Progress on Rescuing Bronson

scenic Bronson sidewalk squeezed between electric pole and apt buildings

The City has compromised on some Bronson issues.

They have agreed to remove their proposal to widen the street, which would have speeded up vehicular traffic while simultaneously making the corridor less cycling and pedestrian friendly and chopping off numerous front yards, church entries, and mature trees. In our opinion, it didn’t make the road any safer for motorists either.

I like to think it had a lot to do with people objecting. Rescue Bronson encouraged many people to have their say. This included residents, landlords, school principals, recreation coordinators, churches … and yup, we even got some of Ottawa’s condo developers to weigh in on Bronson and how it affects urban renewal.

But the “straw that broke the camel’s back”  came from Ottawa Hydro. Many poles are very close to the road. Widening the road required moving them back. In some cases, such as the block immediately north of Somerset, the wiring almost touches the balconies of apartments built back in the 1950′s. Heritage high rises, if you will. The wiring in front of those buildings would have to be buried. Transformers would have to be located in vaults off the side streets, with ridiculous access problems.

wooden poles, aka sidewalk furnishings, will stay in place

So those big wooden poles which blight our streets while simultaneously protecting pedestrians from rampaging motorists have come to our rescue.

While this is a victory for Councillor Holmes and Rescue Bronson and local residents, there are several steps yet to come. The Somerset and Gladstone intersections remain unsafe for pedestrians, but they can be fixed if the city gets over its compulsive need to cater to motorists. The current proposed revisions to the intersections are a step in the right direction, but still way below potential. The Arlington intersection needs a pedestrian crossing, and we remain hopeful that we can attain that. It comes up before Transportation Committee in a week or so.

The job for local residents now is to ensure those intersections are improved for pedestrians, and to ensure that quality landscaping is actually designed and installed. These are not easy tasks, we will have to continue pushing the traffic engineers, educating them as to what constitutes good design in an urban environment.

But for now, savor the victory.

Making Neighborhoods Friendly (i)

This will be a series of posts on how we design our neighborhoods and whether this design is friendly to urban life. It is inspired by a book recently read: Pocket Neighborhoods, by Ross Chapin. You can get it from your bookmonger or reserve it at the OPL.

Three neighborhood styles

From 1900 to the 1950′s most agglomerations of housing in Ottawa were built in rows along public streets. As time went on, the set back of the house from the street grew larger, oft as a City requirement. In 1900-1940 neighborhoods such as the west side neighborhood I live in, the set backs are shallow, six to ten feet. Commonly built on 30′x100′ lots, these houses are typically narrow-front to the street with a side driveway for parking, and maybe a backyard garage. Singles and row houses are intermixed in a fine pattern, and occasional apartment buildings sit comfortably along the block.

By the 40′s, these narrow lot homes are found intermixed with wider lot “square” homes that look more substantial. Still, the garages are subservient, the principle windows face the public street, which take on an element of shared space (“our street”) with concern about what goes on. Unfortunately arranged in a grid pattern, the through streets are easily abused by maze-running commuters, too often directed to do so by our own city traffic engineers.

My grandmother moved from her Bronson Avenue home in ’59 because of the road widenings, dirt, and noise. The City fathers were clearly favouring suburban commuters over city residents. The neighbours were moving away, fleeing really. They moved to Champlain Park, then mostly small houses and converted cottages,  where the streets were quieter and houses still had gardens.

Post World War II the lots got even wider, the set backs deeper. But many of the same features remain from the first half of the century, just at a lower density. Concomitantly, streets got busier with faster vehicles; and playing on the street becomes less safe, less acceptable. We see street life atrophying. When streets are repaved, they tend to look wider, flatter, overlit … with a further decay in street life.

Since the 70’s, North American neighborhood planning focuses on privacy: houses have garages (often protruding) at the front, and maybe a formal parlor/living room window, but seldom principle spaces. There is nothing to see out front as the street is large, the driveways frequent, and all asphalt spaces have an abundance of vehicles. Living areas and windows face the rear, usually fenced yard. Privacy is ensured, just as informal interaction with neighbours is inadvertently discouraged by the design. Basement or ground floor rec rooms become the focus of family life. The street is merely for coming and going by car, as there is usually no place within walking distance, and sidewalks are rare. All activity is focussed on coming and going by car.

