Using a two-year multi-million dollar federal investment initiative, the city of Hamilton has directed funding into an effort to reinvigorate a stagnant Barton Street using art.
The city of Hamilton’s “Anything is Possible on Barton” project has enlisted 15 local artists to create works to be dropped into empty storefronts along the thoroughfare in the hopes of increasing foot traffic and attracting new shops and restaurants to the area.
“We have a high number of vacancies on the strip, and we would like to change that,” Barton Street Village Business improvement executive Jessica Myers told 900 CHML’s Hamilton Today.
Myers says the enterprise is coupled with the city’s My Main Street Community Activator program which funds renewal projects via a $23-million investment from the Government of Canada through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario.
The money targets public spaces and businesses that have suffered economically throughout the pandemic.
“We developed some themes that sort of focus solely on Barton Street and put it out there to the artists” Myers explained. “We received almost 80 proposals from local Hamilton artists. Incredible response. It was so difficult to only select 15.”
Judy Lam, manager of commercial districts and small business with the city, revealed the installations have been happening this month and are expected to carry on through November.
“Because it’s near industrial, it was the shopping district for people who lived there and went to work,” Lam said of the area on 900 CHML’s Good Morning Hamilton.
“There’s been more vacant storefronts than ever in its (entire) history, and we would like this project to sort of bring people to see the potential of this area.”
Ottawa Street and Stoney Creek are experiencing similar local art installations, including wraps on fixtures such as those now covering utility boxes.
The city is also coupling initiatives like the Commercial Vacancy Program with the activator program to provide grants for businesses that take up an empty storefront as long as they take on permanent facade improvements.
“So that’s another … advantage that if they want to invest in an empty storefront, we can help them with the costs,” Lam said.
Projection art, murals, rug hookings, dioramas and paintings are some of the crafts that can be seen now having replaced blank window coverings in multiple vacated storefronts.
“We have 15 right now in different pockets along the BIA, we’re about two kilometers long,” said Myers.
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