2 new power centres for Hamilton!!!!

[fastcarsfreedom]

And you are correct--Lowe's is larger. HD launched a new store format around the time that the Centennial store was built--and it is physically smaller than first-generation stores (such as the one at the Meadowlands). Lowe's response in the U.S. has been larger stores--and they have been very successful as a competitor to the HD juggernaut. Look for them to open a "shadow" store near every HD--again, a strategy that has worked well for them in the past.

[raisethehammer]

I don't think Mike used the right term in the above post about closing malls.
De-malling is actually a trend ripping across the US and starting to hit Canada - its where an old mall site is reconstructed into a more walkable, mixed use development with retail, housing, offices, cafes etc....

I really don't think that the old suburban malls - Eastgate/Centre/Limeridge are the leading factors in downtown's decline, although they certainly didn't help.
The real problem occured when downtown built their own mall in an effort to compete with the burbs.
It can't.
Downtown needs to be a unique, vibrant place - think Byward Market in Ottawa or any number of neighbourhoods in downtown TO.
Downtown cant and shouldn't try to compete with the suburbs on their level - highways, interchange ramps, free parking galore.
Downtowns should be entirely different. Thankfully I slowly see the seeds of that being planted in Hamilton, yet the mindset in groups like the downtown BIA continue to hold the core back because they are too suburban minded - where's the acres of free parking?? why are there posters on the street poles??
They need to embrace urbanism and all it's forms. The suburbs have mega billboards that blaze light into people's bedrooms at night. Downtown has a pile of little clubs and businesses that rely on human beings walking by and shopping/eating there. Signs on poles are more effective than mega billboards on the 403 or Main Street.
Less free parking and more destinations should be goal (again, TO and Ottawa).

Oh, and Ted...I didn't make the assinine assumption that because the biggest companies are advertisers that means we don't have a true free market.
I gave very clear reasons (in the form of trillions of dollars) why we don't have a free market. Nice try though.
Remember, the free market guys are always the ones screaming for the government to just get out of the way and let them do business. I say "great idea". No more $1.5 billion annually to the oil industry anymore in Canada (last year we gave them even more).
No more free land servicing and highway interchange construction.
They want government right out of the way, that should include the money too.

[raisethehammer]

Originally Posted by fastcarsfreedom

And you are correct--Lowe's is larger. HD launched a new store format around the time that the Centennial store was built--and it is physically smaller than first-generation stores (such as the one at the Meadowlands). Lowe's response in the U.S. has been larger stores--and they have been very successful as a competitor to the HD juggernaut. Look for them to open a "shadow" store near every HD--again, a strategy that has worked well for them in the past.

I went by that new Lowes the other day...my first thought was "why does the parking always have to be in front at the streetlevel?"
Then as I stood there looking at the store, I thought "gee, it's good that the store is way back there...if it was right at the street level people across the road would look out their bedroom windows and see a massive "LO" or "ES"
depending on what view they had. the place is insanely huge, or maybe it just seems bigger than other boxes since it's plunked into a residential area.

[SteelTown]

There has been "de-malling" happening in Hamilton, look at Centre Mall and Mountain Plaza. Centre Mall's Farmers' Market is moving to Ottawa Street BIA, if Yale actually cared about Jackson Square they would sweet talk Sears into moving to Jackson Square instead of it closing up for good. It appears majority of the mom and pop stores from Mountain Plaza will be relocating to Concession Street BIA.

[markbarbera]

I believe Sears is looking to move into Eastgate should WalMart end up moving out to the proposed Centennial/QEW site.

[fastcarsfreedom]

Mark is correct, I believe that is the plan--for Sears to build on the Wal*Mart pad at Eastgate.

As for miketoronto--his suggestion wasn't "organic" demalling--but something constructed and mandated. If you look at the so-called "demalling" trend across North America--it's not occuring at "regional" or "super-regional" malls, but at smaller centres (MPM) or centres whose demographic has changed (Centre Mall)--it is a trend--but frankly speaking you don't see large, successful malls like Lime Ridge being demolished and/or redeveloped.

As for the Downtown Vs. Suburban debate--I do agree on some level. Downtown is a unique destination--it has aspects and eccentricities that no suburb can compete with--this can and should be downtown's strength. That being said, the notion that Jackson Square somehow killed downtown is something I've never grasped. Firstly, Jackson Square's opening pre-dates that of Eastgate, Lime Ridge or Mapleview--only Centre Mall and Burlington Mall predated it--so Jackson Square was developed as it was--not as a "catch up"--and as we've debated many times over in this space--for a solid 20 or so years, Jackson Square worked, and thrived. It's inter-connections with Copps, the Market, the Library and the Sheraton uniquely place it--I've said before and will say again, Jackson Square absolutely has a role to play in downtown's future.