Streets take up a lot of space, which raises house prices. Developers more and more often now favour private streets. Usually townhouses are arranged in cul-de-sac clusters.  Their fronts, along a private shared street, are all garage doors. People can come and go for years and never know anyone, even though they “share” space and have a condo corporation as an interaction mechanism.

I have a gregarious friend that lives at Centrepoint in such a cluster, for 25 years, and knows only one person, by the first name only. She doesn’t even know anyone well enough to take in her paper if she is away. She wouldn’t recognize a neighbor, they come and go from house to garage via internal doors, then in cars and minivans with tinted windows. While there are some kids around, she doesn’t know their names, which houses they belong to, or anything else about them. The townhouse cluster abuts Centrepoint park, but is separated from it by a chain link fence, no gate, to prevent “others” from cutting through their private street to get to the park, and incidentally closing it off the residents too. It is totally anonymous living. The “public” side of the house is a garage door, a solid front door, a frosted bathroom window facing onto a shallow, useless-except-as-decoration “front porch”. A stoop, really.

While scads of contemporary housing follows the basic model of street / service side of house / house facing to the rear yard, there are exceptions. West Village off Lanark is higher density cluster mostly of semi’s and towns, tightly arranged on a private street, but with house exteriors well detailed and attractive to buyers that could easily have afforded to live elsewhere. I cycle through it often, as it has a path connection to Loblaws. There are always kids out playing on the street; it doesn’t feel weird if I stop to compliment someone on their front garden. Making eye contact is easy.

west village, narow streets plus detailed exteriors makes for an intimate space

I am aware of a very similar development in a much more western suburb. It also produced houses at a much lower price point. Gone are all the exterior details, replaced by uniform facades of white siding. It looks bleak and crowded. Householders feel free to creep their driveways wider and wider to squeeze in that extra car. Gardens are non-existant; there is only grass between the driveways because the builder sodded the space. There were kids playing in their street, but it felt more like playing in a parking lot. When a jacked-up pickup truck with black windows went by it didn’t slow down.

It’s not my intent to provide a comprehensive catalogue of neighborhood types. And there are always exceptional spots. In the next few stories I intend to wander my way through some self-reflection on how these basic housing types influence the degree of interaction, the “friendliness” of a neighborhood. Come along for the tour.

guest parking is clustered rather than along the street

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Museum of Strife

The (Federal government’s) Museum of Nature is embroiled in a dispute with some locals on the value and location of its parking lot. The nub of the problem is the Museum wishes to convert some of its parkland on its west side into a surface parking lot.

The west side lawn had been converted to a “temporary” construction staging site during lengthy Museum renovations. Alas, in Ottawa “temporary” is usually a euphemism for never-ending. The thin end of the wedge to sneak in unpleasant changes under the guise of reasonably-sounding “it’s only for a while” arguments. The problem with these “temporary” agreements is that they don’t include penalty clauses, so the offending party (in this case the Feds, but in many cases, it’s the City) has no  disincentive to break the deal.

There are a number of aspects of this imbroglio that bother me, and they don’t reflect well on either the City or the Museum (aka The Feds).

• it bugs me that a compromise reached on the basis of being temporary (the surface staging site for equipment and crew parking) becomes the foot in the door for a permanent parking lot. This teaches us not to be ”reasonable” or reach “compromises” if we are just being set up to be screwed, even if excused away as being attributable to “changing circumstances”.
• it bugs me that the Museum claims it is required for “peak parking”, which generally means that 80% of the parking needs are met by the existing lot, but the new lot is required for the peak 20% of the time. Generally, it is inefficient to provide parking for the peak, same as we shouldn’t provide roads for the peak that would remain underused the remaining 20 hours of the day.
• If the lot goes in for this peak load, will it have “peak pricing”?
• Or will the Museum discount parking to better earn revenues off an underused lot? (remember, it isn’t needed for visitors 80% of the time…). I suspect the new lot will simply permit more employees to drive to work where they will have convenient parking.
• according to some media reports I have seen, the Museum makes a “profit” off the parking which is used to subsidize programming. If they put in an underground garage, this profit will be needed to cover the cost of the garage. I fully agree that parking users should cover their cost of parking and the garage structure. I am not sure why they should subsidize programming. And if parking fees cover the cost of the garage, it’s a bit rich to kill the garage because surface lots are more profitable.
• when comparing the cost of the new garage to surface parking, does either calculation consider the value of the parkland itself or is it just “free” land? *
• should the garage on the west side be large enough to replace all the surface parking on the east side too?

