Any mid-sized city gives you plenty of dots to connect and plenty of intersecting lines. The more you find out, the less you seem to really know. Even so, here’s another look at the Tivoli nebula.
• The report
Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble - Tivoli Theatre (PED13055) was co-prepared by Creative Industries' Business Development Consultant
Jacqueline Norton, who is the co-author of 2009's
contentious Building a Creative Catalyst Feasibility Study,
real estate agent,
home stager and
better half of
Glen Norton. Glen Norton is
Manager of Urban Renewal for the City of Hamilton, partner in the
Studios at Hotel Hamilton and head of
Hamilton Realty Capital Corporation, the organization behind the
Cannon Knitting Mills project; his office launched the
UrbanSpace real estate brochures and
directory of "workplace inventory for the creative class."
PED13055 notes that “Committee of the Whole members suggested that the Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble should be part of the ‘Creative Catalyst’ funding mix.”
• Appendix B to the Hamilton Music Strategy (
PED14001, prepared by Jacqueline Norton) catalogues an April 2013 SWOT analysis. Among the Opportunities identified: “Encourage, facilitate efforts to secure mid-sized live performance venues in downtown core (i.e., Tivoli Theatre and Lincoln Alexander Centre).”
• In the summer of 1988, Creative Arts impresario
Bill Powell and veteran Hess Village promoter
Jim Skarratt announced plans to purchase the Tivoli Theatre. They conceived of the building as a local cultural hub that would colocate several of the city's independent arts organizations. Though the bid fizzled, the vision endured. As early as 1990, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra and Opera Hamilton were sizing up the venue as a shared rehearsal and performance space.
• A similar concept was floated again in
August 2004. When the Planning and Economic Development Committee was
debating designation of the Tivoli auditorium under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act, an
arts delegation spoke in favour of the Tivoli’s heritage designation toward that end. Members of that delegation (some of whom supplied written statements of support in lieu of appearing) were
Patti Cannon (Arts Hamilton Executive Director),
Bill Manson (Arts Hamilton board member and author of the heritage reference tomes
Footsteps in Time),
Mike Townsend (Creative Arts VP),
Ken Coit (Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, Hamilton Branch) and veteran live music promoter
Tom Dertinger (Tivoli Task Force). Townsend supported heritage designation, Coit noted that Arts Hamilton and Creative Arts had been collaborating on a long-term solution for a functioning theatre and Manson spoke of the potential creation of a community arts centre -- auditorium used as a performing arts venue for local music/dance/theatre groups, and the rest of the site adapted as exhibition space for visual artists and the like.
Among those on the Arts Hamilton board at the time: architect
Bill Curran and honourary board member
Sam Sniderman, then-owner of the Tivoli. (Sniderman and STRM Inc.
also held buildings at
65 King East,
81 King East and
195 King East.)
Then-Chair of the Board of Directors of Arts Hamilton Kevin Land was a founding member of Theatre Terra Nova, a group that commissioned and produced
Evelyn Dick drama
How Could You Mrs. Dick?, which would go on to be
the first play staged in the reopened Tivoli in 1991. (Arts Hamilton was previously known as the
Hamilton & Region Arts Council and in recent years rebranded as
Hamilton Arts Council.)
• In his capacity as Urban Designer with the City of Hamilton's Planning and Economic Development Department, Coit later
helped to prepare a
group of exploratory options for redevelopment of the Tivoli’s James North component as well as
exploratory options for James & Vine, both released in 2005.
• In 2005,
Ron Marini, Glen Norton’s predecessor as Director of the City’s Downtown Renewal Division,
noted that the City was actively “trying to attract a purchaser or a tenant who will create the economic means to reuse the space,” and apparently contacted
various groups from the city’s Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese communities who might have an interest in the Tivoli Theatre. Marini later acknowledged that the City
helped the CBYE prepare an application for federal infrastructure funding.
• The Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble was
founded in 1991 by
Vitek Wincza, who would go on to found the
Hamilton Conservatory of the Arts in 1997. That year, HCA gave rise to the
Hamilton Nutcracker, which was choreographed and produced by Wincza, and which played to capacity crowds at Hamilton Place for eight consecutive years. Vitek and his wife Victoria Long-Wincza are instrumental in driving
Supercrawl's
Kids Crawl programming, which is fitting. In 1996, Vitek Wincza founded arts outreach non-profit
Culture for Kids in the Arts; HCA's citywide
Artasia initiative was an outgrowth of that. Although he has apparently parted ways with the CYBE circa 2006, Vitek remains passionate about dance, and his production of the multi-disciplinary project
Displacement earned critical applause in
Hamilton and
Toronto.
