Plan presented for restoration of boarded-up Gore Park buildings

The long-awaited redevelopment of a series of 19th-century buildings alongside Hamilton’s Gore Park could begin next spring.

Hughson Business Space Corporation has presented its restoration plan to the city’s heritage permit review subcommittee.

The plan involves using a steel structure to secure historic and protected façades, while a new six-storey office and commercial building goes up behind them spanning 18 to 28 King St. E.

“It retains that historic street wall that is so important for defining Gore Park,” heritage consultant Megan Hobson said of the planned restoration and redevelopment. “If anything, it’ll be enhancing the way these buildings appear, certainly from their condition today.”

The Gore Block application includes the preservation and renewal of four designated heritage façades that frame the south side of Gore Park. A fifth brick façade is too deteriorated for restoration and will instead be replicated.

Architect David Premi says some of the building’s interior history may also be preserved.

“Some of the elements discovered now that the buildings have been cleaned out,” said Premi, “we are going to look at and if they are salvageable, some of them or fragments of them, integrate them somehow potentially into the lobby or in some way that can tell the story of what was there.”

The development also plans to feature publicly accessible outdoor space and an internal courtyard.

The development will begin the heritage permit and site plan approval process this summer, and pending approvals, construction is tentatively forecast to begin in spring 2022.

Ward 2 Coun. Jason Farr said he’s “fully supportive” and adds it’s “definitely at a point now where it’s go time.”

Farr added that it’s another development that ties in with Hamilton’s LRT plan, “within spitting distance from the centralized LRT station.”

The boarded-up Gore buildings, which date back as far as the 1840s, have faced an uncertain future for the past decade.

In 2013, developers proposed demolishing the deteriorating buildings, but city council stepped in at the last minute and approved giving the façade heritage protection.