The City is no saint when it comes to this matter either. Doesn’t it strike you as hypocritical ironic that city folks complain about the Museum’s lot on Museum land while the City runs a commuter arterial through the east lawn? Why are motorists priority users of space on the east side if they aren’t going to the museum but inferior users of space on the west side even though they are the museum’s customers?

If I was John Baird, I’d be asking the City to flash some money. If the City wants all that Fed land for parkland, much of which is for the benefit of city residents, why can’t the city put its wallet where its mouth is?

To purchase a chunk of land of similar size for a park would cost 2 – 3 million dollars. Will the City put that up for a public parking garage that offers both some short-term alleviation of some neighborhood parking issues, and purchases long-term park space?** Of course, I would expect the City to get some legal rights/guarantees for its money. And for this discussion, we’ll ignore the long-term opportunity cost of taking out urban land to make a park whilst simultaneously using existing park land for roads.

And a bigger issue relates to the way Metcalfe curves through the park. It’s a terrible road link, traffic really zooms through the space, and makes the remaining park space feel like a little island sandwiched between busy roads. The City is ruminating on the possibility of converting downtown roads back to two-way streets. This would be an excellent opportunity to end the misuse of the Museum park (although it wouldn’t surprise me if the City wanted to add another road, southbound, through the west side park…).

Maybe Mr Baird should offer a garage … in return for the east side lawn.

And my last thought on this goes to the cynical nature of the political game. Maybe it’s not about the parkland at all. Maybe it’s all political posturing, a chance to blame someone else, to control / shape the political narrative. You know, the best defence is offence. And it’s all about talking of  parkland and green space and motherhood, and looks good, and doesn’t cost the City anything.

 

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*The City has strange values when it comes to its own parkland. A mature planting of trees and kids playground was removed from the Plant Rec Complex to make way for a large surface parking lot. That’s right, while simultaneously complaining about under-parked neighborhoods, the priority use of City parkland is parking. The suggestion of putting a garage under the new building during construction … too expensive! The value of the parkland removed: “Nothing!” the City cheerful proclaimed.

As for neighborhood suggestions that the parking-lot-that-replaced-the-playground be metered, absolutely not, the City replies, it’s for our patrons. At least the Museum is going to charge for parking. Remember, other than at the Museum, the City’s highest and best use for tax dollars is providing free parking and traffic infrastructure. That’s why there isn’t money left over for the parks themselves.

And maybe that’s why the City is so unenthused about expanding existing parks onto street rights of way if that means losing some non-revenue-generating free parking spaces.

** Let’s leave aside the issue for now about whether we should be building garages and parking at all. Or if they actually improve the neighborhood or make it worse. That’s a whole ‘nother issue.

 

Downtown Moves

The folks running the Downtown Moves study had an open house last evening. I was very pleased and surprised at the large turnout  around 6pm. Some attendees were the usual suspects we find at these events, ie the city builder activists and those promoting their favourite causes. There were a l0t of “new” faces as well. All good.

One of the display boards offered attendees the opportunity to put a dot on the main cycling and pedestrian problems in the core. Jumping right out at any viewer was the cluster of both ped and cyclist dots at the Albert-Bronson intersection, especially on the NW corner running to Commissioner Street.

In many respects the meeting was like a cocktail party (with the wine and snackies missing). Little clusters of conversation appeared and reappeared as people mingled. So many people were talking about “solutions” they saw elsewhere on their travels. When talking to HM, he described a truly transit-oriented development (TOD) he recently saw in Sweden. A ring road circles the residential area, and has access fingers penetrating — but not crossing — the central area. From anywhere in the residential area within the ring, residents can access schools, stores, and the transit station directly, without crossing a road. To use the car requires a trip out to the perimeter ring road, a longish drive around, and then finding fresh parking. It was simply easier to walk or cycle.

I compared this to the City’s concept sketch of a TOD immediately north of the Hurdman Station. The motorist road came into the neighborhood right by the transit station, and circled the site, but with buildings on both sides of the road. Residents coming or going to the transit station had to cross a road, sometimes twice or three times. Their walks home were glued to the curb. In short, it wasn’t transit-oriented at all, it was car-oriented but just located close by a transit station.

