A ‘Hammer City’ plan for waterfront Pier 8 Park
HAMILTON’S NEWEST waterfront park will be a multi-use corridor of land along the edge of Pier 8 designed to celebrate the harbour’s industrial and marine heritage.
The city announced on Friday that a “Hamilton: Hammer City” concept, put together by a design team led by Forrec Ltd. of Toronto, has been selected as the winner of the Pier 8 Promenade Park design competition for the $6.5 million project.
The Forrec proposal was one of six design proposals unveiled in late August.
Members of the public were invited to review and comment on the proposals with a volunteer jury of experts de--
ciding between them.
The jury said the Hammer City plan “playfully employs materials and features that reflect the marine and industrial heritage of the site to create a unique sense of place that will become a destination along the Waterfront Trail.”
The 30-metre wide pathway park will be the major public space for the planned Pier 8 community of more than 1,500 housing units along with commercial development.
Scott Torrance, of Forrec, said the company’s landscape architects set out to create something dramatically different than other waterfront areas in the West Harbour.
“We felt you didn’t need to recreate what’s happening at Pier 4 or Bayfront Park.
“Here we made a conscious decision to focus more on the urban side of Hamilton,” he said.
Forrec has done architectural design work in Hamilton before, including the new greenhouse in Gage Park.
The company has been around since the 1970s and employs 135 people.
The design, he said, takes inspiration from how, from Pier 8, one can see heavy industry to the east, recreational and natural areas to the west and a vast bay out front.
The plan is to have three sections, called the Boatworks Promenade, Hammer Harbour and the Landing.
The will tell “the story of the three ways visiting ships would have used the site; creating one site with three places of distinct character.”
Ships would arrive and moor along the north face (The Boatworks Promenade) awaiting clearance, then pass through a threshold at the northeast corner (the Landing) before ending up in the protection of the inner harbour (Hammer Harbour), where the Haida is moored today, said Torrance.
The city’s Waterfront Development team will work with Forrec over the coming months to develop a detailed design to implement the proposal.
Construction expected to start in the spring of 2018.
Hamilton’s general manager of planning and economic development Jason Thorne said, “I think it is fantastic.
“The strength as far as I am concerned is that it does such a great job of celebrating the industrial heritage of the area.
“They’ve made a really interesting space. You can go for a walk or cycle along the water’s edge.
“There is a beach feature, a playground feature.
“There are different gathering points. It is a space that you will be able to use in a lot of different ways.”
It will be a destination for people from across the city, he said, as well as a backyard playground for people who will live in the Pier 8 Harbour redevelopment.
As well, the park will connect to the existing Waterfront Trail, allowing people to walk all the way from the Haida to Princess Point.