Hamilton businesses push back against parking lot repurposing plan

The City of Hamilton is planning to turn a parking lot in the city’s east end into affordable housing.

The lot is located at 70 Hope Ave. near Kenilworth and Barton streets, but there is some pushback from the community on this decision.

The city held an open house Wednesday evening to provide information to residents about the plan, which allowed residents to ask questions and voice their concerns.

Multiple business owners who are located right next to the parking lot say although they do agree on the need for housing, they think it should go somewhere else because they rely heavily on the use of this parking lot.

“You have a street that is in need of help, that not even a year ago our ward 4 councillor said she wanted to revitalize, and all of the sudden now she’s going to absolutely kill the street and kill all the small businesses by putting this housing in our parking lot that we use every single day,” said Michael Heddle, owner of Bounty Hunter Toys.

The parking lot is one of several municipal sites that were approved for review in 2023, to be considered a spot for affordable housing.

The city says it wants to alleviate the pressure caused by the housing crisis, but multiple business owners on Kenilworth Street say without adequate parking, their businesses will face pressure.

They say street parking isn’t enough.

“Weekend, it’s impossible, every business is using up the parking spots – people that visit their friends and family use the parking lots on the street,” said Heddle.

“That’s where the parking lot in the back comes into play.”

Dave Sanders, owner of Renegade Tattoo, says his clients are in his shop for hours at at time and use the parking lot during those sessions.

“It’s not that we don’t want low income housing, it’s that we don’t want it in the parking lot that supports all the businesses on Kenilworth,” said Sanders.

“They can’t park out front – the parking meters run an hour at a time – if you put any more money than an hour in the parking meter out front, it takes it, and then you get ticketed because your time expires,” he said.

“So we have an hour limit out front and you have to stop what you’re doing every hour so your client can run outside and put money in the meter – that’s not fair either.”

Chantell Kempijan, the owner of Indulgence Salon, shares the same concern.

“I’ve been here 18 years, so every single day our clients park back here, and with the revitalization of the front of Kenilworth, they put bumps out, so that reduced our parking, and Britannia has one hour limits,” she said.

“So you can imagine if someone is getting their colours, highlights, they won’t be able to come out every hour to move their car when they’re here three, four hours.”

The city councillor for the area, Tammy Hwang, says in 2018 the parking lot was declared surplus, which opened the door for residential projects to be built there.

“There was a reason those parking lots were considered surplus, we did the analysis and saw they were underutilized and not pulling in enough of the revenue to make them fully considered utilized,” said Hwang.

One of the concepts considered by the city is a three-storey dwelling which can hold a maximum of 54 one-bedroom units.

“But the majority of those homes around there are single family detached homes,” she said, “what if we can offer another option where we can say ‘what does town houses look like?'”

“Can we feasibly put a bunch of townhouses there, it might be more in keeping with the style of the residential homes there,” she said.

Hwang says it may take months for any decisions to be made, and that the city is looking for input from the community to consider as they move forward.

READ MORE: City of Hamilton plans to turn east end parking lot into affordable housing