Monthly Archives: July 2011

Air rights over the transitway/LRT

Councilor Katherine Hobbs is in the news for asking the City to examine developing the air rights over the west side part of the transitway/LRT line.

I have a bunch of mutually contradictory thoughts on this.

1. The City should sell air rights to help pay for the transitway. Taxpayers are forking out a bundle of money for a transit line, we can recoup some of that expenditure by selling prime access to the most-accessible locations in the city.

Otherwise, many of the development benefits go to the builders on adjacent lands. In some cases, these are private developers; in the case of LeBreton Flats and Bayview Yards, these are “public” developers.

But if it is so desirous the City develop land over the transitway … why is it so slow and reluctant to develop lands it already owns that are adjacent to the stations? (see above locations … plus the huge swaths of unused or underdeveloped lands at the Carling O-train station, Confederation Heights, Westboro station, etc etc). Surely adjacent lands are cheaper and easier to develop right now…

2. I have been critical in past postings, and generally cheered on by readers, about the “donut” style of the proposed LRT Stations. If you look at a “future build out” scenario around each station, all the high rises form a ring around the station (on someone else’s land)  but the station itself is the hole in the donut. City land remains the least-built-out, least-return-on-the-dollar site in these accessibility meccas. Yeah, we get increased tax base, but…

(And to be fair, it is not just transit stations that are underbuilt. Many city buildings are extraordinarily wasteful of land. City Hall, for example, could have had a very lively pedestrian street through the building if it also served as the entrance to one or two land-rent-producing condo towers above. Alas, another  suggestion gone unheeded…).

City and Federal bureaucrats seem to prefer single uses of land. Parks over there, roads here, condos over there, talk about mixed use and integration but for simplicity always deliver mono-uses of land. It’s easier that way. There is nothing so complicated as getting bureaucratic silos to cooperate, let alone do something. It is best to restrict air right developments and other nifty ideas to vague architectural sketches used to sell the plan, and then pull a bait-and-switch to deliver same-old unimaginative stuff.

3. A word on building over the LRT tracks. High rise buildings tend to have their supporting pillars about 18′ apart. This is the preferred distance for our current concrete and steel building technologies. Eighteen feet is inadequate to span two tracks. So if the tracks are set close together, some sort of thick bridging beam is required to span the tracks and hold up the building above. For reasons already explained by the LRT teams at public meetings, the resulting building functionality is severely compromised by the thick beam, while simultaneously being expensive.

 Some earlier versions of the current LRT plan showed the tracks running through the Flats but separated by a few meters. This would permit a row of pilotis or building pillars to go between the tracks, so that buildings could be constructed above them. But this concept has been refined out of the current plan. It looks pretty obvious that the site developer (NCC)  decided it wasn’t economic to build over the tracks, preferring instead to build cl0se up to them.

Now all that could change if the land becomes much more valuable (air rights are valuable in NYC, but new condos there go for $3000/ft rather than the $420 foot here). So maybe it would be worthwhile to plan for future air rights buildings, to be constructed when economic. Provided, of course, human nature changes and the adjacent condo dwellers forego NIMBYism when their views get blocked.

In theory, Hobbs could get buildings over the Scott trench supported on giant beams traversing the cut. These buildings cannot be built on pillars supported between the tracks, because as Hobbs well knows, there is a giant square sewer box under the tracks. See for example, this early 2011 sketch of the Tunney’s Station, which shows much of the trench with the sewer box, and no, you can’t build new pillars right beside it.

4. The suggestion we build on the air rights assumes that there is no other use for the space, ie that it is wasted or underused. As underdeveloped as the Scott Street trench is, it is a green spine that is every bit as useful as an Official City Park, sitting off in segregated splendor. McKellerites like the Byron linear park, west side residents might put some value on the Scott corridor.