• In
November 2001, then-Minister of Heritage
Sheila Copps reportedly attempted to have the Tivoli federally designated by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, a move which would open a faucet of restoration grants. Minister Copps was alleged to have said: “We'll still proceed if we get [the designation] or not. The long-term goal is the restoration of the Tivoli.”
• In
July 2004, Sam Sniderman and brother Sid, facing a hefty bill for the partial demolition and shoring-up work related to the collapse of the Tivoli's carriage factory portion, were debating whether to raze or restore the theatre. In the face of this imminent threat,
Council swiftly moved on designation, later creating
a related bylaw in Oct 2004.
• The collapse of the Tivoli also gave rise to the City’s Built Heritage Emergency Management Protocol (
PD05122), unveiled in April 2005.
•
Historia Building Restoration’s
Jeff Feswick was a member of Hamilton LACAC (Municipal Heritage Committee) at the time of the Tivoli Theatre’s partial collapse, though apparently absent from the
July 2004 meeting at which the request for consent to demolish the former carriage factory portion of the Tivoli was addressed. (In his capacity as
President of the Hamilton-Halton Construction Association, he missed the June 12, 2006 debate over
LIUNA’s demolition permit request for the Lister Block, though presumably over philosophical differences: The HHCA supported the request.) More recently, Feswick purchased Treble Hall and
has undertaken its restoration. Aside from his term at LACAC (
2001-
2005), he also served as
Chair of the Board of Directors of Arts Hamilton,
2010-2011, succeeded in the role by
David Premi, with whom he partnered on the
SeedWorks co-working space.
• Ward 1 Councillor
Brian McHattie, a long-time heritage buff and another former member of LACAC (
2003-2010), reportedly counts the Tivoli among his favourite old buildings in the city, though he has said that the building "
is not in great shape and there’s no clear path forward" to protect it. Last year, McHattie created a heritage-minded
Citizens' Forum on Cultural Conservation, whose inaugural meeting featured a
heritage preservation presentation from Jeff Feswick. McHattie was also an
Arts Hamilton board member from
2003 to 2010. In
September 2006, Councillor McHattie reminded his colleagues that the Tivoli was pitched as the cultural companion to Hamilton Artists Inc., with the latter imagined as "an incubator for the arts."
•
Donna Reid was also a LACAC member at the time of the Tivoli collapse, and appears to have been the de facto committee steward of the Tivoli Theatre file. A longtime heritage advocate, she was instrumental in organizing the inaugural
Doors Open Hamilton in 2003, which featured 25 founding sites, among them the Tivoli. (
In recognition of her services to heritage,
Reid was awarded the Ontario Heritage Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.) She also served as
executive assistant to Councillor Bratina from 2005-2010.
•
In March 2006, then-Councillor
Bob Bratina informed LACAC that he had toured the Tivoli with Theatre Aquarius artistic director
Max Reimer, who acknowledged the backstage limitations but was enthusiastic about the auditorium itself and expressed interest in exploring avenues for reuse, possibly as part of a larger education facility.
Councillor Bratina had apparently been involved with the CYBE proposal in the year leading up to the sale; the sale itself was announced 10 weeks before the
2006 municipal election. More recently, CYBE CEO Belma Diamante and her family
donated a total of $2,375 between Mayor Bratina's two post-election fundraisers. Bob Bratina was listed as a member of the CYBE Advisory Board during the
2007-
2008 period.
• When the original Tivoli announcement was made at City Hall in August 2006, then-Mayor
Larry DiIanni pointedly
told the media he would be abstaining from any votes around the Tivoli because
his wife Janet sat on the on board of CBYE at that time. (
She resigned around 2007.) Unremarked-upon was the fact that Mayor DiIanni was listed as
a member of the CYBE Advisory Board at the time of the Tivoli sale. (An earlier intersection: CYBE CEO Belma Diamante had donated $285 to Larry DiIanni’s 2003 mayoral campaign, according to
the candidate’s March 2005 financial disclosures.)
