New City of Hamilton Downtown Urban Design Guidelines
 
As you are likely aware, City staff have instituted a set of urban design guidelines. The guidelines in draft format were commented on by Joanne McCallum, Rick Lintack and myself, and maybe a few others did also.
They are excellent guidelines in many ways, but the key issue is that they require new buildings to replicate the Victorian storefronts on King East. Above about the third floor you are more or less free and clear to do as you please.
 
Our concern that this would stifle good quality, modern architecture was raised but essentially ignored by City staff in favor of Replication. There is some room to manouevre but contemporary infill projects like on Queen Street West in Toronto are not feasible, and excellent Hamilton buildings like the Scotiabank on Gore Park would not be allowed. We tried !
 
The intent is to raise the bar to avoid some of the ugly sins previously executed downtown by some of our less skilled Architects and it is a good tool to use on uncaring clients, as conformance will speed up the approval process. This makes sense, but the reality of the application is key and not yet known.
 
It will be important to see what happens next, as the City wrestles with rolling out design guidelines for other areas of the City, and possibly with a Design Review Panel, as exists in Ottawa and is being proposed in Toronto. The HBSA has offered to help craft and implement this, should it happen.
 
I would love to hear if anyone has had good or bad experiences with the Urban Design Guidelines.