I’m fortunate to have a mother who still reads The Hamilton Spectator, as she does as good a job as an RSS feed whenever anything remotely art-related turns up in its pages, and today’s front-page pronouncement on the forthcoming conversion of the former Hotel Hamilton certainly qualifies. As per usual with bringing these articles to my attention was Mom’s accompanying assertion, ‘This must be good news, right?’

Of course, what that question really means is, ‘Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me this will mean there’ll finally be a job for you and you can finally move out of my house.’ And even without that agenda, I’ve been increasingly wary of the growing barrage of Spec articles pronouncing such-and-such real estate venture as Hamilton’s next best hope for artists.

But before I get into that, it needs to be said that this really is good news. The very idea that four local businessmen - Glen Norton (a business consultant), Dan Lawrie (insurance broker), Scott Smith and Mike Clarke (both lawyers) - are willing to lay down close to $1 million on converting a complete dive of a former hotel turning lodging house into studio space because it makes good business sense is a great compliment to the hard work artists have already done to turn James Street North into the sort of vibrant, viable prospect that attracts this level of investment.

These four have also hit upon a great opportunity with their choice of location at the corner of James and Mulberry, which is where I become concerned about the future use of the building and its potential impact on the cultural life of the street. The current plan calls for the creation of 17 artist studios with rents ranging from $400-$650 a month (utilities included) as well as a shared boardroom, kitchen and bathroom facilities. It’s hard to argue with that, but the fate of the street-level retails spaces - presently unoccupied save for a jeweller and a laundromat with one of the street’s most charmingly dilapidated signs - is addressed in only the briefest, vaguest terms:

The investors hope to attract a co-op gallery for artists and perhaps a European-style coffeehouse.

There’s an ambivalence in that brief mention that doesn’t sit easily with me, one that indicates that the relationship between the prospective studios and its street-level presence may be tenuous at best. The run of this building is to be passed along to the Imperial Cotton Centre for the Arts, and while Jeremy Freiburger has a proven track record of transforming several outlying industrial properties into fantastic studio space, none of those sites offer the sort of public programming that draw audience participation, which is key to the development of a cultural life on James Street North. Without a definitive plan to transform the street-level profile of this building into an active social setting for the arts - a place where people can gather and participate in creative activity - I fear that this opportunity may be squandered at the whim of arbitrary lease agreements, and that the building will be known only as a closed cloister where 17 artists toil away in the privacy of their studios with only the occasional open studio event to show for the effort.

The latter scenario is especially worrying given the explicit tone of the article in which emphasis is placed on attracting artists from the high-rent hell of Toronto rather than serving those already committed to Hamilton. While I agree that the influx of Toronto artists can be a good thing, the arrangement is far less beneficial if a dearth of exhibition opportunities in this city compels them to limit their ideas and works to the Toronto art scene while taking advantage of the cheaper rents here. There needs to be adequate space to show these artists in order to fully benefit from their presence on the street, and a deliberate plan for a dedicated gallery or performance space would be a damn good start.

Not that I would object to a decent coffeehouse in the bargain, of course. Worked for 19th century Paris, after all.

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