• In
December 2006, the doors to the Tivoli were opened for a
press conference. In media coverage the next day,
Gord Moodie, loans and grants coordinator for the city's downtown renewal division, indicated that $7 million had been secured through a first mortgage.
The Spec noted that “Once the business plan is complete, the city will consider using funds from heritage and downtown renewal budgets for the restoration, as well as from the Hamilton Realty Capital Corporation.” (That has yet to materialize, though PED13055 suggests that there are some substantial financial incentives in the wings.) Gord Moodie was listed as a member of the CYBE Advisory Board during the
2007-
2008 period.
He was also reportedly the individual who first suggested the Tivoli to Diamante. Nevertheless, by the second anniversary of the Tivoli sale,
Moodie conceded that it would take multiple arts tenants to make the Tivoli economically viable.
• In 2007, the CYBE was not located at
145 Main East, as it currently is;
it was being run out of a third-floor apartment in Westdale.
• In 2009, Tourism Hamilton awarded Belma Diamante the
2009 Arts and Entertainment Ambassador Award. Tourism Hamilton Executive Director
David Adames was listed as a member of the CYBE Advisory Board during the
2006-
2008 period.
• The
demolition work and parkette construction in the footprint of the Tivoli was the work of Copper Cliff Metals and Wrecking Corp., a company owned by
Anthony DePasquale. DePasquale had bought the
Dynes Tavern (a
pre-Confederation beach strip drinking hole that was the longest continually operating tavern in Canada) in 2002 -- and
demolished it five years later, without a permit. Copper Cliff was later a
subcontractor on the Lister Block,
not without causing alarm. This is partly attributable to the owner’s
mottled business history. It also owes to the fact that Copper Cliff had been
linked to the demolition of the Balfour Building, though the company was also entrusted with
dis-assembly, removal, storage, and re-assembly of the façade of the William Thomas Building and was later
single-source contractor for stabilization of St. Mark’s Church.
• Prior to being owned by CBYE, the Tivoli was home to
Loren Lieberman’s
Tivoli Renaissance Project from 1998 to the 2004 collapse (
which Lieberman learned of while away on honeymoon). TRP served as HQ for
Creative Arts Inc. of which Lieberman is General Manager. When he inherited that position from
Bill Powell, Lieberman had just turned 30, making him the most influential young creative professional in the city at that time. Lieberman had
sought out funding support to address repairs to the aging building on a number of occasions but made limited headway; he issued
a plaintive 11th hour call to arms after the roof collapsed, to no avail. Post-Tivoli, Lieberman staged an unsuccessful run for Ward 2 Councillor during the
2004 byelection.
Creative Arts moved to the old CHCH studios on Main West (rebranded as the
Westside Concert Theatre for a few years) and Lieberman became a
community cable contrarian. One of the largely redacted James North pioneers, he has become something of a black sheep of the local creative community. That can be credited in part to
his skepticism regarding the economic fundamentals of James North and rejection of "
the nonsense notion that the arts community exists only on James Street North." In response to the
Creative Catalyst fracas, Lieberman
offered to act as moderator for an arts community meeting. Since then, the move of Creative Arts' Festival of Friends
from Gage Park to
Ancaster Fairgrounds, in addition to Lieberman's role as
partner and
spokesman for the Carmen’s Group casino bid (as well as
entertainment director for the Hamilton Convention Centre)
has done little to ingratiate him with downtown creatives. (Lieberman's detractors would be tickled to learn that
he played Judas in
Jesus Christ Superstar, the final production staged at the Tiv.)
• In early 1992, the Tivoli hosted a series of events staged by legendary film archivist
Reg Hartt, such as mainstays The Anarchist Surrealist Film Festival (featuring classics by Buñuel, Artaud and Cocteau) and The Sex And Violence Cartoon Festival, as well as an all-night, six-film showcase of Hammer Horror films. By late 1992,
Crossfire Assembly entered into a five-year lease for the Tivoli. When the lease expired they moved to their current location near Victoria Park --
two doors west of what would later become the Westside Concert Theatre.
•
Reportedly opened to live music performances in 1995, the Tivoli hosted a variety of concerts, many booked by
Tom Dertinger. Among the
prominent Canadian acts to appear on the Tivoli stage: Sarah McLachlan, Blue Rodeo, Loreena McKennitt, The Grapes of Wrath,
Junkhouse, Daniel Lanois, The Killjoys, Stephen Fearing, Garnet Rogers,
Jackie Washington, Sarah Harmer, Be Good Tanyas, Hayden and Julie Doiron. One of the last shows appears to have been
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who played three months before the roof collapse of the Tivoli’s 1875 carriage factory section.