As for Sears moving downtown--as much as I'd like to be proven wrong, fuhgedaboutit. Sears has always been, and remains, a suburban operator. The company can barely stand running the old Eaton's stores it inherited in select cities such as Toronto--it's scaled back the size of the Toronto store repeatedly since taking it over--and just did so again. It hangs onto that space for it's pure real estate value--and to keep any new entrants at bay...pardon the pun.

[raisethehammer]

one more thing....the one-way streets in the 1950's did the most damage to downtown Hamilton.
Ask any old business owner from back then to show you their sales receipts...I've seen some that are truly stunning. Week after week after week their sales went down, down, down beginning after the streets went 1-way. downtown needs people walking, sitting, talking, having a good time.
Not blasting through on their way to some strip mall somewhere.
Planning was already underway for many more suburban malls in the area, including Limeridge and Eastgate...Jackson was meant to be the 'downtown response' to those malls. King and James was thriving, full of business. We tore everything down, sucked the life indoors and the novelty wore off eventually. people go to suburban malls to walk around indoors...downtown should be a people place full of life.
yes, now jackson has a role to play in the future and I believe it can work if reno'd properly and oriented to the street.
but again, the one-way streets remain the number one obstacle to generating the real street life that a successful downtown needs.

[DC83]

Although I agree a lot, one-way streets is just ONE of many reasons why downtown Hamilton fell into what it is today.
Don't forget about:
-an increasing automotive industry after the war
-creation of suburbs which would require these new car owners to drive to and from their homes to, say, downtown
-change in lifestyle which we can partially blame on cars (ie: drive-thrus)
-80's to 90's recession. The #1 reason for why retail ran away from downtown to begin with
-Urban Renewal (just look how busy Yonge/Queen are compare to Queen/Bay in Toronto). There's a reason why Yonge St is a destination and Queen between Bay/University'ish is a wasteland: Big, Ugly, 70's style cement blocks! Just like "civic square" which destroyed York Blvd.

EDIT: Wow... reading that over it seems as though I've got quite the hate-on for cars :S hahaha

Key Point... we know what destroyed downtown. Suburban Malls did not do it alone. And suburban Big Box Centres will not destroy what we've worked so hard to bring back to the core. A Walmart in the burbs wont single-handidly destroy the downtown... a Walmart IN the Core surely would.

Aslong as we can keep attracting those who find urban living as exciting/attractive as the majority of us, then we need to capitalize on that and have them live downtown Hamilton rather than Toronto. How? Well we've all come up with a million great ideas.
If someone wants to spend their lives destroying the earth with their fossil fuel emissions as they drive from drive-thru to drive-thru, idling for 5-10 mins at a time, then drive from store to store rather than walk and therefor opening themselves up for obesity/diabetes, etc... then hell, let the gluttons be gluttons. We'll have fun downtown ... and stay fit, too!!

[raisethehammer]

you SHOULD have a 'hate-on' for cars if you really want to see downtown turn around.
The Downtown BIA loves cars and therefore will never oversee a turnaround in that district (until they get rid of their leadership).
Downtowns simply are NOT for cars. parking lots are the biggest waste of prime space in the downtown. Hence, the reason why so many of us on here have been peeved at the city's seeming refusal to look at LRT. It would do wonders for downtown and free up all these stupid lots to actually be made something worthwhile.

[HAMRetrofit]

Cars should not be hated, they should be managed. The city needs to develop a balanced transportation network and work with property owners to develop buildings. They need to work within the real economic conditions of the properties. They need to develop agency for achieving results.

For example, Yale operates Jackson Square and owns several of the surface parking lots that surround the mall. They don't seem to desire developing them as buildings. I am beginning to see that this is not a coincidence. Does anyone have information on how much parking they own surrounding the mall?

[raisethehammer]

they seem to own a ton....
just watching a documentary on Walmart...my goodness, I hope they never come downtown. such a vacuum effect everywhere they go.

[fastcarsfreedom]

Fair to say RTH that the documentary you were watching was anti-Wal*Mart...fair enough, there are those out there who are opposed to the company and it's principles. However, these anti-Wal*Mart documentaries are no more gospel than the films produced by the company to promote itself. The so-called "Wal*Mart" effect where downtowns in small-town America died because of Wal*Mart is a farce. Mass merchandising and the so-called "vacuum" was more-or-less the art of Kmart, Penney and Sears--all of which had national reach long before WMT. Through logistics and inventory control, WMT "perfected" a concept already pioneered by others.

The Yonge/Queen vs. Bay/Queen comparison is beyond apples and oranges. Yonge has it's own "big ugly cement block" in the name of the Eaton Centre--but Yonge is retail and entertainment centered as a district--Bay and Queen would be no more "lively" today had the original bank buildings not been replaced, as they were, in the 70s.

