The blueprint lady
Published Saturday November 28th, 2009
Growth: Saint John will draw upon Jacqueline Hamilton to chart the city's next municipal plan
SAINT JOHN - The city's new deputy commissioner of planning and development is described by former colleagues as a charismatic leader who has, over the course of her career, set the bar high for others to follow.
And that's just the beginning of a long list of strong qualities Jacqueline Hamilton brings to the job of overseeing development of the city's new municipal plan, those who have worked with her told the Telegraph-Journal.
Saint John is "very fortunate to have someone with her capabilities leading up this municipal plan exercise. She's thorough and she'll get the job done," said now-Rothesay town manager John Jarvie, who worked closely with Hamilton in Trenton, N.S., in the mid-1990s.
After just 16 years in the field, Hamilton has the chops to back up the accolades. Besides Trenton, she's also worked on new municipal plans for the Halifax Regional Municipality and the downtowns of both Halifax and Dartmouth.
Hamilton will draw from her experience as she drafts the road map that will guide future growth in the city for the next 25 years, maybe longer.
"It's a lot of work," Hamilton said of her task. "It's a lot of listening, a lot of feeding information back to people, making sure you get it right and checking in with the committees and with council."
As she drafts the city's new blueprint - something that hasn't been done since the early 1970s - Hamilton's office could become the centre of controversy. Working with the public, common council, several committees and consultants, she will have to find common ground in areas that are often divisive.
The use of land, the look and feel of neighbourhoods and the preservation of heritage in the face of new construction are often contentious. Proposals to rezone single properties often fill the council chamber with people on either side of the debate.
The new municipal plan, in contrast, has much broader consequences, because the changes will branch out to every corner of the city. Hamilton's hand will be among several that will guide the process forward over the next two years.
A native of Cole Harbour, N.S., Hamilton knows how to build consensus in the face of potential conflict, said Andy Fillmore, a top Halifax planner who worked with her for several years.
"People just naturally want to work with her, want to help her fulfill her vision of the department, of what the project can be. She's a rallying force, she has that charisma," Fillmore, project manager of urban design for Halifax said.
"She always had a gift for bringing a human element, being concerned about everyone's"¦well-being. This is just part of what inspired people to follow her."
Hamilton began her career, fresh out of university, in Trenton, a small community that was facing population declines as a major employer closed its doors in the early 1990s. Leading a team charged with drafting the town's new municipal plan, Hamilton drew a map that was designed to augment the industrial economy with a more robust service sector.
"It was a traditional manufacturing, steel industry town and the whole economy was changing, and they were in a situation of losing a lot of people from the town; there were similar types of issues you would find here, but on a smaller scale," Hamilton said.
"We looked at providing opportunities for new types of industries around their airport, moving to a more service-based economy. And, we tried to create a more viable main street."
Trenton council appreciated Hamilton's ability to incorporate its goals into the plan as the politicians faced a heightened degree of uncertainty, said Jarvie, the former executive director of the regional planning commission that oversaw Hamilton's work there.
"They were motivated by whatever could be done to sustain the economy and she maintained some consistency"¦to help them avoid short-term decisions that could hurt them in the long run," Jarvie said.
Once her work in Trenton was complete, Hamilton moved to Halifax where she served in many different planning roles. She counts as one of her top accomplishments the role she played in developing a municipal plan for Halifax Regional Municipality, a land mass the same size as Prince Edward Island.
The goal was to address urban sprawl that put a stranglehold over the city's budget. As developers built new subdivisions in the far reaches of the municipality, costs went way up.
Planners identified a number of centres the city would continue to service, and they would become the focus of growth and development into the future. Property owners living outside the boundaries were out of luck.
Hamilton's team wrote a section of the regional plan that identified the need for an urban design strategy for Halifax's downtown, the economic, cultural and social heart of Nova Scotia.
She later recruited Fillmore, an urban designer, to lead the development of what is now called HRM by Design, the downtown plan that was recently approved after a three-year process.
"Her legacy for identifying the need of the project is one that is going to endure," Fillmore said.
Several months after the vote, Hamilton left Halifax bound for Saint John.
"Since there has been such a gap between this community's involvement in a long-range plan - it's been 36 years since the plan was put in place - there needs to be a lot of public awareness around what is a municipal plan, and what are the types of issues that we can deal with as part of this process," Hamilton said.
"And we'll just spend a lot of time reaching out to community groups at the front end."
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