Downtown development in Hamilton is the “right kind of growth for the times”: Mayor – Hamilton | The Canadian News

As the debate over the proposed expansion of Hamilton’s city limits remains a hot topic, the city’s mayor admits that there are many details surrounding the “complex” issue.

Fred Eisenberger told Bill Kelly’s 900 CHML program that he is not so in agreement with the type of expansion that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is suggesting for Hamilton and that the right thing to do is to look for that growth in the spaces that are already part of it. of the city’s infrastructure.

Hamilton’s upcoming $ 3.4 billion LRT development was based on the advancement of the city center, as well as higher-density development along its corridor and for Eisenberger, “that’s the kind of growth. suitable for the times. “

His interest also lies in the “anomalous spaces” that have been surrounded by developments over time and possible extensions through “poor” agricultural land.

“Saying no to urban boundary expansion is not saying no to growth, it is simply saying no to growth in the sense of expansion and areas of total lie,” Eisenberger said.

“That is to say yes to growth in spaces that we know we have available at our limit as it is today.”

The mayor says recent polls that posed the question to voters don’t really have a scope on the complexity of the issue and says his support for an initiative will be based on what he already knows.

“I think it’s pretty unfair to us, for someone to put this kind of question in a poll or poll because it doesn’t really give any of the people who are answering the big picture,” Eisenberger said.

A couple of surveys conducted in the summer, one conducted by the city and another by leading Nanos researchers, yielded markedly different opinions, supposedly from a survey of the general Hamilton population.

The city’s poll, between June 22 and July 23, received more than 18,300 responses by mail and email, and 90.4 percent (16,636 respondents) opposed expanding the limit.

The Nanos poll, funded by local and provincial real estate agents, found that 38 percent of 700 respondents by phone between Aug. 24 and Sept. 18 supported expansion into farmland.

In question, is the A place to grow: growth plan for the Great Golden Horseshoe which directed several Ontario municipalities to set numbers on how each will expand city limits to accommodate population increases according to Ford government estimates.

For Hamilton, Queen’s Park set a projected population increase of 820,000 people by 2051.

A city staff report, which included an assessment by land economist Antony Lorius, suggested that 1,340 hectares of agricultural land would be needed as an urban growth area.

The finding sparked a flood of responses from the community at a council meeting in late August, predominantly from those who opposed the use of cultivated land for development.

A opinion piece in the Hamilton Spectator from the minister for municipal affairs and housing, Steve Clark, touted more numbers from an Oxford Economics study that reveals that Hamilton has become the third least affordable city in North America.

Clark referred to the city’s urban non-expansion concept as “unrealistic” and “irresponsible,” and stated that Hamilton does not have enough existing land for expansion to accommodate the projected 236,000 new residents and 122,000 new jobs by 2051.

Eisenberger doubts both the province’s numbers and the findings from the two polls that suggest the Ford administration may have overestimated the need for expansion.

“I am very skeptical about the projections on which our staff are required to make their recommendations,” Eisenberger said.

“That is part of the challenge here, is that the province has set a bar. They set a 30-year horizon, set population projections, and then said, ‘You have to meet these projections and provide the numbers that are required.’