I find the approved  Bayview Yards redevelopment site similarly too auto-focussed despite the proximity for transit. Now maybe, as plans evolve, these layouts will become more TOD and might actually make the car the less-convenient choice. But Ottawa is still far short of being comfortable with or even conceiving of auto-free developments let alone transit-priority development patterns. We talk well, but don’t yet walk the talk.

Here are two pic from Vancouver, taken last week, showing the easy proximity of cycling and pedestrian facilities. Note, no curb separates the two surfaces, they are at the same level. Ottawan’s are still married to the bureaucratic view that there must be physical bounds between peds and cyclists, they cannot be trusted to get along together. Gotta have rules! Fences! Curbs! Signs! Policing!

Thanks to Michelle for both photos.

 

 

 

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Bronson: an exercise in futility

A previous version of this story originally appeared in www.SpacingOttawa.ca, you should have read it there. But here it is again, made slightly longer.

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Faithful readers will recall the many stories on Bronson Avenue. How it is so poorly designed for motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists. And how it blights the neighborhood. Instead of lively street, the City seems determined to give us more blight, by widening the lanes 2′, thus removing numerous trees and more front yards/greenspace, all in a vulgar attempt to get the cars to go a little bit faster. Gotta get to Greely quicker!

Rescue Bronson has been nagging the traffic engineers to redesign the awful, pedestrian-unfriendly corners at Somerset and at Gladstone. You wouldn’t send any kid less than about age 14 to school by him/herself if you valued their child benefit cheque. You wouldn’t send your mother in law out to those crossings unless you were in a hurry to inherit.

The cross streets – Somerset, and Gladstone – don’t need to be four lanes wide at Bronson. Those streets are already three lanes or even two lanes at previous intersections east and west of Bronson. So there is no traffic need for four lanes. And, by narrowing the pavement, and widening the sidewalks, the crossing distance is shortened for pedestrians and thus made safer. Both intersections are offset (ie, the roads don’t align up on either side of Bronson) which further makes pedestrians feel cars are creeping roaring up right on their heals and are about to be run over from behind.

So after months of prodding and pushing by the community, after months of labouring, what product did the almighty Traffic Engineers come out with? (hint: get out your hankies):

 

 

This is the Somerset Street running right to left as it crosses Bronson. Note that the Engineers have managed to rejig the intersection so that, as requested, there are three lanes on Somerset instead of four.

But where did all the freed-up space go? Look carefully, and you’ll see they reallocated ALL of it to the traffic lanes. That’s right, pedestrian heaven comes quickly when motorists have a monopoly on public space.

On the east side of the intersection (to the right in the illustration) the peds didn’t get one inch of sidewalk, or one inch shorter crossing distance! And in a scheme to improve pedestrian movements, our Engineer consultants only bothered to draw  one of the crosswalks. Can someone spell C-O-N-T-E-M-P-T?

On the west side of the intersection, in front of a corner store and PizzaPizza, a lay by and truck delivery zone was installed. The pitiful bit of sidewalk widening is moved way back from the intersection, and appears to be about four feet wide. Room for a garbage can, maybe, for those popsicle wrappers and discarded lottery tickets. Didn’t win Lotto 6-49? Better luck crossing Bronson! We have a winner … err, loser, here folks!

And we gotta love those swooping lanes they drew in front of the Petro Can. Such optimists: will motorists make these cute lateral shifts or just zoom straight through, more dangerous now that you cannot tell what lane they are in.

OK, so for Somerset all the freed up space from lane reductions was reallocated to motorists. Maybe they need it. Did our Engineers do better at Gladstone?

Obviously, it’s the same artist at work for this intersection. Note the similar swooping lanes, almost balletic, sure to appeal to ballistic boulevardieres.

Again, the crosswalks are missing. Hey, it’s only a pedestrian improvement scheme! But it is apparent the crossing distances haven’t gotten any shorter. Which means what for pedestrian safety? In fact, for east-west movements the crosswalks got LONGER because Bronson is to be made that precious two feet wider along there.