Again, not to be picky, but Civic Square planning reached well back into the 60s, if not the late 50s, under Mayor Jackson and Mayor Copps. It's a shame some of the elements that existed before renewal (namely City Hall and Market Square) were not preserved--it certainly would've made the project less monolithic. Eastgate, to the best of my knowledge, was completed in 1973--so perhaps it was planned concurrently with Jackson Square--I really don't know. However Lime Ridge, which gets all the blame, didn't open until 1981--so I doubt it was conceptualized during Jackson's initial development--there were friggin' dairy cattle grazing immediately behind Eaton's when Lime Ridge opened--no joke, in 1981 Upper Wentworth was in the hinterlands. Let's also not forget that Yale was still expanding Jackson Square into the mid 1980s when the SLC/Sheraton and Copps were built. If you mentally shrink Jackson Square back down to just Phase I and Phase II and take the City Centre out of the equation--you have a full, reasonably healthy mall--retail was overbuilt, no doubt about it. A couple of well placed residential towers in JS would have a huge impact and needs to be an element of renos, whenever they may take place.

[raisethehammer]

yup we definitely need residential in JS...it was supposed to happen originally, but got scrapped.
IF only we could go back and not do Eaton Centre or the final phases of Jackson...downtown would be much healthier today.

and for whatever it's worth...the folks who did this documentary simply went coast to coast across Canada and interviewed small business owners in towns and cities that had Walmarts arrive recently...many of them directly pinned WM expansion as hurting their sales and in many of the towns, businesses that had existed for 40, 50 or more years had closed down within a few years of their arrival.
they spoke with store owners, BIA heads, townspeople etc....it wasn't some made-up 'farce'.

One great point that was made at the end of the film, which I'd never thought of was this:
They said how many people these days say things like "why can't we get government to be run like a successful business?"
So they looked at that - Walmart, after all is the most successful one that exists.

their findings were nothing that we all don't already know - low wages, sweatshops, absolutely everything being controlled from Bentonville -building temps, hours of operation, exact source of merchandise, managers outfits, offering coffee to 'activists' who show up (these guys were getting free coffees like it was going out of style during the film. lol).
I must admit it was funny how they edited it together...different stores, different towns, different managers all coming out with the same round tray holding cups of coffee - "can I offer you guys a coffee?" over and over.
The easy conclusion to arrive it was that if walmart was an economic or governmental system it would be more communist than anything. People who ask for them to also run government should be careful what they ask for.
By the way, they also chatted about WM's huge internet database and the fact that they have more personal info on you and I than most government agencies.
Ultimately, I think their goal is similar to communism - make everyone dependant on them.
People working for the most propserous retailer in America are making some of the lowest wages in America. don't think that those two facts are unrelated....at any rate....I'm sure I've just ruined an otherwise nice chat so far. lol.
just my rant for the day.

[fastcarsfreedom]

Central control of operations is not unusual at all in the retail industry today. Home Depot has used the very same system--with everything from store temperatures to payroll being controlled from Atlanta--it's the practice that most of the highest achieving retailers use. Wal*Mart's centralization in Bentonville, including acquiring customer data, has been a key element to their success, has allowed them to control inventory crises which have befallen competitors (Loblaw has been trying to untangle itself from an inventory mess related to RCSS in Ontario for over a year). I'd be curious to see the documentary--however, it sounds like it's "edited" in Michael Moore style--in other words, it's no more unbiased than a corporate-produced film--which was the point of my post.

As for wages--Wal*Mart's pay scale is in-line with other mass merchandisers--the Targets, Kmarts, etc, of the world. I see no reason why Wal*Mart as the largest, should somehow be exposed to more scrutiny based solely on it's size. If you want to make an argument about mass merchandisers as a whole paying minimum wage--fine, but it's not plausible to single out a particular entrant in the category. To suggest Wal*Mart ought to raise it's compensation for it's employees is to dismiss it's business model out of hand entirely--the company's operation is based on lowest possible overhead--I'm not making a judgement on it--just calling it as I see it. As for fears that it would somehow "take over the world"--look at financials over the past several fiscal years and you'll see that Wal*Mart's growth pattern has matured, it is not killing off it's competitors wantonly--Target has solidified it's position and there has been a resurgence among other entrants such as Penney, Sears and Kmart--all have achieved their newfound growth in part by emulating Wal*Mart.

I probably come-off as particularly "pro-Wal*Mart" which isn't intentional--I'm merely not anti-Wal*Mart. Like any business of their magnitude--they have issues that I acknowledge are of concern--particularly in regard to human resources issues unrelated to compensation. They have also been notoriously bad at telling their side of the story--the coffee I suspect is part of that improved focus on public relations. Interesting how the coffee is edited into the doc in a negative way--yet, the lack of a response would've been edited in in exactly the same way--spin.

