Monthly Archives: November 2011

Highway to Heaven Marked with Big Red X’s

Congregants at the Peace Tower Church on Bronson face a difficult road to heaven. The way needs to be proclaimed, work must be done, respect paid, songs sung.

The traffic engineers have it easier. Their road is wide, straight, paved, and about to be even wider. Truly a fast road straight to heaven hell.

At the Peace Tower Church, City engineers propose chopping off the main front door steps. And removing the trees on their lawn.

The City hides behind innocuous statements. Like, “minor widening”, or “improvements to lane width”. What does it mean out on the street? Rescue Bronson activists marked the trees the city has decided need to be cut down. Just so you know.

The City’s meeting is at Centennial PS gym off Gloucester Street (behind Bronson Centre) at 6.30 pm on Thursday. Will you tell your children you acquiesced to urban road widening even in the 21st century?

Is it a Syn?

There was a controversy about 18 months ago in the Westboro area about a “perfectly fine house” to be torn down to build a new, larger one. The property owner got their permits, and the house was duly built.

Here’s a google street view of the old house, note the mature hedge along Spencer on the right, and the multiple evergreens:

And here is a pic of the new house, seen from the front. For a corner lot, they did not take any advantage of westerly views. Fenestration on the front façade is minimal:

and the view from the diagonal across the intersection (below). The second floor windows are obscured from the street by a frosted glass balcony railing:

A view of the house from the Spencer St side. This side of the house faces south. Note how many of the windows are tucked into a sort of courtyard balcony. I’ve seen this many times on narrow side yards, but this is a first for a wide open side yard:

The view of the back yard. Tiny windows will keep those rooms from being overly bright. The concrete driveway is huge, and there is a double garage to boot. There is also a roof deck with privacy walls to conceal the users, although I suspect the neighboring yards feel a bit looked-over. The rock garden with regularly spaced pyramids contrasts with the front (rock) garden with global shrubs. This garden really rocks:

The side yard and the front yard are landscaped with Syn grass, an artificial turf. Some think it is ecological as it is made from recycled materials and doesn’t need maintenance. But hey, the fun plastic play structure on the plastic grass keeps the kids clean. Natural materials include the cedar hedge, the generous rock mulches, and the uber-thick fence posts. The whole house is built of sturdy? bulky? fortressy? materials and the love of straight lines.

What at first glance was an infill with the typical modern exterior cladding is revealed, on further inspection, to be very different from neighboring infills and existing houses. There are fewer visible windows, a harder exterior, an alienation from the street and neighborhood. All around it houses are being renovated with bigger windows to bring in the light and views; this house looks very passive-defensive to me.

I wonder what their cottage looks like?

Readers?

Bronson road widening a fait accompli ?

Faithful readers of past postings will be aware of that the City traffic engineers have wet dreams about widening Bronson.

Motorists won’t notice the widening very much at all, since it is modest, about 2 feet wider. But it will make it just that little bit easier to go a little bit faster. Which is surely what the street and neighborhood needs — a faster road. Curiously, the road widening makes the lanes wider than what the City’s own guidelines call for (see table below).

Now you really do have to smile in amusement at the limit of their wet dreams. They only want wider lanes where they can chop out the trees or remove front porches or remove front gardens. They are perfectly content to have narrower lanes at major intersections, such as Gladstone, where they’ve run out of room to eviscerate the neighborhood.

Note also that the additional foot won’t make the street safer for cyclists. The lanes are wa-a-a-y below standard for shared motorists/cyclists; instead cyclists are supposed to use parallel streets such as Percy and Cambridge. All the additional width will do is let cars go faster. Alas, all the community suggestions to make those parallel streets really useful or attractive for cyclists were brushed aside, as being “outside the boundaries of their study zone”. (As noted in previous posts, they were very willing to jump outside their study boundaries when it came to making negative comments about community proposals. Their flexibility is somewhat selective).

