Public grill officials on waterfront tower plan

Concerns expressed over 45-storey pitch

The “cylinder,” “lily” and “waves” are three design variations of a 45-storey tower pitched for Hamilton’s redeveloped west harbour.

But the big picture — its sheer scale and potential ripple effects — overtook the project’s finer details during a public feedback session Tuesday.

The 45-storey building and its connected 31-storey counterpart are part of a maximum 1,645-unit residential development at the west harbour that will also feature new public amenities including a promenade.

“The site at Pier 8 really has a pivotal role on the bay,” architect Bruce Kuwabara of KPMB said to the more than 100 who joined the virtual forum hosted by the city and development partner Waterfront Shores.

Residents of the highrise at “Block 16” will have panoramic views of the bay, while the building is meant to make a statement as far away as LaSalle Park in Burlington.

“We want the building to be a civic landmark,” Kuwabara said, noting his hope that it can become a “stately, elegant, timeless” addition to Hamilton’s landscape.

Luka Matutinovic, principal of Purpose Building, said the tower project presented an opportunity to “set a precedent” and “new benchmark” for sustainability.

The tower will require land-use changes on the city-owned harbour properties. A staff report with recommendations is expected to be presented to council in September.

But before that, the project is undergoing what local officials and team members have described as a rigorous public feedback and design review process.

The three variations Kuwabara presented to the public forum are to be discussed by the city’s design review panel Thursday with another crack at the concepts in April.

“We’ve got a lot more work to do and there will be a lot more iterations based on the comments,” said Kuwabara, who grew up in the North End before embarking on a celebrated career.

So far, it’s not a home run. “Monstrosity” and “eye sore” are how some of the online forum participants, whose identities the host kept anonymous, described it.

Others worried the development would “overwhelm” the North End with traffic and asked if the city could handle 1,645 flushing toilets.

“Yes, we’ve done a massive amount of infrastructure work,” said city waterfront project lead Chris Phillips, who also pointed to a traffic study.

Apart from the proposed tower, the west harbour redevelopment — which springs from the Setting Sail secondary plan — has an eight-storey height limit.

But appeals to Ontario’s land-use tribunal ended in a settlement in 2019 that obliged council to consider a tall building on the pier next to the former Discovery Centre to allow for more family units and less density on the site overall.

Phillips, responding to concerns that Toronto-esque condo towers could wall off the waterfront, said a “contractual legal agreement” between the city and developer will prevent that on the site.

The city, he also noted, owns the land and has control over zoning permissions in the area. “We’re talking about one tower in the Block 16.”

Another participant asked why the city decided that only five per cent of all units would be affordable housing.

That was determined through a “public policy rationale,” Phillips said before noting social-housing projects in the “broader area.”