Preparation to demolish Jamesville in Hamilton’s North End underway
The former City Housing complex will be razed by the end of August, councillor says
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At age 83, Silverio Alcatrao wonders if he’ll be around to see the vacant Jamesville complex in Hamilton’s North End transformed into a mixed-income community.
“Only God knows,” the longtime North Ender said with chuckle as he looked at the townhouses that have been empty and boarded up for years.
But he hopes the redevelopment of Jamesville — a 91-unit subsidized community built in 1969 — happens soon to help ease a housing crunch.
“People need a place to live.”
The demolition has been delayed, but the derelict units will be flattened by the end of August, Coun. Jason Farr said.
That will leave the 5.4-acre property between James, MacNab, Ferrie and Strachan streets ready for the big construction job.
“The demolition process has begun,” Farr told The Spectator.
As Alcatrao strolled by Thursday, workers were erecting a chain-link fence around the property.
An excavator was on-site. Water and sewer lines must be capped and other utilities disconnected before bulldozers eventually raze the old CityHousing units.
“It’s not going to be an easy job, man,” Alcatrao said. “But I like it.”
The city acknowledged receipt of The Spectator’s request to interview staff about the project, but only responded to some questions via email Thursday.
A spokesperson noted abatement work for asbestos inside the units starting in March and utility disconnects could take a few months.
The city began relocating tenants from Jamesville in 2015, with the last of them moving out three years ago ahead of the planned redevelopment.
“I think there’s a lot of North Enders, especially, that have been anxiously awaiting to see some action on that site,” Farr said Thursday.
A host of issues — including a development agreement between the project’s partners and environmental hurdles at the former industrial site — contributed to delays, the Ward 2 councillor said.
“It’s just a due-diligence process that maybe took longer than any of us would have liked, including the residents.”
CityHousing’s private partners in the 500-unit-plus project are FRAM and Slokker, Melrose Investments Inc., Marz Developments Inc., and Homes by DeSantis.
The municipal housing provider will retain 46 rent-geared-to-income units on the site, while 45 units are to be replaced in a future building at Bay and Cannon.
Meanwhile, non-profit Indwell aims to build as many as 115 deeply affordable units at Jamesville, which is to have denser forms of housing like stacked towns.
For Alcatrao, who has lived just north of Jamesville since 1992, the boarded-up homes where friends of his used to live are a sore sight.
“It’s sad,” he said, noting the homeless people he sees downtown huddling in the cold. “It’s terrible.”
With skyrocketing property values, it’s not easy to buy a home nowadays in the historically working-class North End, he pointed out. “You try to buy a house here.”
Farr acknowledged that observers have “quite rightly” pointed out the townhouses have sat empty during a housing crunch.
“This is the start of a process that’s going to put a little bit of a dent” in the affordability crisis, he said.
In recent years, CityHousing has executed a strategy to sell real estate assets and put the proceeds toward denser, mixed-income communities.
A staff report last year noted the 91 subsidized units at Jamesville were “incurring increased costs for maintenance” as they got older.
The planned 364 private units are the “enabling financial mechanism” for the site’s “revitalization” and increased density of the mixed-income redevelopment.
Near the Red Hill Valley Parkway, CityHousing is a partner with a private consortium that has demolished townhouses to build more than 600 market homes. CityHousing’s new 10-storey apartment building has risen on the site.
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