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By MattJelly (registered) - website | Posted July 26, 2011 at 17:21:24 in reply to Comment 66919
Hammer, you're entitled to your opinion on the merits of the architecture. I respectfully disagree. This building was carefully designed by it's architect- right down to the furniture and fixtures. You can really see this on the interior of the building as well. It's built with high-quality materials, and we don't put the same attention into buildings anymore- it seems this building was the last of it's kind in Hamilton, right before brutalism began to define all local civic architecture. But we're not likely to see eye-to-eye on the building itself, so I can leave it at that.
Your second paragraph is interesting: "Knock it down, McMaster's initial concept drawings show a lot of architectural similarities with city hall across the street and some welcome mesh of international and post-modern architecture into our city. I would like to see us breathe some life into the core with a mixture of both re-purposed worthwhile historic architecture and some modern buildings showing that we are progressing towards a denser, modern urban environment and not just constantly stuck in the past and simply rebuilding instead of building upwards."
I'd say the Board of Education building and City Hall already share a lot of architectural similarities and compliment each other well, one as the seat of local government and the other the seat of public education. What I've tried to suggest in the video is that the Board of Education property can be adaptively reused, if McMaster were to focus development on the parking lot behind the building- incorporating the current structure into the new development. You and I both want the same things- I agree wholeheartedly with the last sentence of that paragraph. There's nothing stopping McMaster from an interesting adaptive reuse project here.
You're right- there are a lot of buildings in this City which are older, have more architectural and historical significance, and are also in danger of being demolished. I've fought for some of them myself. Do I think the Board of Ed building is a more beautiful building than the Connaught? No. But do I think that means it should be razed from the ground to make way for new development, when there are so many parts of the downtown that need reinvestment?
The point I'd like to make is that we're not leveraging this public investment in the best way possible, to either rejuvenate a vacant building (such as the Connaught), remediate and redevelop a brownfield (like West Harbour) or to fill a vacant lot. Instead, we're relocating the Board of Education to 50 Millwood Place (near Limeridge Mall) taking 300 jobs out of the core and replacing them with 450- only a net gain of 150 Jobs. Then we're demolishing a structurally sound building with public dollars, when the development could just as easily happen somewhere else, or on the same site as an adaptive reuse project.
On the last point, all I did in the video was show the amount of currently idling surface parking that exist in the area surrounding the Board of Education building- I didn't intend to say the McMaster development should go on those specific lots, but rather to illustrate how we're knocking down a building when we have several blocks throughout the core that look like this. Additionally, I did not suggest McMaster expropriates a property as you suggest- it would be within their means to purchase a piece of property.
Thanks for the feedback.
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