Revitalization

Extending the Beach Trail

By Jason Leach
Published October 17, 2006

Some new drawings are available of a proposed recreational trail linking the Hamilton Beach Strip with Windemere Basin along Eastport Drive.

While Hamilton's urban neighbourhoods and west harbour have seen tremendous improvements in recent years the eastern harbour of Hamilton has not seen the same level of investment.

The Beach trail is wonderful, as is the new Lakeland Centre, but with so much industry and highway traffic in the area, it would be nice to see more investment in new greenspace and recreation space in the east end.

The Hamilton Beach Preservation Committee has gathered tremendous support for this new trail and associated lookouts with fishing piers. The greening of Windemere Basin will be the centrepiece of this new plan and would be a very welcome addition to the city's east end and waterfront.

Jason Leach was born and raised in the Hammer and currently lives downtown with his wife and children. You can follow him on twitter.

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By Ted Mitchell (registered) | Posted October 18, 2006 at 11:34:19

It promises an awesome view of the steel mills, not being ironic.

Sketches C,D, and E show not much room - looks like <3m from the bike path to the waterline (is there much of a grade there? looks like big rocks on Google earth)

and it is not clear if there is a fence separating from 4+ lane eastport, since the trail is immediately beside the road. So think twice before taking your kids!

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By Frank (registered) | Posted October 28, 2006 at 00:40:55

Having been an inspector for 10km of trail along the Welland Canal as part of the Greater Niagara Circle route I can tell you that there wouldn't be less than 3m to the waterline. As you say, they are sketches and they're not meant to be scaled. When building a trail, you will rarely find a drawing that details the exact placement of the trail since situations can arise in the field that could never be accounted for at the design stage. You might find a typical cross-section or maybe one every 100m but the exact placement of the trail will never be known until it's actually being built. Also, if you look at the sketch you can see that there is a fence along Eastport Drive... That's what the dots are. Also, do you really think that a fence will stop traffic on Eastport. I expect that when typical sections come out, you'll see a much bigger barrier than a fence between the two.

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