is it about municipal projects that everything has to cost an insane amount? I get it these are durable planter boxes. They're even modular. But $120K???

[SteelTown]

Includes "operating costs".

[mattgrande]

Does "operating costs" include costs of the plants and maintaining them?

[SteelTown]

Kathy Drewitt, Downtown Hamilton B.I.A., to report on the 2012 Pedestrian Pilot Program and Gore park summer Promenade and to request consideration for funding the Gore Master Plan

http://www.hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/...eb06Item63.pdf

[drpgq]

Originally Posted by SteelTown

Kathy Drewitt, Downtown Hamilton B.I.A., to report on the 2012 Pedestrian Pilot Program and Gore park summer Promenade and to request consideration for funding the Gore Master Plan

http://www.hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/...eb06Item63.pdf

Is it really worth spending more money now? If Blanchard is going to pull down those buildings and some time later do something, why bother doing anything? I'm pro Gore, but if the buildings go, why do anything right away?