Comment 84388

By Mahesh_P_Butani (registered) - website | Posted December 23, 2012 at 17:06:19 in reply to Comment 84377

To Bill Kelly:

Bill, This is probably the lamest thing you have written in your entire career:

"Wilson/Blanchard Gore Park Plan Just What's Needed In The Core - Posted 12/21/2012 6:27:00 AM

A few days ago, I opined that I was happy that a dilapidated Ivor Wynne Stadium was being demolished, to be replaced by a new ,more functional structure.

Well, same goes for the Wilson Blanchard plan to bring down a few tired, old buildings and build a much needed complex that would include a grocery store, office space and residential.

Of course, the usual suspects are voicing displeasure with the idea.

And, as usual, the most vocal naysayers just love to tell investors where and how to spend their money, but rarely dip into their own wallets to move the City forward.

Well, here’s a news flash to those types; the ‘50’s just called, they’re not coming back !

We need new investment and new ideas and this project will inject new life and vibrancy to the Core.

This Gore Project is a continuation of their investment in Hamilton’s downtown.

Demolishing run down, non functioning buildings to be replaced with an attractive commercial/ residential property is not destroying our heritage, it’s building our future. -- Posted By: Bill Kelly

Here is why:

1) You have zero knowledge of downtown and what is going on down here, on most days.

2) Your total lack of curiosity about our downtown prevents you from learning facts and truth about our downtown.

3) You make up stories about downtown as you go, to cover up for the lack of your direct knowledge on subject you opine on day-after-day.

These are indisputable facts - which you can challenge, but the truth is stacked up against you.

In 2010, when you, for the first time, developed some courage to leave the safety of you cushioned studio (to come downtown and broadcast a live program called "Bill Kelly Unleashed" from the storefront of the new city developed building on King, off John), you refused to reply to my email informing you of the construction of 50 condo lofts that were almost complete, right behind the building from where you were broadcasting.

Your show was dedicated to 're-development work going on in downtown'. The 50 condo lofts were the first and only privately funded condos being developed in an old building in decades, and none have been built inside the core since then. You simply failed to invite the developer of this project to your show.

I wrote off your pathetic behaviour, back then, as lack of curiosity and poor journalistic skills on your part - or your unease with broadcasting reality.

Well, here’s a news flash for your types who don't see real development work done by out-of-towners in our city as real development worth talking about in public:

a) Your "local" buddy has come up with a pathetic notion of a mega development -- with not a shred of real design or finances to show for. And you are parading him around town as the best thing to be invented since white bread.

b) Many locals, and out-of-towners from GTA, including new immigrants, have directly invested more than $100 million in the core over the last twelve years.

c) Scores of tired, old, run down, non functioning buildings in the core have been bought with "real" money and fixed, restored, and put to new use which has helped re-grow the local economy.

d) Scores of people have come to live and work in them, and pay taxes to the city - which have gone towards subsidizing the charmed lives of your types in Ancaster.

e) The Wilson/Blanchard Gore Park Plan -- is not a plan. Presently, as proposed, it is an abortion with a wire hanger.

f) Your buddies first need to develop a good design, consult with the residents of downtown, then raise finances and then apply for permit to build. The need for a permit to demolish, then would become redundant, as would all this drama.

g) The heat you and your friends are feeling here, has as much to do with the lame sketch that was proposed, as it has to do for the premature and arrogant filing of the demolition permit.

When you promote such blatant idiocy in the name of development, and then haul you solemn presence each year, to lay flowers at the cenotaph at Gore park, you not only insult the memory of those you claim to cherish, you insult their lives and their work upon which you have developed your identity as a Hamiltonian.

Those buildings that you defile with you ignorance, are what gave you a leg to walk on culturally in this country.

You may as well profess to tear down the Gore cenotaph as it is old now, and have your buddy David replace it with a glass-clad box with stucco and a candy store at the bottom of it, to signify your perverted notion of progress.

Your types are irrelevant to the future generations of Hamiltonians. That you'll hang on to your jobs like crabs to earn you pensions when you'll have nothing of substance left to say, is comical.

Your abject lack of vocabulary on topics such as: progress, is what leads your types to see demolishing as the only way to growth.

I plead you to stay away from topics of downtown redevelopment in future, and if you must indulge your golf-club buddies again, do the honorable thing and run ads for them instead of opining publicly on their behalf.

Your giving broad coverage to Wilson Blanchard's wild fantasy in Gore Park, while slandering those who are actually rebuilding this city, is distasteful, and you need to apologize for you lack of knowledge on what you speak here.

Mahesh P. Butani

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds