Monthly Archives: August 2009

Bore Hole Drilling at City Centre Complex

The City Centre complex is a combo office tower and industrial bays located on City Centre Avenue just east of and south of Bayview Station. Built in 1960 as part of the federal-funded railway relocation project, it was a intermodal terminal for offloading rail cars onto delivery trucks. Now it is industrial bays, with a surprisingly large number of printers located there. The largest tennant in the whole complex is my old company, Cielo Print.
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All last week there were two drilling rigs working the parking lot, drilling bore holes around the perimeter of the parking lot along City Centre Avenue and up close to the building. Surely, after so many delays, the owner, Equity Management, isn’t planning to resurrect the 2 million square foot office-residential already-approved plans for the site?
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Or maybe they are just drilling for other purposes. Whatever, the project is unlikely to appear soon since it depends on a decided transitway LRT alignment and Otrain right of way project, both of which the City seems unable to make its mind upon. In any case, the tennants do not have demolition clauses in their leases, so it could easily take a decade to vacate the bays.
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The plans made a 15 years ago had the first (smallest) tower being built in the parking lot east of the existing tower, so no demoliton was necessary. Tower 2 was to be at the south end of the parking lot along Somerset, and only it or tower 3 actually required demolishing the southmost bays in order to proceed. More problematic, is who would rent all this space with the industrial uses still scattered amongst the new towers.
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Note that Phoenix DCR bought the vacant triangle of land to the north, 801 Albert Street, and is pushing the city for approval to build two 30 storey condo towers. Most motorists and passersby do not realize how very close this site is to the Ottawa River (Nepean Bay, unfortunately a lot of it was filled in while implementing Greber’s plans) which means great views from the condo.
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The whole beehive of interest in this area (recall earlier posts on Arnon’s proposed developments at the 855 Carling end of the Otrain corridor) reminds of me of the City’s dumb decision to postpone the Carling – Bayview CDP which was to implement a coherent zoning and development vision for this whole underutilized corridor. Rumours abound the CDP is getting back on track, but nothing is firm yet.

Why Not Ask First? We May Have Other Plans!

There’s a lot of hoopla in the mainstream media these days with everybody and their brother popping up with new plans for Lansdowne Park.

The alternative plans tend to share some elements in common:

The Glebe will get a big grassy and treed park. Someone else’s money will restore some older, architecturally significant buildings into marvellous wonders for the local neighborhood. Locals will wander in on bicycles and by foot to buy directly from the friendly farmer locally-grown no-downside produce. After that they can linger by Venetian canals sipping coffee from organically grown (in the shade) responsibility harvested 100 mile coffee beans, while the breeze waffles in the gentle strains of the NAC orchestra playing in the park. Tourists come (by transit, of course, or maybe electric vaporettos or bixi bikes) to wander, mouths agape, at the wonder that is the heart of The Glebe. The vital canal side sidewalks are enlived by the thousands of residents who live in the park … except for the plans that insist no one may live in the park, unless maybe they are renters.

Gone will be the football stadium, soccer stadium, and outdoor concert venue. Where did they go? Over to Bayview, of course. Nothing attracts amateur planners like a big “empty” lot.

What happens to the plans already in place for that neighborhood? What happened to their plans for lively cafes along an historic aquaduct? Fun riverside walks? Vital mixed income condo developments? Ethnic shopping nirvana?

Gone. Replaced by a giant stadium or stadii, deafened by outdoor concerts, swarmed by hodes or car parkers (not everyone will arrive and depart by magically silent bullfrog-powered transit). For most days and evenings, the stadium areas will be vacant wideswept voids, interrupted by tractor trailer bays and large parking structures (pressed into cost-recovery use as park and ride facilities to encourage car commuters to drive to the edge of the downtown core and take free transit…).

Oh, think maybe the locals might prefer the “other plans” already developed and approved by Council and subject to subdivision agreements and into which millions of tax dollars in infrastructure development and land remediation have already been poured? Well, here, toss them a library building, now that’s an intellectual+jock=happy formula. Nevermind that the City already has a new library on track, approved land purchase, and has a library board and ward councillor opposed to moving to Bayview, well they can be changed, just a triffling issue.

Too much of the Lansdowne Park dreaming seems hinged on dreams of the Glebe getting a urban area high-culture park to foster their Florida-inspired nirvana while fobbing off the noisy and troublesome stuff to another neighborhood, without bothering to ask if the recipients of all this largesse want it.

Just for the record, I am not totally opposed to the idea of a utopian-dream stadium at Bayview, but I am sure concerned about what sort of stadium the neighborhood would actually end up with.

