Lister Block – mackaycartoons

Wednesday June 4, 2014

June 4, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 4, 2014

Lister grill owner plagued by money woes

One personal bankruptcy, at least four corporate bankruptcies associated with his name, and one business pushed into receivership with millions of dollars in debts that led to the forced sale of a Puslinch horse farm.

At least two successful civil lawsuits against him as a defendant, including one judgment against him of nearly $160,000 that resulted in the forced sale of a Burlington condominium unit.

At least 15 small claims court lawsuits against him or his companies with outstanding judgments and claims totalling nearly $100,000.

And the list goes on.

One company he was associated with dissolved for failure to comply with Ontario’s Corporations Tax Act.

The suspension of his standardbred horse license by the Ontario Racing Commission.

At least $348,000 owed at one point to the Canada Revenue Agency, and another $145,000 owed to Ontario’s finance ministry, based on DesRoches’ bankruptcy documents.

DesRoches, the man who turned his downtown La Costa restaurant into a small chain across southern Ontario in the 1990s, is preparing to open 28 Lister, a 1920s-style chophouse on the ground floor of the Lister Block. The opening of the restaurant has been postponed several times since last year for a variety of reasons, including the death of the executive chef in April.

DesRoches and his company, 28 Lister Restaurants Inc., were chosen by the city from four submitted bids for the lease in April 2013.

In addition to the $267,000 that the city agreed to pay for the project, documents show that DesRoches would invest another $200,000 to develop the restaurant.

According to an April 2013 report to city councillors, “28 Lister Inc. met all of the criteria including the financial criteria.”

But the city now acknowledges it was unaware of the financial information about DesRoches uncovered by the Spectator’s investigation. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Other restaurant cartoons

January 8, 2008

January 8, 2008 by Graeme MacKay

It’s not too difficult, given the length of time consumed discussing the future of Hamilton’s Lister Block, to shrug one’s shoulders and wish they’d just tear the damn thing down. End the on going ups and downs we’ve all be reading and hearing about for the last 8 to 10 years and just get rid of it. Get rid of that decaying purple bricked building you’d see in a city like Detroit sitting in the heart of downtown Hamilton. It can’t be doing anything good in terms of attracting business to the downtown. Indeed, many have said it’s a symbol of the rotting downtown core and the lack of leadership on the part of city hall to get things moving. Time has run out! It’s do or die time!

Or is it?

First thing that comes to my mind is the urgency of all this. Beyond all the politics of lease rate increases and provincial grant money and deadlines for action there sits a rather ramshackle looking building to be sure, but it’s still a solid steel framed concrete and brick building of the 1920’s that really isn’t going to fall over if left alone for many more years.

What’s rather maddening, and completely underplayed in the media, are the owners of the building who have left it open to the elements and riff raff and have done nothing to keep it clean and respectable looking since taking ownership 10 or so years ago. For everyone who has been turned off by the site of the Lister Block only its owner, LIUNA, not city hall, carries the blame. If, by leaving it to look so decayed is the impetus to provoke action on the site, well good, the point has been made by LiUNA. Obviously, not even council is going to be duped into forking over loads more money to a landlord that has done a great job of making a gem of building look so awful.

We’re looking at several more months or years of talk and debate on the building’s future. The people of this city are stakeholders in the future of this building and it is up to the people and the council they elected to demand owners clean and maintain their properties. A few thousand dollars is really all that’s needed to properly board and polish up a once proud building in the downtown. It’s time to clean it up now if only to show that it cares about the image of downtown Hamilton.

A great Lister Block photo gallery by Lopix.

March 7, 2007

March 7, 2007 by Graeme MacKay

…And these are just the waterfront proposals. There’s a whole bunch more which could be recognized in, say, a downtown proposaleum. A new city hall, a rebuilt Lister Block, a new market, a naturopathic college, a downtown casino. All types of bold headline making ideas with splashy architectual/conceptual sketches that have gone no where.

Today’s cartoon is actually a revision of a cartoon I did way back in 1999:

This is not to say all new ideas for advancing innovative plans for Hamilton are stupid. I actually like Bob Bratina’s idea after you get past what sort of lake smell will be wafting down-breeze from the fountain, and maybe some more pressing needs like actually doing something about the toxic goo laying in the harbour’s Randle Reef. And while Councillor Bratina sounds very worldly pointing out Geneva’s Jet d’eau as an example, he needn’t look further than Peterborough’s own Centennial Fountain. So before he and a couple other councillors venture off on a fact finding trip to Switzerland they might instead consider a day trip to Peterborough.

September 4, 2006

September 4, 2006 by Graeme MacKay

I like to act the role of a futurist and speculate on what cities will look like years from now. Last month I drew on the subject of the Lister Block and suggested there’d still be no answer on what to do about the crumbling downtown eyesore even 500 years from now:

I was hoping to cheat by borrowing sections of a earlier cartoon I had drawn but I couldn’t track it down in my archives. I finally found it, well after the time I drew the above cartoon:

Back in 2000 I did another futuristic cartoon which had similarities:

Thursday June 15, 2006

June 15, 2006 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 15, 2006

Council Votes to Demolish the Lister Block

Judgment day has arrived for Hamilton’s Lister Block.

Councillors voted Wednesday night to demolish the building to make way for a $30-million office building with a replicated facade.

The majority of councillors supported the demolition request by the Labourers’ International Union of North America and partner Hi-Rise Group.

The wild card, however, remains in the province’s hands.

Councillor Brian McHattie has asked the government to intervene and designate the Lister as a provincial heritage building. The Minister of Culture plans to weigh in now that council has voted. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)