See, for example, the BikeWest proposal. It would upgrade the primitive path along the north sides of Albert and Scott to a proper bi-directional bike route that would extend due west of the downtown core to Westboro (and extendable beyond). With safer, modern intersection designs there is every reason to expect this path to become a major active transportation link to the core, for 100,000 people living on the west side. Putting buildings on the space is likely to kill BikeWest, or at least render it unattractive to users if it is constantly dodging pillars and garage ramps.

5. Politicians have images to protect and polish. If a politician only reacts to events, they will usually be on the defensive. Other parties are setting the agenda, often parties affiliated with another politician. So it makes sense to be pro-active from time to time. What better way to enliven a slow news month than by demanding staff produce a report on air rights. So glamorous and futuristic, and progressive. Cynical as I am about her motives for asking for the report, it is one that should have been done much earlier.

My cynicism is tempered by the experience of attending LRT planning sessions. Hobbs and Holmes are the only two councilors to regularly attend these sessions or send staff to them. This is to their credit. But then a councillor could easily find out about air rights by simply asking staff at a meeting about them ( public attendees do, frequently). So is the Hobbs inquiry crass politics, or good public policy, or both?

6. Air rights might be an idea always brought up but seldom deliverable.

If development occurs over an open/unused/underused space, then it spoils a view (see, for example, the still-complained-about Pan Am/Met Life building in NYC).

In Boston, the “big dig” that buried a downtown core freeway could have recovered some of its cost overruns by selling air rights … but instead got developed as a sterile and astoundingly underused Rose Kennedy park, an open space if not a liked space. Recall that an Ottawa faction (spokesperson: Senator Mac Harb ) wanted to keep LeBreton Flats all “green space” — trot out usual argument here about lack of neighborhood park space…

Hobbs is not yet offering west enders a good bargain. If it was development ONLY over the transitway, then neighbours might be interested. Instead, they know it is development there AND throughout the neighborhood.

So it is in their own interest to oppose air rights development in favour of open space. We’ll call it park land and a green spine or a linear park, until some other day when it gets chewed up for a road widening or new transit. Earlier suggestions from this blog that parts of the Scott and O-Train trenches be covered over as the easiest and perhaps cheapest way to get additional park land for the City have fallen on deaf ears. Covering the trench is only feasible for affluent neighborhoods.

A proper inquiry about air rights has to consider what we might want to put above the transitway, and why, then cost it out.

 

Development charges and misleading headlines

Today’s Citizen has a story on development charges. The headline, picture,  and first part of the story emphasizes how much of the development charges will pay for transit.

Buried deeper in the story, and not all that easy to spot, is this bit:

But in general, fees for new roads are far and away the biggest chunk of any of the charges: for a new house inside the Greenbelt,You can read the whole story here: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/City+Ottawa+boosting+development+charges+transit+costs/5167823/story.html#ixzz1TPDX3NqW
 
 
 
 

Do you notice that the headline doesn’t read “rampant road construction boosts housing costs?”  There is no picture of Terry Fox extension or other intersections growing like tumours on the urban body.

Why does the Citizen emphasize transit costs but not road costs? Why is transit responsible for unaffordable housing but low density sprawl isn’t? Is it just a cheap pandering to controversy, to conflict, a hook to get the reader, by driving wedges and promoting grievances between different parts of the population?

Because it sure doesn’t put education and enlightenment first.

Concrete images

Many years ago the maze of pathways around the Portage Bridge were designed with a number of landings, lookouts, or other flats spots. I once heard that these were for sculptures.

Trivia fans may recall that at the time of construction, the proposed site for the new National Art Gallery was between Archives and the Supreme Court. The building would both face Wellington Street and spill down the cliff and have another face towards the river, in an area of prime waterfront that is still just another parking lot. So having a sculpture walk makes some sense.

It may be 30 years late, but some artwork has finally appeared. There is an exhibit called EcoArt installed on a number of the concrete walls. They are photographs, enlarged and printed on some transfer material, and bonded to the concrete walls.

The images were used last winter along the Rideau Canal; and will be displayed in the Portage area until October.