• The Tivoli also
reportedly hosted 14 movie shoots, some of which were facilitated by film liaison officer Jacqueline Norton (née
McNeilly). In 2003’s
Bulletproof Monk, for example, the Tivoli appeared as the
Golden Palace. Prior to McNeilly's appointment as film commissioner in early 2001, the Tivoli saw extensive exposure in 2000’s
Rated X, in which it served as a
loose approximation of San Francisco’s
O’Farrel Theatre. It also gets a fair bit of play in 2001’s
Laughter on the 23rd Floor.
• Cultural connector
Jeremy Freiburger's
first foray into arts administration and adaptive reuse was as
assistant to HCA Artistic Director Vitek Wincza, where he also worked on the CYBE's annual Hamilton Nutcracker ballet. An early proponent of the
Creative Catalyst hub development, he currently manages the
Studios at Hotel Hamilton as well as
Cobalt Connects (preceded by
Cossart Exchange and
Imperial Cotton Centre for the Arts). Jacqueline Norton was a
board member at Imperial Cotton Centre for the Arts circa 2008-2009; the
Creative Industries page on the City’s economic development website links to Freiburger’s Cobalt Connects exclusively as “the connecting element for creative communities.” (Neil Everson, Director of Economic Development & Real Estate, was
also a founding board member.)
During that period Frieburger served on the City’s
Economic Development Advisory Committee via the Hamilton Civic Coalition, later known as the
Jobs Prosperity Collaborative.
Freiburger was listed as a member of the CYBE Advisory Board at the time of the Tivoli purchase.
He is also on the Board of Directors of Supercrawl, a festival
he has been involved with since its inception and whose director is Tim Potocic.
•
Tim Potocic,
a co-owner of 118 James North,
has sought ownership of the neighbouring Tivoli. Potocic (a
Cobalt Connects/ICCA board member since 2008,
Vice-Chair of the city’s Arts Funding Task Force,
Secretary of the Hamilton Arts Council under
president David Premi and
co-chair of the Hamilton Music Core Group under chair Jacqueline Norton) is also co-owner of
Sonic Unyon Recording Company, whose partners own/manage
11 properties in the James North area and which was a
bid partner on HECFI facility management alongside
Forum Equity Partners.
•
Forum Equity Partners is partnering with the City on the
Cannon Knitting Mills (aka
Mills Innovation Exchange) via the
Hamilton Realty Capital Corporation, “a co-investment partnership initiative between Forum Equity Partners and the City of Hamilton created to stimulate real estate development within the Downtown Community Improvement Project Area.”
HRCC is a for-profit development corporation. Forum Equity Partners reportedly tapped Cobalt Connects to help create a plan for the Cannon Knitting Mills, but the developers reportedly didn't keep in touch. (Trivia: Forum Equity president Richard Abboud had previously been
linked to
the idea of
a Gehry on the West Harbour. Abboud was a
contributor to Fred Eisenberger's re-election bid; he and partner Jitanjli Datt were also
contributors to Bratina’s 2010 mayoral campaign.)
• A second offer on the Tivoli was
reportedly made by
tech tycoon/
digital entrepreneur/
venture capitalist Mark Chamberlain,
Chair of the
Jobs Prosperity Collaborative,
Founding Chair of the Innovation Factory board (2010-2013) and,
since 2008,
an oft-invoked challenger for the city's mayoralty. (Trivia:
Scott Smith,
Director of Operations of Innovation Factory, is a Principal and Co-Managing Partner in the Studios at Hotel Hamilton; he succeeded previous IF COO Keanin Loomis, now
President & CEO of the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce.)
• The other author of the
Building a Creative Catalyst Feasibility Study was
Paul Shaker, Executive Director of the
Centre for Community Study, formerly
Mayor Eisenberger’s Advisor for Rural & Urban Affairs and a member of LACAC from
2004-
2007. Shaker’s Centre for Community Study and Freiburger’s Imperial Cotton Centre for the Arts were two-thirds of Creative Catalyst precursor the
Hamilton Creative City Initiative. Before that, CCS’s reports
Hamilton and the Creative Class (2004) and
Creative City (2005) offered statistical assessments of Hamilton’s cultural sector and its economic development potential. Shaker's
CCS has supplied event analytics for Supercrawl, and he is also a partner in
Rethink Renewal with
Cannon Knitting Mills project architect David Premi and
Chamber of Commerce initiative Renew Hamilton alongside Glen Norton and others.