On the south side, wider pedestrian sidewalks have generously been provided a hundred feet east and west of the intersection. At the northwest (upper left) corner, where peds are squeezed tight against the traffic lanes by a too-narrow walk complicated by a storefront door right there (see pic below)… well, the Engineers have granted pedestrians more space 50’ west of the intersection. I guess school kids are supposed to gather at that little bulb out, and then run like hell when the light turns green, trampling someone’s elderly mother-in-law if she hasn’t already expired of old age on this long, long crossing of the motorists nirvana, a sea of flat asphalt.

google street view

I hadn’t noticed the convoys of trucks before, but Gladstone eastbound (coming from the left) must be a really really major truck route. The Engineers have given trucks there a huge turning radius, way more generous that all the other corner turns.  Whether any of this makes for a shorter crosswalk is hard to determine, because… well, as noted before, the crosswalks are missing inaction.

Now as advised at the start of this sad little story, get out your hankies and have a good cry.

Can our blessed Engineers redraw an intersection? Boo hoo.

Can our pocket-protector’d traffic boffins reallocate space to pedestrians? Boo hoo.

Have they been able to listen to anything or learn anything in the long sad saga of the Bronson reconstruction? Boo hoo hoo.

So sad. Too bad.

What if we reject this three lane scheme? How can the Engineers claim all the space is required for three lanes, and not one inch can be given over to a wider sidewalk, and then turn around and put back the four lane scheme presently in place? I mean, if there isn’t room for anything but three lanes, how can they magically fit in four?

Now, sarcasm off, there is a reason that the new three lanes take up all the same space as the old four. The old four are grandfathered. Even if the road is all dug up, and new everything goes back in, they can use the “old” standards. This is so very convenient for traffic engineers. If the old lanes are sub-standard, they don’t have to be fixed.

BUT, if the community suggests a revised scheme, such as three lanes, in order to widen the sidewalks and make the intersection safer … well, the NEW traffic engineer standards come into play. And they require wider lanes. Apparently, about 30% wider. Oops, there goes the narrower street…

Apparently the new standards only apply to the motorised traffic. There is no need to repair the substandard crossing distances or crosswalk alignments. Purely optional, to be fitted in at the last minute, if there’s room.

We come across this catch 22 situation so often. If the Engineers want it, the rules allow it. If they don’t want, well, so sorry folks, we’d love to help ‘ya, but the rules, you know, just don’t permit it. It’s for your own safety, y’know.

 

 

Snow Plowing — 1920 vs 2012

The City may change from year to year, but the winter stays the same: it snows.

Here’s a shot of snow removal on Preston, looking north, in 1920. Each trucker had his bin filled by hand shovels, there is a crew off to the right.

The first building on the left is now Pubwells. All the houses shown in this pic are still there. The building in the far distance closing off the end of Preston was the factory where the transatlantic cables were made. It was the longest building in the British Empire at the time. It was partly demolished in the late 1960′s; and the rest of it was demolished in 1982.

 

-- photo courtesy of Bayview-Carling CDP

 

 

 

And here is the City bike path multiuser path (MUP) along the north side of Albert as it goes through LeBreton Flats. A snowblower had gone by sometime previously removing the snow bank from the curb line of Albert. But with all the space available, did he have to put smack dab in the centre of the MUP ? Or is this some sort of comment about the priority of cleaning the roads at the expense of dumping snow on a previously-cleaned path?

the left half of the path has been packed with snow windrow about 12" high thrown there in order to clear the street for more important people

You’d think with all this motorized, mechanized modern machinery City works crews could, you know, maybe redirect the snow discharge shute like someplace else?

And lastly, a shot from elsewhere, taken just a few days ago, on the road to Whistler:

photo: M Lafontaine

The Dog Shelter Condos – Is Ashcroft Serious?

The Champagne Avenue area — immediately west of the O-Train near Carling Avenue — has been a hotbed for developers recently. Domicile built two red brick mid-rise condo towers and some townhouses at the southwest corner near Carling Avenue.  He has another one – Hom – starting at the corner of Hickory and Champagne.