So what are the consequences of the proposed widening that gets these traffic boffins so excited? Well, they propose to cut off the stairs to this historic church, as there won’t be enough space for them to come down to the sidewalk:

And this entrance to a house, chop it off! Presumably residents will be issued a ladder or springboard to get from the sidewalk to doorstep (and never, never ever extend your hand out the window or it might get broken off) :

Bronson is a pretty bleak street right now. And the traffic consultants are twitching in sheer delight at the prospect  of removing so many trees to open up sight lines, to enhance public safety, to rid the city of fallen leaves and other traces of nature. They’re doing for the cyclists, remember? Here’s some of the trees they are removing:

(Above trees are ones actually identified by the traffic engineers as ones to be removed. And there are many more…)

And here is Councilor Holmes, shown during a public walkabout with the engineers a few Saturdays ago, standing on the micro-sidewalk by a hedge that is slated to go-go-gone. But don’t worry, the consulting landscape architect tells us, it will be replaced by a new one of 12″ shrubs, set further back.  We’re sure not to notice a thing:

And lastly, here is a picture of a large Russian Olive tree slated for removal in the next few months. No one is going to notice its absence. It will be replaced, the landscaped consultant tells us proudly, with several low-growing shrubs and some of those “columnar trees” which mature at 15-20′ of height and only 5 feet of width,  and look rather like overgrown bushes. That’s progress in traffic-centric Ottawa. Coming up next: the same consultants will be looking at Bronson south of the Queensway, for the next phase. I wonder what gets them excited about the Glebe? Will it be the Official Plan that says we design streets for pedestrians first, cyclists, and transit users, and commuting motorists last? Or can it be the traffic opportunities? Watch out Glebites, you’re next!

The City’s ONLY public consultation event for the Bronson road widening and neighborhood massacre is at 6.30 Thursday, Nov 24th; at Centennial PS in the gym.

Ross Avenue reno (ii)

More photos of a reno on Ross Avenue, in Westboro, this time of the inside.

First, the front entry. The designers view, of course, is that two small spaces in a cut-up front entry have been consolidated into a single larger open space. It sure makes a great first impression when showing the home, but someone the open space with a few hooks on the wall will be a lot less practical when all our junk moves in. Definitely a great look for those who can live minimalistly:

The kitchen was formerly a separate room off to the right of the dining room. I do like the modern trend of opening up the kitchen to adjacent rooms. In this case, the opening is not total, so a modicum of a separate room is maintained. New kitchen floor is cork.

 

typically for an older home, the kitchen needs a major rethink and expensive revamping. The most expensive and awkward thing to relocate is the plumbing, which stayed put. The door to the attached bathroom was closed off; the new entry is tactfully done off the family room:

The view from the dining room to the “family room” addition at the back (facing east) . All traffic in the house went through the dining room. And still does, there isn’t room for a hallway. But now the space opens up and looks a lot more inviting. The kitchen relates equally well to either ‘living’ space at the front or back of the house:

 

Sim Preston: Claridge strikes again

The Soho Italia project by Starwood Mastercraft has been controversial since it first became public knowledge through this blog early in the year. The + or – 35 storey condo tower put a major hole in the established urban plan for the neighborhood and multi-year traditional main street plans. The tower, a short block north of Carling Avenue, is aggressively positioned to maximize views.

Not being in the “first row” along Carling, it runs the risk of being blocked by competing towers should ones be built where the CIBC is, or Dow Motors (whose site has NO height limit on it) or other vacant lots along Carling, all of which have the enviable position of marvelous south views over the Lake and Farm, a huge NCC park at the doorstep, and fine dining and pubbing along Preston. More recently, signals have been insifying from the Feds that some of the Natural Resources Canada lands along Booth and Rochester will up for disposal very soon (like, within a year; soil remediation has been done and we are in the “wait one year” cooling off period). Once approved, the Soho Italia project will have to get shovels in the ground quickly to sell the pieds a ciel before another condo developer announces.