[SteelTown]

Land suited to jobs, not shops
Report doesn’t favour power centre along QEW

A proposed Wal-Mart in Stoney Creek is getting the thumbs down from consultants hired by the city and a developer.

Mady Developments wants to build an $85-million power centre on a 17-hectare site on the southwest corner of the QEW and Fifty Road. Wal-Mart has signed on as the anchor tenant.

But independent consultants say the land should be used for employment purposes, not shopping.

“The consultants have said ‘there is a need for the commercial use, we don’t dispute there is a demand for it,’” said Brenda Khes, a senior project manager with the city’s planning department.

“However, this isn’t the best location for it because we have a limited amount of employment land and what we have, we need to keep.”

Employment uses typically include industry, office buildings and warehouses — not major retail developments like a power centre.

Earlier this year, the Ontario Municipal Board allowed Hamilton to expand its urban boundary to add 223 hectares in Stoney Creek, including the Mady Developments site. The city is now working on a plan for how the land should be used.

To move ahead of that process, Mady, with the city’s agreement, opted to have an independent consulting firm, Hemson Consulting Ltd., study whether its site was an appropriate place for a power centre.

But a draft version of the report said the “exceptional access and gateway location” of the Mady property make it better suited for employment purposes.

Hemson has told the city it will need 1,000 hectares of new employment land to handle its job growth over the next 25 years.

“When the city told us ‘well we want to promote this other site and not your site,’ we put a halt to the studies that we were paying for thinking ‘what are we doing?’” said Hal Kersey, Mady’s vice president of planning and development.

“We’re spending significant dollars knowing full well the city’s not going to be supportive of what we’re doing.”

Kersey says a separate report, commissioned by his firm, shows the power centre would provide “significant economic benefits,” including $1.11 million in property taxes for the city and up to 1,000 jobs. And a commercial development needs the visibility and highway access of the Mady site in order to draw in highway traffic.

The city disagrees.

According to the consultants’ report “a Wal-Mart is a great thing to have, but it doesn’t need to be at that intersection,” Khes added. “It doesn’t need highway exposure, it doesn’t need highway access and it’s probably much better located closer to and as a part of an overall community.”

Councillor David Mitchell said residents in his ward have told him they favour the project.

“The north side (of the QEW) close to the lake hasn’t got anything,” he said. “There’s a lack of infrastructure for groceries, shopping, everything.”

[raisethehammer]

yea, this is a no-brainer...employment lands all the way for such prime property on the QEW.

let's hope the city sticks to their guns on this one and not waste such good land.

fastcars - the 'coffee' bit in the show wasn't edited in a negative way...it was quite humourous. they went to one store and nobody had a coffee so the guy told them "everyone else has been giving us coffee. what's with this store?" so they ran in and get him some.
it was nothing like a moore film. it was literally a cross country road trip going to walmart in towns all over canada...they did go to some towns that were fighting to keep them out too - guelph, stratford etc.... and those towns gave some insight into how walmart was literally trying to hijack their planning process. they've got so much money and time that they're basically just out-waiting these towns by having endless OMB hearings and spending money on lawyers.

I realize businesses have been successful with a central command post, but my point was that people need to think before asking for government to run like that. it's called communism in government. people are people, we aren't coggs on an assembly line that can be stuffed into an identical box, wearing identical clothes, all toeing the party line.
I'm not necessarily anti-walmart either...i'll never go protest (I shouldn't say that - I might be forced to if they try to stuff one downtown) these stores on the QEW or anywhere else in the burbs that wants them.
I just think it's ethical to keep the worlds most successful business accountable for their prolific use of sweatshops, their practice of turning over staff regularly to avoid having employees remain long-term and become eligible for health care etc.... and paying the lowest possible wages, even in the world of low-wage retail, and always leading the fight against unions and wage/benefit increases.
A film worth watching is 'The Corporation'. It explains how legally a corporation is given the same rights and responsibilities as a person. yet they constantly treat other humans in a way that would land you or I in jail.

just some more food for thought.

[BCTed]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

A film worth watching is 'The Corporation'. It explains how legally a corporation is given the same rights and responsibilities as a person. yet they constantly treat other humans in a way that would land you or I in jail.

just some more food for thought.

You seem to have a hate-on for all businesses that have grown beyond a certain size just because of their size. Are there any large (i.e., multi-billion dollar) businesses that you do not dislike?

[raisethehammer]

Originally Posted by BCTed

You seem to have a hate-on for all businesses that have grown beyond a certain size just because of their size. Are there any large (i.e., multi-billion dollar) businesses that you do not dislike?

nothing in my above quote even hints at me having a "hate-on" for ALL (or any) businesses that have grown beyond a certain size.

[SteelTown]

At Mohawk College they force all students to watch The Corporation for the mandatory Active Citizenship course.

[raisethehammer]

gee, who knew that Mohawk College had such a hate-on for business?? Those lefty commies!