Exercise and Drugs

While cycling home from the Parkdale Market the other day I tried to avoid both West Wellington and Scott due to the construction. This took me through the centre of Hintonburg, past a fireplace store.

I came accross one guy on a bike, the other on roller blades. Cyclist had a pager.

Roller blader: puff puff, “He wasn’t there.”
Cyclist: “he must be, he just called five minutes ago” (holds up pager).
Roller blader: “want me to go back?”
Cyclist: “naw, gotta another call” (cites address).
Blader skates off madly down another street.
Cyclist: checks pager, heads west at a fast clip.

Now what these two gents were doing could be totally innocent. I am sure many 30-40year old scruffy males enjoy cycling and roller blading. Or maybe they were mixing “business” with exercise or economical transportation. Whatever, it was low carbon footprint and will positively reflect on Stats Can surveys about mode of transport to employment in inner city neighborhoods.

Knock Knock, Ottawa Police

While creating the following post on double-tracked pathways in Toronto (punnily entitled: InAction), there came a knock at the front door of my house. Two Ottawa police persons were there, giving competition to the UPS men in short pants category. One officer was hanging off the end of my verandah to peer over my driveway gate, which is 7’6″ high.

The cause: my elderly Cdn tire 6speed commuter bike was parked in my driveway, the front door of the house was open (although the glass aluminum door was locked). It seems there is a burglar active in our area, age 35-45, druggy-skinny, scruffy, riding an old bike. They advised I call 9-1-1 if seen, regardless of what he is doing, and the police will check it out. It looked to the police officers that they may have stumbled onto a b&e in action. No such luck for them, however, and after a social chat, they wandered off. On foot. No police car in sight.

I then realized that it must be fairly serious for the dept to have two constables on foot wandering around the neighborhood hoping to catch a burglar in action. Of course there are other benefits to having them foot patrol residential streets, but the rarity of this impressed me that the b&e’s must be awfully frequent and blatant to warrant this response.

In 25 years, we have had only one b&e, which my (then) seven year old son interrupted in progress. Since then, the front window has been nailed shut and a driveway gate constructed. I maintain I live on a very safe street, and in a safe spot on said safe street. Nonetheless, resident vigilance is required (and this is not blaming the victim).

Separate Bike Path InAction


from left: gravel path, asphalt path, concrete walk


note the wide wide curbs on the bike path and jogging path

Before we spend lots of money double-tracking bike and pedestrian paths, it is important to know if double tracking is warranted and if it works where tried elsewhere. I am not opposed to double paths, but I want to know that the expenditure would be worth it, both for the paths and compared to alternative uses of the money.
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Pictured are two views of the same path in Toronto. Click to enlarge. There are actually three paths here: a concrete sidewalk, about 5′ wide; an asphalt path about 8′ wide, and a gravel path about 3′ wide. The gravel path is separated from the other paths by a boulevard of grass and sometimes trees.
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We walked on the asphalt part. Cyclists rode on the asphalt part, or the gravel part. Runners ran on the asphalt or gravel. No one favoured the concrete squares. This is based on only 15 minutes observation:

1. no signage indicated which path was for which user
2. every type of user used every type of path
3. it did not reduce conflict except by diluting traffic over a broader range of path
4. no self selection of path type was apparent except everyone avoided the concrete path
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I was really puzzled by the obvious expense of installing really wide curbs along the asphalt and gravel paths. The curbs, flush with the surface, were twice as wide as regular roadside curbs that corral traffic and buses, and about a foot deep. Why were they so big, and why were they there at all? Surely 2″x8″deep precast concrete curb pieces would have done just as well.

Decapitated

I came across a row of decapitated parking meters on Lisgar Street on Sunday morning. If you look closely the green arched hood of the unit has been forced up, possibly with a pry tool. The coin mechanism was then lifted out, and the coins removed. The mechanisms can be seen disgarded in the shrubs in the background.

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At one time parking meters were located between the pedestrian and the curb line, which helped separate pedestrians from vehicular traffic. Now, all the meters are located on the far side of the sidewalk, forcing the pedestrians to walk on the zone considered too dangerous to locate innanimate parking meters and where snow is “stored” in the winter.

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When the city switches to pay and display central parking kiosks on a post next year (?) will the larger kiosk go on the curb side, or will it be on the far side where it offers more obstruction to the pedestrian? Since our city insists on calling these obstructions “street furniture” my bet is they will get the prime space and pedestrians the left over space.