[as an aside, I have several times mentioned to developers or their agents that they should be going after the Sir John Carling Building, which the Feds propose to raze to the ground, even though all the grassy area between it and Carling is already zoned for high rises. The obsolete office building should be gutted, reclad, and sold out as a condo]

The arguments for the Soho Italia project have always been of concern. They will look immensely credible to the OMB. And the proponent is stickhandling the deal through the political process rather than through the planning process, which is much less favorably inclined to the project. These arguments to permit a high rise apply equally well to all the adjacent lots — indeed, they apply to virtually the entire length of Preston.

Imperial Oil, I think,  owns the lot at the NE corner of Preston and Carling. I recall it as one of the very well decorated gas stations at Christmas time, back in the day when businesses did such a thing. The site was decontaminated a little over a year ago, and approved for sale. 

Now Claridge definitely positions itself as a leading condo developer, and is careful to line up a string of developable properties. It has a number of Centretown and West Side sites either approved for development or coming on stream. They own the ex-Chinese supermarket lot at Breezehill and Somerset, immediately north of Devonshire School. They have approved towers in the 28 storey range on Queen and Lyon (3); Nepean and Gloucester (2), and Lisgar just south of Place Bell (where the Big Square Hole is) (3 towers).

When Starwood Mastercraft applied for heights in the mid-thirties for Soho Italia, I heard through the grape vine that Claridge vowed to get every one of their 28 storey approvals revised to also be 35. This would add about 7 floors to each building. This would be quite profitable.

So now that Claridge has bought the lot at Carling and Preston, will they want to add 7 stories to the Soho total and go for 42? Why not, the sky’s the limit.

Claridge's new tower will block some of the Soho Italia views of Dows Lake and Commissioner's Park

Shown below is the SimPreston photoshop done up by my graphic artist (aka dependent child), which replaced Dow Motors and CIBC with tall condos; and also the vacant Esso station lot on the right (east) of Preston, now owned by Claridge. We don’t know what will be proposed yet, but we will know shortly tall-ly.

CFNM in Ottawa

This past year has been a busy one in our west side abode. One daughter got married. This necessitated a lot of preparation on the parents’ part. A significant chunk of this was watching wedding videos: My Big Fat, Mama Mia, etc.

I must confess that Mama Mia was the better choice (thank god, as it was screened numerous times). I also went off to the NAC to see it last fall, just in case the live show had additional hints for the parents that weren’t in the movie.

And this brings us to the CFNM promised in the title. No, it’s not the name of a new radio station. Clothed Female, Naked Male is an erotic activity. I thought Mama Mia, now playing in our neighborhood,  exemplified the practice, in a discrete for all ages sort of way.

All the women characters in the play are fully dressed. Even at the beach scenes. The bride in one scene is in a bathing suit, a very conservative one-piece. But the guys … bare torsos abound, and the male chorus wears tight trunks with short legs (no board shorts in either the play or the movie).

The successful ladies get to make fun of the hapless guys*. Rejection and humiliation abound. The ladies either proclaim they don’t need sex, or are on the prowl, cougars all. The only flash of anatomy is of a guy’s butt. It’s the sort of play that had the roles been reversed, with guys dressed and the  blondes dumb or undressed, would have been considered scandalously incorrect.

Actually, I have seen just that, and from videos borrowed from our Public Library no less. Purely for sociological research purposes, I borrowed The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew video series. I now recall why I much preferred reading the Nancy Drew books to the kids. Girls (never women) in the 1978 Hardly Boys series might just as well have been in 1878. They are told to stay in the van, to phone for help, or are otherwise excluded from the action. And they cheerfully acquiesce.

The roles assigned to the genders in the 1978 videos are just as one sided and sexist as in the 21st century ones (or in the live action at the NAC), it’s just that the dominant gender has changed.

If you want to catch some [sanitized] modern CFNM action in our downtown community, head off to the NAC for the rest of the Mama Mia run, or watch the video.

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*I think the only guy in the movie that isn’t mocked or dominated is the piano player on the pier. There may be a reason for this: he wrote the songs (and provided the yacht).