West Harbour redevelopment fuels Hamilton's rebirth - downtown, lakeshore now fun places to live and play

If you haven’t been to Hamilton for 15 years or so, you’re in for a shock.  

The West Harbour waterfront, once an industrial wasteland, is being cleaned up, with new waterfront parks attracting more than one million residents and visitors each year, all eager to soak in panoramic views of Hamilton Harbour and the Niagara Escarpment.  

They come for a day at the beach, a walk or jog on the scenic trails, a trolley ride, an ice cream cone, a leisurely boat cruise around the harbour or just to throw a Frisbee across the wide-open grassy expanses. There’s everyone from toddlers in the splash pad, to visitors checking out the Parks Canada Discovery Centre and boomers sipping mochaccinos at Williams Coffee Pub on Pier 8.  

The waterfront is the new place to be, and be seen, in Hamilton, a city of about 500,000. The city will soon show it off to the world as co-host, with Toronto, of the 2015 Pan-Am Games.

East and west, Hamilton's waterfront re-energized with upscale housing

On the east-end waterfront, the venerable old Confederation Park on Lake Ontario has been given new life. There’s the Wild Waterworks water park, Adventure Village children’s playland, go-carts and eateries. Or you can take a scenic stroll along a trail that follows the water or bring a picnic lunch and stretch out on the grass.  

Hamilton’s old beach strip is going upscale, too. Once the domain of cottagers, the beach strip fell on hard times until a posh new condo development became a catalyst for redevelopment. Beach Boulevard is a neighbourhood in transition and, after years of stagnation, it’s seeing dilapidated cottages torn down and replaced by upscale homes whose owners look out onto the blue expanse of Lake Ontario.  

Not surprisingly, the waterfront redevelopment — and there’s still lots more to come — has fuelled the rebirth of Hamilton, which for years had suffered from neglect, the victim of a changing economy and a rush out to the suburbs by the people whose very presence would have helped pull it out of the gutter.  

Luxed-up waterfront also pulling people downtown

The downtown core isn’t far from the west waterfront, and the plan is to link the two with attractions along James and Bay streets. A cornerstone in those linkages is the rejuvenated old James Street North railway station, a magnificent, neo-classical structure, which is now the Liuna Gardens conference and banquet centre, complete with extensive gardens.  

Today, thanks to the development of upscale condo residences, professionals are now working and living downtown, creating a domino effect that has resulted in a healthier retail trade. On the waterfront, new low-rise development, including beach-style townhomes, are popping up, adding more people and more energy to a municipality that is more than ready to trade its Steel Town image for something that more closely resembles its true self — urban, hip and innovative, with an artsy flavour running through it all.  

You can check out the city’s creative pulse by booking a seat on the Arts Bus, which will take you around town to visit the studios of various artists. The heart of Hamilton’s exciting new arts scene is the Imperial Cotton Centre, a former cotton mill that is now the working home for about 70 artists — everyone from painters to filmmakers to musicians.  

Hamilton is Canada's new artist studio central

The Imperial Cotton Centre is the perfect complement to Hamilton’s more established arts community that serves up everything musical from opera to classical to jazz, along with so much live theatre it seems there’s a play to enjoy every day of the week.

The newly refurbished Art Gallery of Hamilton, along with the McMaster Museum of Art, round out an arts and cultural scene that offers everything you need for entertainment outside the many bars and nightclubs.  

That’s not to say that Hamilton, located between Toronto and Niagara Falls, has totally shed its gritty, lunch-bucket image, deserved or not. There are still steel companies operating in the industrial east end. But industry is no longer the city’s top employer. These days, that would be health and education, with the bulk of jobs being provided by Hamilton Health Sciences and the City of Hamilton, with McMaster University and the government of Canada coming in at fifth and sixth, after the two biggest steel companies. McMaster’s Innovation Park is attracting high-tech firms to the city, whose west end has been declared a research and development zone.  

Image makeover brought on by end of steel

The end of steel as the dominant employer in Hamilton has caused much economic hardship here — more than 55,000 people already commute to Toronto for work. So not everyone is celebrating steel’s slow death. There is a lingering inferiority complex here that is hard to shake.  

But the end of an industrial era is seen by many as an opportunity to transform Hamilton into a place that people commute to — to live. The city’s new-look waterfront and affordable housing stock are what have attracted artists here from all over the country, especially those fleeing high-priced Toronto and Vancouver, where finding a studio to work in remains a dream for most. Now that luxury townhomes and condos are being developed downtown and on the waterfront, the hope is that many of Toronto’s professionals will join others who have already made the move.  

So far, Hamilton is on the right track. Thanks to waterfront redevelopment, this urban city is turning into a great place to live.  

The seeds of today’s waterfront parks were planted in the mid-1980s, when the city bought a 40-acre piece of scrubland near the railway tracks on the West Harbour for $2.8 million. At that time, only about two per cent of Hamilton’s shoreline was open to the public. It took almost a decade to clean up the industrial site, a former scrapyard that jutted into Lake Ontario. For years, that land had been crying out for parks that would bring people, not industry, to the water. All the work paid off in 1993 with the unveiling of Bayfront and Pier 4 parks and the Waterfront Trail. For the first time since the 1930s, it was legal to swim at the West Harbour beaches.  

West Harbour vision includes residential/retail mix

About 30 per cent of Hamilton’s 45 kilometres of waterfront is now open to the public. The Hamilton Waterfront Trust, formed to protect the waterfront after the federal government in 2000 handed the city control over much of it, wants to open up even more land to the public. On the new section, around Pier 8 and east of Williams Coffee Pub, the trust envisions a mix of low-rise residential buildings and retail development.  

All that needs to be done now is convince city council to go along with the vision. The new City of Hamilton was created on Jan. 1, 2001 when Hamilton and the five surrounding municipalities of Ancaster, Dundas, Flamborough, Glanbrook and Stoney Creek merged. Hamilton now has about 100 neighbourhoods. Getting everyone to agree is no easy task, with east end often pitted against west end and downtown against the suburbs. But eventually, things get done.  

One thing everyone can agree on is that Hamilton, boasting both Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment, is a nature lover’s dream. Hamilton’s natural assets have been attracting people here since the first European settlers arrived in the early 1800s. The Niagara Escarpment, a United Nations World Biosphere, cuts through the middle of the city, providing outstanding vistas, trails and waterfalls. In fact, the Hamilton Conservation Authority has identified 65 waterfalls within the city’s expanded boundaries.  

From the lake to the escarpment to valley farmland, scenic views abound

In Hamilton’s northwest corner at the end of the harbour sits another natural wonder. Cootes Paradise is an 1,800-acre wildlife sanctuary that includes 450 acres of wetland. The sanctuary not only supports a wide variety of plants and animals, including rare and threatened species, it is also an important waterfowl staging area and fish habitat.  

Hamilton’s land mass is 65 per cent rural — so a drive in the country to sample fresh farm products is a must when visiting. There’s even an award-winning winery — Puddicombe Estate Farms and Winery has been in business for more than 200 years.  

On the resale market, recent listings for waterfront homes and condos in Hamilton included an older five-bedroom house on a double lot on the lake for $624,900. A newer three-bedroom home with 2,195 square feet of living space and a stairway to the beach was priced at $1,199,000.