Discovery Centre dominates public meeting

Residents voice concerns about whether building will remain in public hands

The future of the former Marine Discovery Centre dominated conversation and incited heated debate at a west harbour community meeting Thursday night.

A tense back-and-forth between local residents, who want to see the now-empty harbourfront building remain in public hands, and city officials, who say it is not up for sale, dominated the first hour and a bit of the jampacked session after it was bumped up to the top of the agenda at the suggestion of Graham Crawford.

Crawford is leading an online campaign to keep the 19,000square-foot building “in public hands for public use.”

He received a round of applause when he questioned why the future use of the Discovery Centre had not been part of the many meetings that have already taken place about reshaping the west harbour.

“We’d like to keep it public,” he said at Evergreen Hamilton Community Storefront on James Street North.

“We don’t know what we’d like in it yet.”

City waterfront point person Chris Phillips said the building is not up for sale.

He said it has been rolled into a request for proposals designed to redevelop Pier 8 into condos and commercial retail.

The successful bidder could be given the “right of first negotiation” for the space if interested, depending on direction given to staff by council in June, Phillips said.

“No one is proposing anything for the Discovery Centre.”

The reason the building, which was vacated by a restaurant last summer, had not been brought up at previous meetings is because it was only at the end of January that council decided to buy out the long-term lease for the centre and its parking lot with the Hamilton Waterfront Trust for $3 million, Phillips said.

Other questions put to officials at the meeting included: Why isn’t the city establishing guiding principles about what the community would like to see in the space; and can the building be torn down?

Ward 2 councillor Jason Farr said he has no interest in tearing down the building, which was given to the city by the federal government in 2015.

Farr said he has seen online chatter pointing to suggested uses for the space, which include an aviary, a civic museum and a library. “I don’t want to see anything other than an institutional designation,” he stressed.

The request-for-proposals deadline is April 4.

Public presentations from the four developers will be available online from April 6 to 17.

There will also be a “road show” to share the information at various stops throughout the city, Phillips said.