Steelport
Steelport
Steelport
Steelport
Steelport
Considered the beating heart of Canada’s steel industry for more than 100 years, Hamilton, Ontario, known colloquially as Steeltown, is undergoing a reinvention, and the massive Steelport master plan for the harbourfront is playing a vital — and vitalizing — role.
Led by developer Slate Asset Management, Steelport will transform some 324 hectares of shoreline along Hamilton Harbour, a heavy-industry area that had been home to the Stelco steel plant (and its various owners and monikers) since its founding in 1910. The ambition for the development is to set a stage for new commercial activity in the area, one that incorporates an industrial park as well as diverse and resilient landscapes and trails, a revitalized waterfront and other public spaces to foster a vibrant community hub.
When PUBLIC WORK became involved, the demolition and removal of the plant’s decommissioned structures had already begun in order to prepare the site for sale. But the Toronto urban design and landscape studio saw an opportunity for preservation rather than destruction and successfully proposed that a number of these “massive pieces of raw industry that were born in Hamilton” could be saved and woven into the fabric of the site. Seizing on this potential, the design team developed a new framework, one that plumbs the memory of what once was while simultaneously ushering in a varied and productive second life.
Focusing on what it terms “hybrid spaces,” PUBLIC WORK’s concept rehabilitates those old industrial artifacts into public amenities. Among them are a human-scaled linear park called the Pipe Gallery, which will form a main street, and the Battery, a hybrid park that combines new structures, preserved buildings and outdoor spaces by stitching them together with swaths of greenery and a four-kilometre recreational circuit. (Materials from the demolished buildings will be “harvested” for re-use throughout the public realm.)
Steelport will also transform the currently barren and overworked waterfront into a lush and welcoming destination with a variety of native habitats that range from dry meadow, woodland and mixed-wood forest patches to beaches and dunes, riparian edges and wetlands. Combining site regeneration, economic development and much-needed public green space, Steelport is positioned to be an authentic expression of the city of Hamilton, one that respects its history and heritage while looking to the future and reconnecting its citizens to a significant cultural landscape.
Team: Marc Ryan and Lauren Abrahams with Adam Nicklin, Ben Matthews, Mary Liston-Hicks, Avery Clarke, Eva Sabourin and Matthew Baker (PUBLIC WORK); Arnold Ortiz and Leeviana Dsouza (Gensler Architecture & Design); Angelo Ligotti and Stephen Oliver (Stantec Engineering); Gerry Tchisler (MHBC Planning); Erik Enders (Pinchin Environmental); and Steven Dejonckheere (Slate Asset Management)
Combining site regeneration, economic development and much-needed public green space, Steelport is positioned to be an authentic expression of the city of Hamilton.
