Monthly Archives: August 2010

What stores turn you on?

Some time ago I went to a city seminar on vitalizing main streets. Speaker was David Engwicht. He gave us many examples of techniques that work. He cited the case of one Australian small city with a less-than-active main street, suffering from too many vacant storefronts. With business people, local residents, academics, landlords, merchants, they walked the street and identified each store front and envisioned what might succeed in that vacancy. Large posters were then put up in the vacant windows, showing people eating ice cream, buying magazines, looking at travel brochures … the sort of activities the locals thought might work. It was a great example of crowd sourcing, since within 18 months there were no vacancies left on the street, and to everyone’s amazement many of the storefronts were occupied by the businesses portrayed in the posters. Thus was reborn a happy mainstreet.

The Preston Business Improvement Assoc (PBIA) is doing something similar. They have engaged experts to do an analysis of what might work, but now they are turning to the local residents. They have dropped 1000 surveys to households in the neighborhood and have an on-line version too:  http://www.prestonstreet.com/survey.php.  They are asking what stores and services we want to see on Preston Street.

To my mind there are some pretty obvious choices: a grocery store, Produce Mart, Farm Boy, or similar would be useful. It would be hard to compete with Loblaws in Westboro for those big grocery runs, but I think a lot of people could do midweek or smaller runs locally. What else?? A magazine store. A greek restaurant with big patio for our endless summer evenings … a liquor store outlet. A big condo development in the vacant block south of Adobe to inject more customers onto the street. What do you think?

To encourage participation, the BIA is offering some $500 shopping certificates to people who fill out the questionaire.

It’s not very often that a BIA turns to crowd-sourcing for retail suggestions, so this is a great opportunity to tell them what you want.

Community Building is Play

Last week playground structures were delivered to the sites at Rochester/Gladstone housing project. Like IKEA furniture, it came with hundreds of pieces and thousands of colour-coded screws and bolts and flanges and washers and mysterious extra pieces.

The work was so meritorious, volunteers came from as far away as Beijing to spend a few hours working. Actually, the work crew from Beijing returned to painting the Chinatown Royal Arch later in the morning.

Allen key? Allen key! Who’s got the Allen key?? IKEA definitely has better instruction sheets.

Look for the Made in China tag; assembled in Canada by Chinese workers…

Evidence of a healthy and happy workplace where work is child’s play.

Many hands eventually make a roof.

Shovelling can be done in many conditions and circumstances.

A snakes and ladders sidewalk game is spray painted onto the pavement. Everyone breathe but don’t inhale!

 

 

 

 

Volunteers from St Luke’s and  from St Mathias 32nd Brownie Pack

 Volunteers from Adobe, in Action; and overweight volunteer assigned to hold down a troublesome retaining wall.

 

Insert blue-dyed left-hand threaded 13.8mm bolt into lock-nut #6 using left-handed monkey wrench turned counter-clockwise …

Mr Tilly could have been a sponsor, there were so many Tilly-style hats in evidence.

Children inspect the finished structure.

Many thanks to the hundreds of volunteers who worked to make Dalhousie a better place for their neighbours. Isn’t west side Ottawa just the best place to live?

Making sidewalks safer

 

Perhaps I should clarify: this is about making sidewalks safer for pedestrians. Not motorists.

All too often, the city makes sidewalks unpleasant appendages to the real users of the public right of way, the all-important motorist. The city directs traffic to travel at high speed mere inches away from pedestrians. The city then uses the space at the edge of the road to collect water, salt, slush, snow, and debris, all well-located and handy for hurling at pedestrians. Pedestrians are not only made to feel unwelcome, but feel their safety is at risk. And let’s not revisit the roller-coaster sidewalk slopes designed for motorist convenience and pedestrian falls.

Why does anyone walk in a city designed to make it so unpleasant?

Occasionally, the city does something to make the pedestrian world better: for example, go to Preston Street, or West Wellie, for sidewalks that are a joy to walk on.  But for every example of an improvement, there are ten more Bronsons where the city is determined to make pedestrian life  hell and  to make peds suffer. And continue to suffer. And then suffer some more.

I had noticed the planter-barriers along Isabella near Loblaws before, but always when cycling along the street (NOT fun!) and unable to stop. Last week, I stopped. And looked. And walked both ways. What a joy! The concrete planters are large enough to feel like a real barrier between the sidewalk and road. Being a pedestrian actually feels safe here. I presume the barriers block some salt and slush spray. This area is no pedestrian nirvana, but the planters do work to improve an awful street.

The planters aren’t big enough for trees, but a similar set of planters will be going in on Somerset in 2011 as it slopes up towards the O-Train overpass. For these, the city planner and landscape architect worked to incorporate  trees.

The planters take up about 36″ of space; and are set back only about 8″ from the curb. The close proximity of the concrete wall to the travelled portion of the road helps “narrow” the road visually and might even calm traffic flow. As a fairly timid elderly cyclist, the planters did not intimidate me. There are similar planter installations on Rideau Street which also serve to separate busy sidewalks from the wall of buses on Rideau.

Shrubs and annuals are in the planters. The new ones for Somerset will be a similar height, but because of the slope of street, one end of the planter will be about 30″ above the sidewalk and the other end about 12″ (the planters “step” up the sloped street). The Somerset planters have been designed for locust trees, as used on the rest of Somerset through Chinatown.

Thick enough concrete and solid-looking enough to intimidate motorists. Not the common characteristic of the pedestrians and elderly people usually directed to position themselves by the curb.

On Somerset, city planners asked the community to choose between a wider sidewalk with standard curb, or a narrower sidewalk with the planter amenity. The planter option won hands down, in part due to the exposed elevation of Somerset near the O-Train.