Starwood Mastercraft has the vacant lot at the NE corner of Hickory and Champagne, where they are building two towers, about 16 floors high, the Soho Champagne. Here is an aerial view of the neighborhood, taken from somewhere above the soon-to-be-demolished Sir John Carling Building (which should instead be converted into condos):

The O-Train track is the black line running up through the centre of the air photo; and Carling Avenue runs across the bottom. The green space south of Carling, shown holding a circus during the Victoria Day weekend, is zoned for high rises. Dow’s Lake is on the extreme bottom right. The Domicile buildings at Sherwood/Bayswater/Carling  triangle are also not shown due to the age of the photo. The Queensway is shown running across the top of the photo, as is part of the Adobe complex at Preston and the Queensway.

view from the O-Train Carling Station looking NW across the Arnon parking lot (now approved for office or condo development) towards the CMPA office buildings

The two proposed Starwood buildings –Soho Champagne –   are shown on the site plan below as the pair of buildings with slight curves on their south side.

The next lot north (left) is the former Humane Society site, which they sold to Ashcroft once the dog shelter moved to the ‘burbs.  Oh, to round things out, the remaining vacant lot, now used as surface parking for Civic Hospital employees, running between Hickory and Carling, is owned by Arnon. They just won their OMB hearing permitting them to build either office towers or … more condos. For the sake of less traffic, and an attractive building in an historic style, I hope that the Arnon site is developed by Charlesfort, the condo builder.

OK, back to the dog shelter site. The plan above sketches in Tremblay Park on the left third of the block. It has a wading pool, bike polo courts, and an abandoned bocce court. The entire park is due for a refreshing. The smaller middle slice of the block is the Ashcroft/Dog Pound site. They are proposing two towers, somewhat thinner than the Soho Champagne towers shown on the rest of the block, but in the same staggered configuration. Running all across the top of the site is the O-Train cut with parallel paths on both sides. 

The existing Carling Station for the O-Train is just off the drawing at the top right; and a pedestrian bridge over the O-Train cut is promised for Hickory Street, so residents can have easy access to the Preston main street.

The Ashcroft proposal is for two towers of 24 and 20 stories. The planning rationale they have submitted to the City is very unusual. It is essentially a crie de coeur (or crie de wallet…) wailing that they cannot figure out what the City wants on the site. The Official Plan (OP) and the Secondary Plan are at odds. They don’t even mention the on-going-but-never-to-get-completed Bayview-Carling CDP which local residents suspect is designed to die of embarrassment because it will only be finished once all the developable sites have already been rezoned and developments permitted (only a slight exaggeration).

Listen to Ashcroft: ‘the inconsistencies between the [planning] documents make it difficult if not impossible, to propose an urban design rationale and architectural solution consistent with both’.

Ashcroft cannot figure out if there is supposed to be a height gradient from (highest at) Carling declining as one goes north into the block, or if it is the other way around. They point out for example, that the Carling end is zoned for 8 stories (just recently overturned by the OMB) but the next lot back is zoned for 18. High density zones in the plan are further from Carling than the low density zones. And why do designated high density zones have a four floor height limit? How does one have a ‘transition zone’ when adjacent lots are zoned ‘high rise’ and ‘low rise’?

I attended the Planning Committee meeting (fall 2010) at which Soho Champagne was approved, and the story then was a declining height as one went north from Carling, but that may be worth the paper it’s (not) written on.

It is hard to tell just what this planning application is supposed to do. Is it to embarrass the planning dept which is struggling with conflicting plans, ad hoc directions from the planning committee, and superimposed decisions from the OMB? Why couldn’t a working coffee session with the head of planning and Hume sort out just what the direction is?

The application has other zingers in it. They ridicule the notion, outlined in the plan, that the area northwest of their site (ie Champagne and Young, immediately south of the Queensway) could ever be developed as low rise. Yup, in their mind, it definitely needs high rise there.

Except … Ashcroft’s planners don’t seem to have actually visited the site in the last nine months since those very lots they ridicule as being developed as low rise are now ready to have residents move in to their new townhouses, semi’s, and singles. Oops.

vacant lands at Champagne and Young, near the Qway, have already sprouted townhouses and semi's since this picture was taken in the summer

Here is the best sketch I could find in the application as to what Ashcroft is actually proposing:

This is the view from some unknown height off in the northwest. Eve Trembly park is shown on the left, then Ashcroft’s Siamese towers, and running off to the far right is Soho Champagne and Hom condo towers. Ashcroft’s best views will be of the park, and north. Soho Champagne’s best views will be south, towards Dow’s Lake. Who knows who will be attracted to the back sides of each building which offers views of the next building.

