Posted Oct 4, 2014, 1:24 PM
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Hamilton as the Next Pittsburgh? Hold the Phone
(The Inside Agenda Blog, Steve Paikin, Oct 3 2014)
Earlier this week, The Agenda did a segment focusing on US Steel Canada seeking bankruptcy protection and what that might do to the thousands of pensioners depending on those pensions being honoured. We also spent a fair amount of time talking about Hamilton's economy, where US Steel has one of its plants.
When I grew up in Hamilton in the 1960s and 1970s, Stelco (as it then was) employed 25,000 people. Today, 90 per cent of those workers are no longer there.
It raised a question among our guests: should Hamilton try to model itself after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which used to be the steel-making capital of the United States, but now markets itself as a tourism, culture, and higher education destination?
Not so fast, says the Mayor of Hamilton, Bob Bratina, who has heard the question posited too many times.
"The suggestion that Pittsburgh is a model for Hamilton cannot go unchallenged," Bratina says.
The mayor points out the following:
• Pittsburgh exists under Pennsylvania's "Financially Distressed Municipalities Act" to try to deal with its $400 million operating budget, in deficit by $90 million.
• Pittsburgh's population actually decreased last year -- the only major metropolitan area in the U.S. to experience that. Its population is actually lower today than it was in 1894. In the last 13 years, it's lost 7000 residents. Its population today is 305,000.
Conversely:
• Hamilton, whose population is above 500,000, has issued more than $1 billion in building permits for the last three consecutive years.
• Hamilton has the lowest unemployment rate and youth unemployment rate of any big city in Ontario.
• Manufacturing continues to be the most significant sector in Hamilton's employment scene with 23,000 employees.
"There are 30 blast furnaces in the North American steel industry," Bratina points out, "and three of them are in Hamilton. We still produce 60 per cent of Canada's steel." (While the old Stelco Hilton Works plant makes no more steel, Arcelor Mittal Dofasco is thriving right next door).
One expects the mayor to be a booster for his community and Bratina, who's not running for re-election but instead is seeking a Hamilton-area Liberal nomination for the next federal election, is no exception. Still, he says an Atlanta-based magazine looked at Canada's best locations to invest and discovered Hamilton had 20 "new or expansion projects with at least $1 million invested, at least 50 new jobs created, or at least 20,000 new square feet between June 2011 and May 2012." Quebec City had 16. Toronto had 15.
It does seem fashionable to point out that Hamilton's arts and culture scene has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade. Many neighborhoods are great, and unlike Toronto, homes are affordable to purchase. But Bratina admonishes us not to forget about the city's manufacturing core.
"I won't let the steel lands be turned into a playground for Ducks Unlimited," he says. "We need those factories there and I love 'em."
And in case we didn't yet get the point about Pittsburgh:
"I would be happy to have our economic development staff share with Pittsburgh insights as to how Hamilton has revitalized and flourished in the decade of their decline," says the mayor.
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"Where architectural imagination is absent, the case is hopeless." - Louis Sullivan
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