The Amherstburg Community Foundation (ACF) presented its fourth night in its “Thought Leaders” series last week with the guest speaker giving tips to municipal leaders how they can grow their municipalities.
The ACF welcomed Jason Thorne to the Libro Centre, with Thorne being the general manager of planning and economic development for the City of Hamilton. Thorne’s talk was entitled “A How-To Guide to Community Building in Smaller and Mid-Sized Cit ies” and drew municipal leaders and the general pub lic not only from Amherstburg, but from surrounding municipalities as well. The majority of Amherstburg town council were among the large crowd at the event as were other area mayors including Kingsville Mayor Nelson Santos and Leamington Mayor Hilda MacDonald.
It was touted that previous “Thought Leaders” speakers spoke about what could be done, with Thorne giving tips on how to do it successfully. Thorne noted that he wasn’t off ering recommendations, but was telling people what worked in Hamilton. He highlighted media reports about Hamilton, which included The Globe & Mail and New York Times, adding “to see this kind of interest and excitement is just fantastic.”
That city’s success didn’t come in one fell swoop, he stated, but was “the culmative eff ect” of doing the little things properly. That includes municipal departments and the citizens working together.
“We don’t have the luxury to work in silos,” said Thorne. “We need to get everyone on the same page.”
One of the topics was “kinder, gentler” bylaw enforcement, noting Hamilton traded in its police-like uniforms for its bylaw officers and replaced them with golf shirts so that they were more relatable. Thorne said he and staff would also go to lunch at new businesses to understand what worked and what didn’t in the city’s systems and processes so that they could further help new businesses going forward. He added that “co-creators” need the room to do their jobs and sometimes the municipality has to “get out of the way” and let them do their thing, noting some events in Hamilton may not be doing everything by the book but bylaw officers are sent elsewhere those nights to let the event thrive.
“You have to give co-creators the space to co-create,” he said.
As it pertains to an art crawl in Hamilton, Thorne remarked the city “did nothing. We let it happen.” Other ideas that Thorne pointed out were “urban intervention,” where special event permits could be applied for to allow people to use public spaces to be creative. A legal gra ti wall was also created in Hamilton to allow people to express their art. Thorne also pointed out ideas like allowing street encroachments for flowers, awnings and signage and to try and “decomplexify things a bit.”
Hamilton has also has concurrent reviews in its streamlined planning process for developments, reducing the amount of time developers have to wait to get started on their projects.
“All of this is about simplifying your processes,” he said.
Thorne noted Hamilton simplifi ed the zoning processes for retail and restaurants and also allowed more food trucks. The latter has led to more “bricks and mortar” restaurants as food trucks have become traditional restaurants instead. Parking regulations were relaxed as well.
“We were putting in unnecessary barriers preventing the businesses from being successful,” said Thorne.
Arts and culture are “infrastructure,” Thorne continued, and cited examples Hamilton has used as “creative industry zoning,” highlighting the city’s music scene including helping churches double as concert halls, allowing buskers and music on patios and creating “musician loading zones” so performers could park their vehicles to load and unload equipment as they needed.
“It showed we are listening and are trying to do something,” said Thorne.
As it pertained to music on patios, Thorne drew applause when he noted Hamilton has asked those whoare concerned over noise volume be the ones to bear the expense of noise testing. Thorne also said Hamilton has tried to “reanimate public spaces” by allowing on-street patios and having groups naturalize or beautify boulevards. He pointed out Hamilton’s vacant building registry to prevent buildings from falling into disrepair, heritage and brownfi eld remediation grants and having design competitions to generate ideas on how to redevelop areas.
“Every city of every size builds something,” said Thorne. “There are opportunities to lead by example.” Thorne acknowledged that every municipality has a budget but believed a lot of what he did in Hamilton didn’t cost a lot of money and made an impact. “Nothing I’ve presented is at all radical,” he said. “Nothing I’ve presented is particularly expensive. Nothing I’ve presented is particularly innovative.”
Thorne urged people to be open to risks and be willing to accept failure as “that is the nature of city build-
ing.”
Councillor Patricia Simone thanked Thorne, stating he brought ideas which will allow local leaders to generate ideas of their own and spark conversation about moving Amherstburg forward into the future.