I'm writing about the Pam velodrome in Hamilton on OpenFile Hamilton today.

Needed: Watchdog for West Harbour

Boarded up and left behind. Houses in the Barton-Tiffany neighbourhood in Hamilton were bought by the city to make way for the Pan Am stadium in the West Harbour. Now with the stadium located at a rebuilt Ivor Wynne, what's to become of the neighbourhood that was? I'm blogging about in on Open File Hamilton tomorrow.

Working on North End Hamilton stories. Storm clouds ahead?

What is going to happen in the Barton Tiffany neighborhood where the city expropriated people, boarded up houses and now like a fickle lover is turning attention to new passion-Ivor Wynne. Those left behind in the West Harbour neighborhood now look out to a bitter view. Excellent piece at Open File Hamilton, I will be blogging about it tomorrow.

West Harbour Hamilton-now as popular as bedbugs.

This is a photo of Hess North where the City of Hamilton once wanted to build a Pan Am stadium. I have driven by this land thousands of times on my way home. Matt Jelly blew the whistle on the barrels of unidentified liquid abandoned on the site, I have been emailing people who should have been concerned about it for years. Jelly got the job done. After the lid came off the story, there was much furrowing of the brow by the city and the Ministry of the Environment. Now, not so much. The switch hitting city is now fretting about enhancing the Ivor Wynne neighborhood since a rebuilt Ivor Wynne will decrease their parkland. That's fine. But after sitting through the five hour stadium debate at council yesterday (and writing about it for OpenFile Hamilton) I heard two references to selling the West Harbour land the city bought for the stadium to developers in order to recover some costs. Is this a whim, a notion, a trend, a threat? Whatever it is, it should be watched. Developers can do good things, but we can't forget that the early developer ideas for what became Bayfront Park, was for light industrial use. Great things could happen on that West Harbour land, and they should, but they should happen with imput and imagination. Citizens be vigilant.