Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital Lands
Institutional Growth

NRU
Nov. 1, 2017
Dominik Matusik

The City of Hamilton is considering options for the redevelopment of an 8.7-ha site that was part of the former Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital lands. The community has expressed support for retaining the site for institutional uses and public open space.

Declared surplus by the provincial government in 2015, Ward 8 councillor Terry Whitehead told NRU that the site could be used as much-needed expansion lands for Mohawk College, which is located just across Fennel Avenue West to the south.

“From a mountain perspective, this is our beachhead,” he says. “It is premium land that is owned by the community. And how we exercise that land needs to be one, sensitive to the needs of the community and two, it has to be done in a way that is taking into consideration public access. The other key piece for me is [that] Mohawk College is a growing concern, and it’s getting landlocked... And it also concerns me that we do have student housing issues within the precinct. And I’ve been pushing for [Mohawk] to build more residences because [it has] a huge waiting list for the one residence [it does] have.”

“So I was looking at this through a lens where we can have a win-win by developing something that would meet the needs of Mohawk College as well as provide–we have a long-range plan of creating a pedestriancycling escarpment corridor–... public access and build it into any development that takes place.”

Of the 11.6-ha psychiatric hospital site, the province has conveyed a 2.9 ha environmentally significant area to the city. The site abuts the Niagara Escarpment brow to the north, Fennel Avenue West to the south, Juravinski Drive to the east, and low-density residential neighbourhoods to the west.

Public consultation on a vision for the site has ended, and staff brought an information report to
planning committee yesterday.

Hamilton community planning and design manager Christine Newbold said, in an email to NRU, that the public has expressed a desire for the lands to continue to support institutional uses, to be preserved as open space and to support public access. She says that the lands are currently designated as institutional in the Urban Hamilton Official Plan, which would allow for educational, religious, cultural, day nursery, health care, and long-term care facilities, as well as ancillary office, residential, and recreational uses.

There has been a great deal of intensification pressure on Hamilton’s brow lands, Whitehead says, which has been met with pushback from the community.

“The majority of the community and stakeholders that attended [the consultation meetings] believe that the long tradition of those lands providing service to the greater community is a tradition that we shouldn’t turn our back on,” he says. “They believe that you can put housing anywhere, but institutional use is a premium when it comes to land opportunities... There is a real desire to over intensify areas. And I think there are ideal locations for intensification and there are areas that are not so ideal for intensification.”

Hamilton retained consultants MMM Group and Watson and Associates to assist with the study.

Newbold says, the city’s potential acquisition of the property remains a confidential matter, and has not yet been determined. Meanwhile, Whitehead is eager for the city to forge a partnership with Mohawk.

“I think it’s a unique site,” he says. “It’s probably the last developable bastion on the mountain brow within the urban core. And I think we need to be judicious in our approach in how it’s developed.”