Bianca Marijan

Hamilton Population Growth Slow and Steady but still Good

February 9, 2012 The Hamilton Spectator

Hamilton’s 3.1 per cent population growth may look modest beside Burlington’s 6.9 per cent, but it’s still good, says Hamilton’s economic director, Neil Everson.

“Hamilton has traditionally had a long steady growth … But it is an increase.”

New census data from Statistics Canada on Wednesday shows the city’s population grew 3.1 per cent to 519,949 in the five years up to 2011. That’s about 15,000 more than the 504,559 population in 2006.

GRAPHIC: Population change in Hamilton between 2006 and 2011

Everson believes the growth is driven by Toronto and GTA residents and businesses relocating because of Hamilton’s lower cost of living and costs of doing business and good quality of life.

Statistics Canada demographer André Lebel, however, said the growth is driven mostly by immigrants. Two-thirds of the growth in the Hamilton Census Metropolitan Area — a larger area than the city which includes Burlington and Grimsby — came from immigration.

Lebel couldn’t say if new immigrants have ties to the business investments Hamilton has seen in the past few years. Details, including where the immigrants are coming from, will be in a future census report in 2013.

Arsim Aliu, the Hamilton YMCA’s manager of immigration settlement services, said most new immigrants here are from South Asia — Pakistan, India, China, the Philippines and other countries.

Although a large portion comes through sponsorship and under the family reunification classification, many also come here as independents, which means they have money. Once here, they often look for business opportunities, Aliu said.

But overall, fewer immigrants than before are coming to Ontario and Hamilton.

Ontario’s slower growth rate is related to fewer immigrants coming to the province, and from people leaving for other parts of the country, Lebel said.

“The proportion of immigrants settling in Ontario has been diminishing.”

Although immigration still accounts for the greatest part of population growth, there is some growth in the population already here.

“Ontario still has more births than deaths,” Lebel said.

Same goes for the Hamilton CMA. From 2006 to 2011, there was a natural population increase of 800 because there were 5,300 births and 4,500 deaths.

Bill Janssen, Hamilton’s director of strategic services, is trying to bring more information to the numbers Stats Canada released. “There are three ways to get population growth — births, migration from other cities, and immigration.”

Everson still puts a lot of emphasis on Hamilton’s economic emergence for the growth.

“Canada Bread, for example, is closing three plants in Toronto — we know some of those employees have already moved here.”

With companies like Canada Bread, Maple Leaf Foods and Tim Hortons opening large operations here, “people are coming for jobs and moving here. It’s one of the contributing factors (of the growth).”

“We (also) had 320 new jobs in our creative industry sector in the downtown.”

Everson also points out that the Real Estate Investment Network last May identified Hamilton as the third best city in Canada and best in Ontario to invest in, and in 2009, Foreign Direct Investment magazine named Hamilton the third best largest city in North America in quality of life.

He also points to the 20.8 per cent population increase in Brampton and says, “From an economic development perspective, we’ve beaten them in the nonresidential growth.”

Hamilton’s growth rate will take off, he expects, once the city gets full.

Government Grants Downtown Hamilton

　

　

City to offer $650,000 grocery store prize

Gary Yokoyama/The Hamilton Spectator

　

The pot:

$1.4 million — The amount of money available over three years for incentives as the city targets three key areas for downtown improvements

The incentives:

$650,000 — Goes to someone willing to bring a grocery store to Hamilton’s downtown.

$50,000 — A matching grant for any property facing Gore Park making improvements that will mean better use of the building. Grant includes up to 75 per cent of the cost to replace oversized old signs with smaller and more architecturally respectful ones.

$10,000 — Grant for façade improvements in a larger core area from Victoria Street to Queen and along King and Main as far west as Highway 403.

This is one heck of a grocery store coupon.

The city has budgeted a one-time $650,000 prize to someone willing to bring a grocery store to Hamilton’s downtown.