Could I ever hope … pray … fantasize that the Bronson planners might ask pedestrians for what they want along Bronson? A planted boulevard, even if it’s in a box, might be a lot better than anything yet on the table for that troubled mainstreet.

To close, here’s an even more extreme version of what a sidewalk-side wall and planter beyond could look like: (hey, if the city wants fake trees on Bronson, maybe they could be palms…)

Chinatown Arch being foiled …

 

Wednesday, August 25, 2010
 
The huge Chinatown Royal Arch on Somerset Street is being decorated with real gold foil by Chinese artisans. The finished results are stunning, and the process itself is well worth a look.
 
This is the same posting as on my OttawaChinatownRoyalArch.blogspot.com site. I try not to crosspost much, but this story is so interesting, I wanted to make sure readers of WSA get to see the post. And yes, I was up on the top level of scaffolding, 33′ above street level, guest of the Chinatown BIA.  Over the next several days, the OttawaChinatownRoyalArch.blogspot site will have more postings of the decorating process. I took well over a hundred pictures, surely I got some usable ones out that!
 
 
Many of the elements of the Chinatown Royal Arch are decorated in real gold. The gold is applied in a foil format (not paint). The incredibly thin sheets of gold leaf come on carier sheets of heavier parchment. Each larger sheet is cut on site down to a smaller 1″ x 5″ size. The artisan uses wooden tweezers to pick up  5″ strips of gold :

 

 
Artisan holds the sheet over the area to be foiled. He then rubs the backing to transfer the gold foil to the arch:
 
 
 
The carrier sheet flutters away in the breeze. Notice how the gold leaf covers too much area and is not yet the final shape:
 
  
  
  
 
Applying the gold foil to the scroll work on a piece of (concrete) bamboo:

 

After pressing the foil into place, the excess bits are wiped off with a piece of cheesecloth. I caught some of the bits waffing in the air, and ate them. Gold leaf (presumably in small quantities) is supposedly good for you, I learned that from a Vegas chef at a cooking lesson where we applied bits of gold leaf to our Japanese icecream deserts: 

  

 

The finished scroll work. It should stay bright for about 100 years. Rain will wash over it and keep it clean:

Gold leaf sheets are available at craft and art supply stores for those who want to try this at home.

Bike Post on Somerset

The City is reusing about 12% of its retireing parking meter posts as bike posts. Here is one of those rare items on Somerset Street near Rochester.

I frequently hear from the cycling fraternity that cyclists aren’t supposed to ride their bike across a street using the painted crosswalk. These crosswalks are for pedestrians only. This, despite numerous city cycling multipurpose paths — including brand new ones — ending right smack dab at the crosswalk, just begging the cyclist to cross here.

So, I would appreciate if someone could send me the quotation from the appropriate legislation identifying the offence.

And then I would appreciate a similar quote saying it’s right and proper to park a bicycle (surely its a vehicle under the act …)  on a sidewalk. We don’t invite cars onto sidewalks …

Transportation Committee approves Otrain corridor bike path

Transportation Committee today approved a series of bike route improvements for 2011. There are five off-road paths that were approved:

  • The Otrain corridor linking the  Ottawa River paths near Bayview Station south to Carling Avenue and Prince of Wales Drive
  • Rideau River western pathway from Belmont to UofO Lees Campus
  • Sawmill Creek, Brookfield to Walkley
  • Hampton Park pathway from Sebring to Island Park/Merivale
  • Aviation Pathway, Innis to Prescott-Russell rail corridor pathway

The projects were approved unanimously by the committee, and go to full Council on Wednesday, to be included in the 2011 budget. Of course, they could still be cut back at the final budget stage, but the situation right now is promising.

The Otrain corridor pathway starts at the NCC Ottawa River pathway at the foot of the Prince of Wales bridge. It will go through the Otrain station then south to Somerset. It will pass under Somerset in a new underpass  being installed there as part of the 2011-12 reconstruction of Somerset Street.  From there, it rises up gently to cross Gladstone at grade. South of Gladstone it passes through a wooded area, the St Anthony parking lot, and uses existing underpasses under the Qway. From there south, it is merely a matter of widening the existing cinder path (shown in picture above). At Carling, there would be a crossing signal installed (someday, if the LRT underpass is widened/replaced, it would be great to get a cycling underpass under Carling). Somehow, the path continues to Prince of Wales where cyclists can use the on-road lane, go south through the arboretum paths, or east on the Dows Lake paths. Total cost is expected to be around 3.2 million, about half of which is for the underpass & connections at Somerset.

The Preston BIA is excited about the path as a means of bringing additional customers and tourists to Preston Street – it is a joy to see a business group encouraging cycling and seeing cyclists as customers as opposed to being nuisances. I did a series of posts earlier this year under the title Cyclopiste de Preston, which you can see by using the search button. Those posts covered the route and some of the issues.

I hope the city will hold public consultations early in the draft plan stage before the details get locked down. The community association, BIA, cycling groups, ped groups, will all have wishes to be accommodated to make this a successful multi-purpose path (all city cycling paths are multipurpose paths). Key items will include street crossing signals, grades, lighting, and tree thinning (parts of the route feel isolated today … but with rapid redevelopment going on, the path will soon be very urban).

Our Lady of the Condos attracts attention of MSM

Last week, I wrote an update on the Richmond Road redevelopment proposals for the former convent site. Today, the MSM “breaks” the story. Read all about it in the Citizen today. Interestingly, they skirt around the back half of the site (the south side) where the review panel had some more controversial bits about “consolidating” the two four storey structures into one (presumably higher?) building. And no mention of the Byron Road access.