City councillor looks to revitalize the ‘gateway to Cambridge’
Posted Jan 17, 2026 06:15:00 AM.
Last Updated Jan 19, 2026 12:34:50 PM.
Taking over for his Ward 7 predecessor, Cambridge Councillor Scott Hamilton is hoping to throw some luck into old fountains.
He calls the intersection at Hespeler and Pinebush roads, the “gateway to Cambridge” due to the fact that it connects Galt, Preston and Hespeler together. At the corner of that intersection are three well-known tall pillars, which, at one point, were flowing fountains until they were shut off sometime in the mid 2000s, shortly after Knob Hill Farms closed its doors and the Home Depot took over.
In 1991, Knob Hill Farms had the largest food market in the world, at least for a time. The pillars were used to locate that market, attracting tourists in and welcoming Cambridge residents home.
“That Pinebush, Hesperler Road intersection is now going to be a critical spine of the future of Cambridge,” Hamilton said while on The Mike Farwell Show. “Not only because the 401 sits there, but because going south, we will hopefully have the LRT going down into Galt, we will hopefully have the GO station from Pinebush proceeding up into Guelph, and of course, we will have a lot of housing.”
Hamilton adding the housing will replace some of the big box retail shops that currently dominate that area.
“Now is the time where we have to start thinking ahead — how can we revitalize that and try to bring these fountains back to life in some capacity?”
In the midst of a water capacity issue in the region, Hamilton acknowledges running three very tall fountains might not be the best solution, and they might be in a state of disrepair. The point is more to see what can be done to illuminate “the front door of Cambridge.”
Hamilton said he is looking to bring forward a motion next month to tell city staff to look into options on how they can revitalize the pillars sustainably, recreating a “welcoming doorway to walk through” instead of the decaying pillars standing there outside of Home Depot now.
“People have suggested we could bring in LED lights and LED screens to simulate water night and day, project images at certain times of the year; we could add architectural elements, we could add signage, we could add flags,” Hamilton said. “The spirit of this motion is to really look at what used to be three architectural-central pillars of the city and bring them back to life in partnership with Home Depot, in a way that can still inspire our residents today.”
Cambridge Ward 7 former councillor Frank Monteiro took a similar tone back in 2018. There was a tentative deal at the time reached with Home Depot on the reuse of the fountains, but it fell through when Monteiro passed away in 2019 from cancer.
