Province asked to save Lister Block
May 29, 2006

West end councillor Brian McHattie has written to the provincial government asking them to intervene to protect the Lister Block if city council decides to accept a request for the building's demolition by the Labourer's International Union of North America (LIUNA). And downtown councillor Bob Bratina has recruited one of Canada's top architects to assist in restoring the landmark property.

City councillors will debate the demolition permit at a special committee meeting on June 12. Senior staff are supporting LIUNA's application to demolish the Lister Block, despite nearly unanimous opposition from the city's municipal heritage committee which voted 12-1 against it.

McHattie's May 25 letter to the Minister of Culture, Caroline Di Cocco, predicts that the permit "will likely be granted" by council. If that is the decision, McHattie is asking the Minister to immediately respond by designating the Lister Block as a provincially significant "property of cultural heritage value" and to "issue a stop order to prevent any alteration, damage to the property, or demolition".

In his letter, the councillor notes that the Lister Block was "the first indoor mall in Canada and the forerunner of the modern shopping mall", and has been listed by the Heritage Canada Foundation as one the most endangered buildings in the country.

In a related effort to block the demolition of the Lister building, Bob Bratina issued a media release yesterday announcing that world-famous architect Eberhard Zeidler is volunteering to help the city restore the building. Zeidler's accomplishments include Ontario Place and the Toronto Eaton Centre as well as the Trump Tower in New York City and McMaster Hospital.

Bratina released a letter from Zeidler in which the architect pleads for restoration of the Lister Block. "The Lister building is a magnificent specimen which has sadly been allowed to deteriorate," writes Zeidler. "I challenge anybody who claims you can gain by tearing it down."

Zeidler argues that demolition of the Lister will mean not only a loss of Hamilton's past but it's future as well and he offers his services to prevent this from happening. "I would be happy to volunteer my time and help you solve this problem."

Bratina argues that the current deal between the city and LIUNA amounts to a $10 million public subsidy and charges that LIUNA has not "seriously looked at the possibility of a true restoration" of the building.

The city published advertisements last Friday inviting members of the public to register to speak at the July 12 meeting of committee of the whole. The meeting starts at 3 pm and will be followed immediately by a special meeting of city council to ratify whatever decision is made.

The back-to-back meetings with no opportunity to reflect on new information repeats the process that generated a city commitment last May that would see the Lister Block replaced with a modern office building and the city pay $30 million to lease half of the space for 15 years.

Rumours of an impending deal circulated for several weeks prior to the May 2005 meeting, but the details were not revealed to the public until after it was signed and ratified by council. Although the staff report explaining the 2005 agreement was dated April 25, some councillors didn't see it until Friday, May 6 - the same day they got a 3 pm notification that a special meeting of council would immediately follow the May 9 committee of the whole meeting.

Most of the May 9 committee meeting was held behind closed doors, with no questions or debate in the short public session that followed. Then the decision was immediately ratified by the special council meeting.

This unusual process of allowing no time between committee decisions and their subsequent finalization has been used more and more frequently over the past few years. Before amalgamation in 2000, both regional council and Hamilton city council allowed at least a week between these two decisions.

That's more in keeping with the process followed in the federal Parliament and at Queen's Park where legislation goes through three "readings". The first simply introduces the proposal. At the second stage, the legislation is referred to a committee which usually holds public hearings. The third reading finalizes the bill, although at the federal level, it is reviewed by the Senate who sometimes hold their own hearings.

The entire process usually takes several weeks, not the two or three hours that has become the frequent practice of city council. In addition to the special council meetings held immediately after committee meetings, the city has adopted the regular practice of only allowing one day between the meetings of two of its major committees and the finalization of the committee decisions by the full council.

The social services committee and the community services committee both meet on the day before the regular city council meeting, and the decisions are usually not circulated to councillors until a few hours before the council gathering, and sometimes not until the actual meeting time.

The back-to-back meetings and other features of the largely secret 2005 process resulted in confusion among the public and some councillors, many of whom thought that LIUNA was promising to save and restore the Lister Block. The final decision on the contract was followed by controversy over the leasing rate agreed to by the city's negotiators, and their failure to seek competitive bids.

The owners of Jackson Square, for example, claimed they had told DiIanni that they were prepared to purchase and restore the Lister without any city subsidy. Other critics calculated that the $30 million offered by the city to lease half the proposed LIUNA building was nearly twice the rate paid by the city weeks before for equivalent office space.

The 2005 meeting did not include public delegations. That has been added to this year's process, with the advertised invitation citizens to speak at the June 12 meeting. They must pre-register by June 7, and councillors will only have a few minutes to reflect on their input before having to make a decision.

Also unlike last year's process, the city staff report supporting the demolition permit was made public two weeks ago, although it's still not available on the city's website.