Focus on 5 Hamilton Based Businesses
From industrial waterfront to suburban greenfield to downtown conversions, businesses are investing in locating and expanding in Hamilton. “We are taking inquiries virtually every day and seeing so many exciting investment deals,” said Norm Schleehahn, manager of business development with the City of Hamilton.
“What is so encouraging is that companies in industry, food processing, technology, life sciences, and creative sectors are finding success in our city. They are start-ups and multinational giants and everything in between. That’s why we are among the most diversified economies in Canada.”
Here is just a sample of business developments in Hamilton.
Mondelez Canada
Mondelez Canada has officially opened a $40-million expansion of its Hamilton candy factory.
It will add 50 jobs to the existing complement of 300, while adding a production line that produces about 11 million pieces of candy – Maynards Sour Patch Kids, Fuzzy Peach and Swedish Fish – each day.
“We are so proud to make Maynards, that are sold across North America, right here in the heart of Hamilton,” said Martin Parent, president of Mondele-z Canada. “With this new line, Hamilton leads the way in advanced food manufacturing.”
Mondele-z Canada’s 225,000-square-foot plant in the west end operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, producing more than 40 types of candy.
L3 Harris
Leading edge imaging company L3 Harris is undertaking one of the largest corporate head office investments in a Hamilton in a generation with its 330,000-square-foot headquarters in Flamborough.
The new facility, at the southeast intersection of Highway 6 North and Highway 5, will feature research and development, engineering, assembly and office space and house 1,200 highly skilled workers who are currently working out of two locations in Burlington.
L3 Harris is one of the city’s most high profile technology companies and began out of research into a stabilized camera at Westinghouse on Longwood Road.
It now has a global reputation for its electro-optical and infrared imaging technologies and system solutions, which are used across the aerospace, homeland security and defence industries.
Stelco
Design is underway on the first phase of a massive redevelopment of the Stelco lands.
About 550 acres are available and will be used to bring employment to the city, says Peter McAllister, Stelco’s chief development and operations officer. The remaining 250 acres are required for Stelco’s present and future operations.
The company recently got municipal approval to subdivide the property and has begun planning for a first phase that McAllister says will yield about 1 million square feet of industrial space.
“Elsewhere in the GTHA there are record rents, and record low vacancies. The Hamilton market is very hot, and the demand is strong.”
The Stelco lands are well served by the port and by rail and has easy access to highways in all directions. A number of steel-related companies have signed leases for existing buildings, says McAllister, including Samuel Steel which will take up residence in 136,000 square feet.
Hamilton Central Business Park
The 26-acre property where Otis Elevator and Studebaker manufactured for decades in Hamilton’s industrial north is finding new life as a prestige industrial park.
The 70 employees of geotechnical contractor Soletanche Bachy Canada (formerly Bermingham Foundation Solutions) will take up about three quarters of the park’s first phase – a 20,000-square-foot office building.
“This is the first office building development in the lower city in decades,” said Sergio Manchia, president of developer Urbancore. Manchia and his 24 employees will also relocate to the new building.
He also has plans for a 40,000-squarefoot office and warehousing complex that will incorporate part of the historic Studebaker/Otis office building.
The property also features 12 to 14 one acre lots for development or sale.
Style Park
Blacks Point Development has recently completed a new headquarters for Coppley Apparel on MacNab Street North, and will soon begin work on one of the suit-maker’s former manufacturing locations at 127 Hughson St. N.
Called Style Park, it will feature an adaptive redevelopment of 60,000 square feet into four storeys of loft-style offices, along with a restaurant and café.
“It has a brick and beam industrial vernacular and will be cool, hip and urban,” says company partner Bryan Dykstra.
The location is just a block away from the heart of James Street North at Cannon and will appeal to marketing and design firms, technology companies, and to business and financial service operators looking for creative space, says Dykstra.
“We are very optimistic about Hamilton. It’s a market with tons of potential.”