My rules vs your rules

Yes, dealing with the City (and the BIA’s, the Community Associations, the Councilors, neighbours… you name it) can be frustrating. I persevere, joining traffic studies and public advisory committees because sometimes we “win”, ie speaking up effects a change or improvement in a project.

But it can be terribly frustrating. The City is an impenetrable maze of rules and standards for any occasion.

Too many times to count we are told “you can’t have that” because it violates some engineering code, or bylaw, or whatever. Only to turn around and see that violation employed somewhere else or to get the opposite of what we wanted.

For example, lane widths are sacred. We can’t have a substandard lane if we beg for it. But, shrug, the City cheerfully goes ahead and installs them, on a blind hill no less, and cheerfully tells us motorists “will have to get used to it”.

Rescue Bronson is currently at a bit of a standoff with the consulting engineers because they claim the exit lane from an intersection must align with the entry lane. Anyone can see dozens of “violations” of this rule any day. “Ah” they reply, “but those are existing conditions. You can’t put one of those in new…” Of course, a bit of searching will find that done somewhere else in the city because the engineers thought it convenient to do so when it suited their own interests.

The pic above shows the new pedestrian (-and-intrepid-cyclist) boardwalk under construction to bypass the hole about to dug in Somerset Street by the O-Train underpass, where a bike underpass is to be inserted. Notice that the safety railing for the road has been dismantled. Must have been convenient for the contractor.

I cannot convince you, gentle reader, because you would never believe me, how many hours of design committee meetings were spent on that %*^!! railing. It can’t be changed or modified, the City claimed, in dismissing what we wanted. It would be too expensive to change. Then, ah ha! almost a million buck budget line appears to install a new railing, because the City decides it wants it. Hours are spent consulting on the picket design, the aesthetics, whether to paint it black or leave it galvanized… only to find at the last minute that the budget was being cut, and the new railing is out, and old one back. And the things we wanted, but couldn’t get because the railing couldn’t be modified … well, they seem to be back on track to being installed, using the old railing.

The City can be amazingly flexible. When pushed. Persistence, polite persistence, pays off. Don’t give up, never let the bastards grind you down.

Road improvement only temporary

The City repaved Somerset west of Preston this morning.

Don’t get too excited though. It’s just short term improvement change followed by more disruption. The section of Somerset further west, near Bayswater, is not ready for paving yet.

The newly paved section will be striped next week as a two-way cul-de-sac street, ending at Musca’s. There will be no vehicular traffic, east or west, over the O-Train bridge, starting in August. The road will be completely dug out to insert a new underpass, for the north-south cycling route that parallels the east side of the O-train corridor.

The contractor will keep the bridge open for pedestrians (and intrepid cyclists) on its south side.

The underpass will be completed sometime in late August or mid-September. Once everything is repaved, the road will be restriped as a two way street again.

Yucca gardening in Ottawa

Several years ago I became aware of Yucca plants. Once aware of them, I started noticing them everywhere.

These have heavy spiked leaves at the bottom, and once a year send up a spectacular bloom stalk. Despite being a cactus-type plant, they survive the winters here if left outdoors.

The yucca shown above is on Spruce Street, but the blooms have now fallen off. The bloom stalk was about 7′ tall:

March of the High Rises

The City has recently seen a spate of high rise applications and project announcements. Claridge has a number of downtown high rises in the high 20- storey range: beside Bell Canada, on Nepean and Gloucester, and on Queen at Lyon (currently Barbarella’s and a parking lot).

There are taller applications too. The first out of the gate* was Soho Italia, proposed for 500 Preston Street near Dow’s Lake.

The Soho Italia structure is notable for several features: most of the parking garage is above grade (about 7 stories of it) clad in a perforated black metal screen; the building rises straight up occupying all of its small lot; the builder anticipates sec 37 “community benefits” and tries to proactively offer a “cultural centre” space on part of the lobby level and basement and via a large screen TV on the south side.

