New owners revive stalled James Street Baptist redevelopment plan​

The partly razed downtown heritage landmark has languished for years.

March 6, 2025 Teviah Moro The Hamilton Spectator

The new owners of a partially demolished church in downtown Hamilton are resurrecting long-frustrated residential highrise plans for the derelict site.
Vantage Developments has bought the James Street South property for $13 million in a receivership sales process that recently wrapped up.
The intention is to incorporate what’s left of James Street Baptist into a roughly 30-storey, 300-unit redevelopment, Vantage partner Alan Leela says.

“It’s an opportunity to do what I think is a unique project that can add a lot to the fabric of the city in a location that makes a lot of sense.”

Central to that is the 147-year-old church remnant, partner Shamil Jiwani added.
“It’s not very often that you’ve got a church facade that you incorporate into your building in one of the best locations in Hamilton,” he said.
“And so we’re taking this very seriously in terms of designing a building that we can be proud of.”

The Rest of the article

www.thespec.com

New owners revive stalled James Street Baptist redevelopment plan

Vantage Developments has bought the James Street South property for $13 million.
www.thespec.com www.thespec.com
 
innsertnamehere said:
They apparently bought it cash, which means they have at least some level of financing behind them and makes another bankruptcy unlikely. We'll have to see.. Ultimately I'm not sure how they *have* that cash
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They can be laundering money but I don't give a shit if they build something I'll be happy lol
 
I'm not even sure what that company is really. It seems like some sort of pet project for some rich people's kids. It's clearly just a real estate company pretending to be a development firm. They flip properties, that's what they do. They bought it for 13 million and will try to sell it for 15. That's all it is, smoke and mirrors. The Spec clearly didn't do their research on them.
 
christiesplits said:
I was underwhelmed by their portfolio, which has two sites, neither of which have broken ground.

Still better than Vrancor, though.
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How is better than Vrancor? Love him or hate him, at least he builds stuff. This company is either just some sort of money laundering operation, or a play place for some rich people's kids. They aren't serious, and this is probably the worst possible company that could have purchased this lot.
 
TheHonestMaple said:
How is better than Vrancor? Love him or hate him, at least he builds stuff. This company is either just some sort of money laundering operation, or a play place for some rich people's kids. They aren't serious, and this is probably the worst possible company that could have purchased this lot.
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You’re writing off the possibility of this company being set up specifically by somebody else (a developer, maybe) to own and develop these lands. Is it likely? No, but it’s not uncommon. What is uncommon is not financing that purchase.

Flipping doesn’t strike me as a great laundering method compared to fully building, either- but I don’t really know.
 
The guys behind Vantage were previously execs at Emblem. They definitely have real development experience. But whether their new company actually has the wherewithal to build, I have no idea.
 
I think we're all just tired of this place seeming to be cursed and wondering how long that facade can last - after the gore park incident none of us wants to see any more facades collapse due to neglect, otherwise our whole downtown is just going to be a mishmash of boring uninteresting glass boxes.
 
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