They propose 250 units, although I found that out from the transportation plan rather than the planning plan. And their garage will have either 275 or 175 parking spaces, depending on which page you refer to. As further evidence that the plans have been somewhat rushed, the site drawing on pg 3 is actually of Ashcroft’s Central Park site on Merivale Road rather than the Champagne site. Details, details!

The proponent has put forward an alternative to the tower-on-a-podium model that City planners love so much. There are already two tower+podium designs already approved for the street – Hom and Soho Champagne. (The existing CMPA office towers in pinkish granite are done in the office-building-in-a-park model popular two decades ago, and Domicile’s existing two towers simply rise out of the ground sans podium, although the bottom two floors are done in white faux stone instead of brick).

Instead, Ashcroft suggests his towers will have no podium, and an absolutely minimal base structure at all. The largely ground level space will then become a piazza, park, and pedestrian composition that will allow circulation through and over the site in all directions. The site would become a virtual extension of Tremblay Park.  The actual condos would only start on the fourth floor up.

Alas, there is no sketch as to whether they plan a building on pilotis, or some cantilevered structure. Or maybe they envision something like the 13th Federal Reserve building Minneapolis *, which is held up like a suspension bridge over a huge concrete plaza. Or something like the old BC Hydro building in Vancouver (now condos) which had only the elevator at the ground level and everything else hung down from the top of the elevator shaft so as to truly free up the ground level.

The planning rationale is short on some other details too. 

The traffic study is more complete, since Delcan has done all the other traffic studies for the adjacent sites. This makes a lot of sense, since the traffic report includes the impact of each proposed building and project separately and together.

Adjacent residents usually jump up in horror at the traffic impacts of infill. Alas, the impact of traffic is usually way less than feared. As the study shows, an over-estimate of the generated traffic shows Sherwood Drive getting all of one new car per two minutes, at the rush hour, and then only at the one east-most block. (Sherwood residents have a street designed for cut-through traffic, as it runs to the Parkdale/Queensway on-ramps, and indeed 50% of the traffic on Sherwood is using it as a through street. Something could be done about that, but the condos are not going to make the problem significantly worse).

I did note with interest that the intersection of Carling and Champagne has traffic lights, although these are not warranted by the current volume of traffic. As a result, the operation of the signals is paid for by the CMPA in the adjacent office park (your medicare dollars at work…).  It is unclear from the traffic study if the signals will be warranted in the future once all the condos are built.

Indeed, Carling Avenue is so under-capacity that the plan notes that it could be reduced to four lanes and no one would notice. This of course, was the position of the PAC on the upcoming Carling reconstruction, where we pointed out the section from Bronson to Preston (3 lanes westbound) has the same traffic as Preston (one lane northbound), so why was the City calling for the widening of Carling in this area? (while it wasn’t a rhetorical question, it still gets no answer from the City).

 So, we have a development application that whines about the conflicting plans, and proposes a sketchy pair of high rises at the old dog pound. I cannot imagine the Planning Committee approving it as is. Presumably the applicant (Ashcroft) tossing something on the table and hoping the City will respond. This is truly one development application worth following, since it tells us so little about what is proposed.

You can read the stuff yourself at

http://app01.ottawa.ca/postingplans/appDetails.jsf?lang=en&appId=__8ODN8V

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* Actually, the former fed.reserve building, now known as Marquette Plaza, was built like a suspension bridge with two elevator towers and the office building is slung between the two towers. The office building itself doesn’t reach the ground.

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Katherine from the Civic Hospital Neighbourhood Assoc sends this convenient summary of the projects:

DEVELOPMENTS NEAR CARLING O-TRAIN STOP
125 Hickory (Mastercraft Starwood)Soho Champagne (not yet under construction)- Town houses and two condominium towers – 16 storeys and 20 storeys. An estimated 342 residential units. 263 parking spaces.
100 Champagne (Domicile) (now under construction) One residential 12 storey apartment building with 94 units. One three storey townhouse dwelling with 6 townhouses. 109 parking spaces. Two car sharing spaces (Vrtucar) and six visitor spaces.

 
330 Loretta / Caring and Breezehill (Domicile) completed - Two buildings. One 8 storey on Breezehill with 66 units. One 10 storey on Loretta with 86 units. A number of townhouses. Shared garage with 160 parking spaces.