The lot here is so small the original undulating façade only fits on it “on average” — the ‘out’ part of the waves extend over the City street while the ‘in’ part of the waves is entirely within the lot, leaving a tiny bit of their air unbuilt and thus justifying using the City’s air space.

The builder has submitted the rezoning application and its application has been deemed complete.  The application went on technical circulation last week.  I suspect the Soho Italia will have a reasonable chance at approval, albeit a bit scaled down by the end (personally I’d rather the tower be made thinner and left 35 stories tall rather than be left its current bulk but a few stories shorter).

The arguments for the rezoning relate to its proximity to a main road arterial (access) and the Carling O-Train station. It is on a traditional main street, which provides shopping amenities (alas, no grocery store yet…) and needs neighbors.

Those arguments are generic to any location within the prime walking radius of any rapid transit station. If the Soho Italia wins its case, then the template will have been set for very intense development around every transit station. The land rush will be “on”.

Right out of the gate following Soho Italia will be Claridge, who has been propsecting  land along the OTrain at Somerset,  and Westboro Station (Claridge is somewhat late to the Richmond Road land grab, but there are still lots of sites left). If 35 stories is approved for Soho Italia, I fully expect them to go back to demand their downtown lots to be retroactively increased to the same height. Phoenix is already talking to the City about 30+ storey developments by the Bayview Station.

Immediately north of Parkdale Market is a proposal for another high rise:

When viewed from the south, the building looks very large, but from the north, or that helicopter view loved by developers and planners, it seems rather in scale with the high rises already build along Parkdale at Scott and the cluster of office buildings at Tunney’s (of which a whole bunch more are coming, not all of them to be located on the northwest quadrant of the Pasture). Did I mention it is but a short stroll to the Tunney’s LRT station?

OMB approval is written all over this, as it is compliant with the Official Plan, although not the loop-hole-ridden neighborhood plan.

A few days ago I was on a panel discussing Ottawa’s planning, and fellow panelist George Dark, who is frequently consulted by the City, noted that the City has been lax in identifying intensification areas related to the LRT. I disagreed. Each of those 10-minute walk circles drawn around the stations is the rezoning target, but the City lacks the guts to come out and say so. (Indeed, when the original transitway was built in the 80′s, the City outright promised ajacent neighborhoods their would be no upzoning, which is why, 30 years later, there has been so little development along the transitway).

Planning should be about forecasting the future, and letting people know what is likely to change. In those aspects, the Official Plan is clear: Intensification. Big time. A string of high density residential and employment nodes along the transitway. But on the mechanism for achieving that, the City is silent. Better to avoid controversy. Blame it on the OMB, or greedy developers.

I made the point with Dark and the Spacing audience last week that if the City proactively identifies the degree of intensification that will follow the LRT routes, then the routes themselves become a real problem to identify since the NIMBY forces will be opposing transit because of the intensification that follows. It makes chosing the best route difficult if some of the proponents favour a route mainly because it is far from where they live (we already experienced this on the western LRT study).

Upzoning makes locals unhappy. A courageous City would face the music, and make the plans. A timid City sets the stagework behind the scenes, and disclaims responsibility as the play unfolds. In Ottawa, the land rush is on, the greediest and boldest will win. Them’s the rules.  

The losers in that scenario are not just the existing locals. Instead of the City planning for an intense node, for example at Carling/O-Train, so that most towers get a slice of the view, and there is some graduated heights, and a pleasant main street atmosphere, there is instead a winner take all situation, where the biggest blockiest tower that obscures those behind gets the prime dollars and everyone else gets second best. Soho Champagne only wins until the next guy builds another tower between it and the view.

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*I ignore the Minto building beside Westboro Station, already the City’s tallest condo and a good indicator of the size and height of the proposed new condomania. It got its height not solely because of its proximity to transit, but in part as a trade-off for lower-rise development around it. The new applicants aren’t bothering with low rise stuff, they want tall.