• Paul Shaker, Jacqueline Norton, Jeremy Freiburger and Tim Potocic were the panelists for an April 2010 discussion at Acclamation entitled What is James Street North?, moderated by
Martinus Geleynse,
one of the original tenants of Studios at Hotel Hamilton and, along with Jacqueline Norton,
then co-chair of the board of
The Factory: Hamilton Media Arts Centre. As one of the Studios’ original tenants, Geleynse had access to the owners’ braintrust via the since-discontinued
Mentor’s Corner program. (
In August 2010, Geleynse entered the race to succeed Bob Bratina as Ward 2 councillor, running his campaign out of the same address as The Factory.
Among his campaign donors were Jeremy Freiburger and future Renew Hamilton team members Glen Norton, David Premi and Keanin Loomis; the latter,
now Chamber president, once served as
Chief Advocate at Geleynse’s Hamilton24 festival.) Geleynse’s monthly publication
Urbanicity counts Shaker and Loomis among its contributors; his
MGI Media has staged urban renewal
bus tours to rustbelt cities such as Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Detroit,
each of which included Glen Norton among its participants.
• Jacqueline Norton and Jeremy Freiburger had been panelists at a testy April 2009 debate entitled
Creative Cities: Can the Arts Save Hamilton? at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, moderated by
Terry Cooke.
Also on the bill: Gary Santucci of the Pearl Company (and, more recently, the CYBE Board of Directors).
Prominent voices in the subsequent Q+A were Bill Powell, Loren Lieberman, Ken Coit and then-councillor Bob Bratina.
•
Gary Santucci partnered in the 1998 resuscitation of the
Red Mill Theatre just south of the Tivoli and in 2005 served as
manager of the
Downtown Cultural Centre (now
Downtown Arts Centre), exiting over
artistic differences and promptly going on to launch
The Pearl Company. By the fall after the Tivoli announcement,
the CYBE was using the Pearl Company as rehearsal space. In
January 2010, Santucci launched a new studio gallery at the
Lincoln Alexander Centre along with Crowne Plaza owner Oscar Kichi, who sank $4 million into building the LAC. The debut exhibition featured the
Tiger Group arts collective, of which
Bill Powell was an inaugural member. (By
mid-May 2010, the Lincoln Alexander Centre was mothballed as a performing arts theatre.
The same day that story ran, a bankruptcy order was issued against
Grand Connaught Development Group, of which Kichi was a member.) Santucci has alluded to the creation of a local collective called the
Tivoli Performing Arts Association said to be contributing to to the theatre's redevelopment plans.
•
Domenic Diamante is the principal of
Diamante Holdings but also appears to be the principal of
1130419 Ontario Inc., more commonly known as CBS Property Management, which owns and manages off-campus housing in Waterloo. In June 2012, 1130419 Ontario Inc. submitted
an application to demolish the eight townhouses on
its Waterloo property to make room for
five new 20-24 storey apartment buildings; a variation on this high density concept was
spit-balled in a May 2008 agreement in principle with the University of Waterloo. CBS Property Management is located at
292 James N but Google results also suggest an affiliation with
119 King East. That address also correlates with Diamante Holdings partner
Cash on the Spot. (The property in question
listed for just under $300K and recently sold.) CBS Property Management also appears to have a foothold in Burlington at
2114 Lakeshore Road, and appears in a Development and Infrastructure report on the
Old Lakeshore Road Precinct Study appealing
Interim Control By-law 113-2006. That property is expected to be
consolidated with its neighbours as part of
a waterfront redevelopment decades in the making.
• In February 2013, architect
Drew Hauser revealed that he was “working on a redevelopment project connected to the Tivoli.” Hauser currently serves as chair of the
Hamilton/Burlington Society of Architects and
sits on the Government Affairs Committee at the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce. McCallum/Sather, the firm at which he is a principal, is
also designing the Hamilton Grand, participated in an early
design charrette for
270 Sherman North (aka Imperial Cotton Centre for the Arts) and was previously
connected to the renovation of the Studios at Hotel Hamilton.
May you live in interesting times, etc.
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