855 Carling (Arnon) proposed- Two office towers. One 15 storeys. One 12 storeys. 800 parking spaces.
Note: This may not include changes at the Arnon site due to OMB hearings. Arnon believes it should be allowed to build higher towers. It may also consider building apartments or condos instead of office buildings.
ADDITIONAL VEHICLES IN NEIGHBOURHOOD ONCE ALL DEVELOPMENTS ARE BUILT: 1340
NOT YET APPROVED
101 Champagne (Ashcroft Homes) – A 22 storey building and a 25 storey building right next to Ev Tremblay Park on the former Humane Society site. Approximately 252 condominium units. 175 or 275 parking spaces.
ADDITIONAL VEHICLES IN NEIGHBOURHOOD IF ASHCROFT’S DEVELOPMENT IS APPROVED: 1515 TO 1615

Ode to a bare sidewalk

Friday saw me wandering about a fair bit of the City. The Centrepointe MUP (ped/cyclist path) is plowed in the winter, and there was the imprint of one cyclist. Mind, it was snowing hard at midday, so the evidence of previous cyclists (if any such hardy souls…) was quickly erased.

Later in the afternoon, another cycle track, this time on the Albert Street MUP running along LeBreton Flats:

But the most interesting stroll took me past the Laurier Separated Bike Lane. Now the City did promise to keep it plowed all winter, and boy, do they ever live up to their word on that one! It was the barest pavement in all the downtown. At 3 o’clock there was a cyclist visible every block or so, but most users were peds fed up with the mushy sidewalks.

Laurier SSL - segregated stroller lane, aka the Mommy Track

So if the City can keep the Laurier SBL bare, why not the main sidewalks downtown and along traditional mainstreets? We would certainly see a dramatic uptick in modal shift if pedestrians were encouraged.

But is it better?

A strip of stores in Hintonburg was somewhat attractive before, with a row of bay windows on the second floor, a built-out cornice line, and green-painted brick storefronts below (the block is obviously the result of earlier renovations).

photo courtesy of the google maps time machine

 But with the explosive gentrification of the neighborhood, a property owner decided the place needed a re-do, one that “modernized” the look. (I do wonder what it might have been like if he had gone for a faux-heritage look…does anyone have a heritage photo of the previous storefronts pre 1960′s??)

The first phase to be redone was the west side, facing St Francois Church and Fairmont Avenue:(pic from first week of December)

Notice the cornice is gone, and wood strapping is being nailed onto the exterior, sure sign that a new covering is coming. And… it looks like it more  corrugated metal siding, this time put up horizontally. Corrugated siding is to the current day what aluminum siding was to renovators thirty years ago: ultra economical.

 It is an unfortunate oddity of our tax laws that in cases like this there is no incentive for the landlord to go the expense of adding insulation or draft proofing because he doesn’t pay the utility bills. Most tenants won’t insulate, because they are on short-term leases and won’t see the payback. So older commercial buildings continue to stagger on, uninsulated, drafty, with crappy plumbing.

For this row of buildings, huge gaps appear around the steel beam supporting the second floor, but I saw no evidence of insulation or spray in foam being applied. I guess all that infiltrating air might keep the ole floorboards dry.

The western façade is pretty boring: horizontal siding only, with just a bit of darker siding under the windows. But on the north side, facing West Wellie, some different materials were brought into play. Hardiboard,  man-made synthetic wood panels, have been placed between the window units. This reintroduces a vertical element to the frontage, a sense of rhythm, and some (artificial) warmth:

This commercial strip was a long way from being heritage storefronts, unless 60′s renos are now heritage. Landlords have the right to modernize their facades, if they think that will attract better tenants. Tacky renovations will quickly look dated and sad.

I look forward to seeing some sort of horizontal roof line put back in above the storefronts, although the landlord might go all-modern and leave it stripped off.

Life in older urban neighborhoods is full of change. This project has given employment to sidewalk superintendents and critics.

What do you think of it?

Pedestrians in the snow boldly goes to CBC

I can never tell what is going to appeal to readers.

Sometimes, what I think is great post, gets no comments, and average readership.

Othertimes, a simple post goes viral.

Today’s earlier post was on reading the paths in the snow to determine where pedestrians really want to go. It tickled the fancy of the fine folks at the CBC, so I trudged out through the cold fields of LeBreton Flats talking to a reporter. You can hear my footprints on the noon show today; or maybe again in the  afternoon show.

Progress comes in many disguises.