The details of the incentive have yet to be approved by council but the plan by staff is to open a request for proposals in May, asking proponents to outline their proposed location, size of the store, the breadth of product offerings, price points and any related services offered such as dry cleaning.

Competing bids will be scored.

The grocery incentive is part of a package of three new incentives aimed at boosting the core which total $1.4 million over three years.

The lack of a grocery store in the core is a catch-22, says Glen Norton, the city’s manager of urban renewal.

"The grocery stores are saying there aren’t enough people living downtown to make the investment and the developers are saying people are complaining because there’s no grocery store downtown. So it’s a matter of who’s going to go first. We’re trying to break that logjam and get someone to take that risk."

He added that land prices downtown are more expensive than elsewhere in the city and that the grant can help bridge that gap and make a grocery store a viable venture. He’s not aware of another municipality offering such an incentive.

The grant will be open to any individual or company, whether that’s a large grocery chain, an independent entrepreneur or existing vendors at the Hamilton Farmers’ Market.

Norton says the idea is not to create competition for the farmers’ market but to provide a venue for daily access to fresh meat, fruit and vegetables, a variety of dry goods and household essentials such as toilet paper and pet food.

Norton says The Spectator’s Code Red series, which analyzed health and poverty data, pointed to the importance of ready access to affordable, fresh food. "Otherwise, people have no choice but to make bad choices which are both more expensive and unhealthy."

The second new incentive program is a $50,000 matching grant for any property facing Gore Park making improvements that will mean better use of the building. That could be used for fixing store fronts, installing elevators or patching up a leaking roof to make upper floors inhabitable, for instance.

"Gore Park strikes a real chord with people," said Norton. "They won’t feel the downtown is revitalized until Gore is. This goes right at that."

An interesting element of the grant is that the city will pay up to 75 per cent of the cost to remove a large sign and replace it with something "smaller and architecturally respectful," Norton said.

Many of the signs on buildings facing Gore Park do not conform to current sign bylaws but have been grandfathered. "We want the façade show through on these buildings. I don’t like the carnival atmosphere in our downtown," Norton said.

A third new incentive offers a grant of up to $10,000 to property owners improving facades in the city’s community improvement project area (roughly Victoria to Queen, Hunter to the CN tracks, James Street and the newly added King and Main from Wentworth to the 403). Work can include new windows, repointed brick, signs, awnings, stucco or anything else that improves a property’s street appearance.

There is $400,000 allocated in the city’s 2012 capital budget for the program.

mmacleod@thespec.com

905-526-3408 | @meredithmacleod

It took me 18 yrs, but well worth the wait.

Shortly after I got into the business, and in the days when you could still telephone and solicit expired listings, I decided to brave up and go visit a mansion on a hill.

This house was literally perched on a hill at an awe inspiring address. Needless to say, just the taught of ringing the door bell petrified me.

I was greeted by a very stylish lady, the type that wears full make up and a caftan around the house, always presentable and cosmopolitan.

After my palpitations, facial ticks and tremors subsided she gave me a tour of the house and promptly and unceremoniously ---- dismissed me.

She listed with someone else, the listing expired again, I showed up at her door again. I do remember parking some ways away with my rusty batmobile. She listed with someone else again. The listing expired again.

I didn’t pursue her relentlessly, but I did mail to her for the following eighteen years with an occasional phone call and eighteen years later, she called me to list the house.

It all seemed somehow different now; I could not help registering how I had changed, she appeared more fragile, the house seemed smaller, I parked in the drive way, we both felt the physical passing of time, there was a bit of melancholia in the air as we sipped a liqueur while I wrote up the listing agreement.

It was really all kind of sweet.

I love everything art deco; from furniture to architecture to jewlery; there is something about that style that is glam, elegant and simple in a sophisticated way.

Hamilton has some real jewels of art deco architecture.........

and here are photos of homes in and around Hamilton, in their beauty.