Is Hamilton truly ready for Amazon?

By: Rob Hardy

This past autumn, huge buzz began to spread around Hamilton about the next big idea taking shape for the Hammer. Amazon, one of the largest players in a select circle of cool 21st century global tech brands, announced it was taking bids to open a second headquarters in North America, known as HQ2.

Such a chance would provide an immediate boost to any city lucky enough to land a deal as large and rare as this. Numerous municipalities across Canada and the United States began preparing how best to sell their cities.

As has been consistent with Hamilton’s ambitious stance this past decade, we decided to boldly take up the challenge and join more than 200 other bids vying for this golden opportunity.

We certainly should not count ourselves out of competition for larger ventures. Instead, we should be proud that such a diligent effort was made to lure this powerhouse into setting up shop here.

In order to keep Hamilton moving, we need to continue plugging away at increasing our business sector and working to gain a larger share of the investment capital that is attracted to the Golden Horseshoe, but usually goes to regions closer to Toronto’s nucleus than our own.

However, given the odds, we should be realistic enough to understand that winning this lottery is a huge long shot. Moreover, it is not just a numbers game. Some bids are inevitably much more attractive than others. It is likely that many other proposals ultimately have more convincing selling points.

Hamilton mayor Fred Eisenberger recently penned an open letter in the Hamilton Spectator where he referred to our city as “unstoppable”, and wrote passionately about his conviction that we are up to the challenge.

While I applaud his leadership and positivity, his sentiments seem a bit grandiose and too optimistic. It is not a question of our resolve, but of how much more unstoppable other competitors are. Is it helpful to believe that Hamilton is currently in the same league as some of the strongest players in this race?

One of the most fallacious claims in Eisenberger’s op-ed is that Hamilton happens to have everything Amazon is looking for. Actually, meeting their requirements is merely what is necessary to be considered — it is not something that somehow makes us standout from other serious contenders. It is also possible to find dubious ways of claiming that everything on a checklist has been satisfied. Yet in this case, we have not even done that.

For one thing, Hamilton is not a metropolitan area of over one million people. There are many cities that genuinely meet this criterion without attempting to pass off their additional surrounding regions as part of their actual metro population.

Even if we include Burlington in Halton Region, a city that is increasingly more of a satellite community for Toronto than Hamilton, we still do not even come close.

This is important, because Hamilton’s rather small downtown core, relative to Seattle or Toronto or San Francisco, lags far behind in terms of the number of businesses and services that are already established.

This brings us to another point relating to service. Hamilton also does not have any sort of rapid transit infrastructure set up — not even bus rapid transit.

What we do have are promises to have an LRT up and running by 2024, even though progress remains painstakingly slow, with an astounding number of setbacks and vague assurances. Any reasonable assessment would conclude that there is no way this project will be finished on time.

Meanwhile, are we are expecting a slew of forward-thinking millennials to be stuck with relying on the under-performing HSR to get to and from the Amazon campus every day?  The idea would actually be funny if it wasn’t for how truly miserable that would be for them.

Though I surely expect us to land in the rejection pile, this should not be a blow to our egos. After all, only one bid will be successful. More importantly, we should be proactive at asking ourselves how we can get closer to success in the future.

Are we really as good as we are blowing ourselves up to be, or should we realize that burgeoning art and restaurant scenes are merely typical of many other cities in a post-industrial economy and don’t really make us all that unique?

And though some hate to hear it, some level of gentrification needs to be further embraced to help Hamilton grow and evolve. Even as change causes us to lose a part of ourselves, it allows us to give birth to new identities. After all, having the guts to confidently bid for Amazon says that we are at least willing to overcome some of our trepidation as we explore the idea of new possibilities.

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