Category Archives: Bank Street

When condos replace offices …

Vancouver has been “enjoying” a condo tower boom for some years. Early on in the boom, the demand for condos was so hot that existing office buildings were converted to condos. For example, the iconic BC Hydro building (the highrise with no ground floor) was converted. Critics began to speculate that residences would drive commercial uses right off the prime peninsula space, an interesting reversal of the usual community activist nightmare of expanding commercial uses driving out the residential uses around the core.

Apartment towers differ from townhouse developments in Barrhaven and Riverside South in that the towers stick up in the air and are thus more visible to the casual observer. This inevitably leads to expressions that the boom is unsustainable. Fewer people say that about the suburban sprawl, because it is less visible and more acceptable to the low-rise preferences of much of the population. And the Ottawa population is very conservative.

For the high-rise doomsters, there is much to be recommended in reading The Greater Fool blog which is a constant doomsday prediction about unsustainable real estate prices. Don’t take this as being that I agree or disagree with that blog or the condo tower woesters.

For several years there has been a vacant lot just east of the Telus building on Slater at Bank. Formerly the home of Ted Tilden’s then National Car Rentals, it has for the last year or so sported a sign promoting a new high rise office building. Without a huge floorplate, it would have been attractive to private-sector tennants rather than government offices (compare to the mammoth Export Development Bldg or the new one replacing the Lorne Building to get an idea of how big government floorplates are now). But alas, the private sector is abandoning the downtown, leaving mostly civil servants, and as one major landlord tells me repeatedly, they are the kiss of death to urban vitality. The Tunney’s Pasturification of the downtown continues apace (and don’t for a minute dream that Federal civil servants can redesign Tunney’s to be a genuine downtown).

That “coming soon” commercial development sign is gone now, and a sales centre is under construction. Not a major developer, the imaginatively named The Slater project is sponsored by a building contractor (Broccolini Construction) and local condo realtor Bennett Pros. It will have a hotel component and condos. Although I am not sure who wants that stunning view of the windowless back of the Bell switch building or the side of the next office building. At least there won’t be someone peering back into your bedroom — there goes the market for exhibitionists.

a sales centre grows just beyond the Telus garage entrance

The Slater is another glassy box, the front of which will look somewhat like this:

Alas, no view of the back.

There seems to be some sort of outdoorsey space on the fourth floor, which shows some potential. But the two floors below it are an echo of The Mondrian, sporting an above grade parking garage:

Vancouver didn’t collapse when offices were converted to condos. Nor will Toronto, where older hotels are being converted to condos. Nor will the world come to an end when older rental buildings are converted to condos.

But I do wonder who will want to live right in the heart of Ottawa’s “financial district”, as the adverts put it. It is a sleepy civil service downtown becoming more and more 9 to 3, where the most exciting storefront uses seem to be dentists and eye surgeons.

I think the downtown would have been better off with a private-sector office building on the site. It would have promoted a better mix of uses.

On the other hand, yet more apartments will increase the supply of accommodation, which will moderate prices for renters and buyers. It doesn’t matter that the new buildings are initially “expensive”. So were all those high rises built in the 60′s and 70′s, which we today covet as the core of our “affordable” housing stock.

The price of a lot plus building is made up of the building value and the lot value. A high rise building has a high ratio of building value to lot value. Except buildings depreciate and eventually must be replaced. Expensively. Low rise buildings have a higher proportion of their value in the lot, which appreciates over time. That’s why low rise buildings (ie, really its their lot…) go up in price more over time than do apartments. Today’s apartment condos are tomorrow’s affordable housing.

Except … condos are bought and sold on a retail market; rental buildings are sold on the wholesale market. Hmm.

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On an aside, one excellent replacement of an office building with condos would be the conversion of the vacant hulking Sir John Carling building to condos, sitting as it right on the shores of Dow’s Lake and adjacent to the condo land rush going on there now. The asbestos has to be taken out before knocking it down, so why not clean it up, and flog the concrete hulk to Claridge or Starwood?

 

 

 

Major changes coming to downtown streets

The current downtown Ottawa is rather blah. Some might even call it bleh. Over the decades, it has become a motor-vehicle-oriented environment, with the fast movement of vehicles the main only priority. We all know about the walls of buses. And the priority given to automobile commuters over pedestrians. Trees: rare as hen’s teeth. It has become a downtown one goes to because you have to. It is not a shopping, or even much of a recreation destination. All rather sad.

When the LRT is opened, there will be major changes. Most OC Transpo buses will be off the Albert and Slater bus lanes. What do we do with the freed-up space? Recall too that the current bus stops disgorge pedestrians at many locations; the LRT will deliver huge crowds, all at once, at limited locations.

So Council directed that the Downtown Moves study be conducted, to integrate urban design and transportation strategy, and to restore the balance among street users [in council's actual words]. Most people can understand that a vibrant downtown doesn’t  come from wider roads, faster traffic, or “getting everyone out” as quickly as possible ( I exclude from this understanding some select minority voices).

The Downtown Moves study isn’t about just tinkering with the core. It’s a major rewrite opportunity, to reallocate space, to refresh the downtown sidewalks and streets for the next 50 to 100 years. Thus far, the working teams have not been timid. So it is time to look at some of the suggested streetscapes.

Note: these are working documents only, in progress sketches, and may not be the final designs. They will evolve under pressure from various factions. So how well are we moving towards the grand statement:

“Our downtown is about to undergo a transformation that will define a new identity and be the foundation for its prosperity for coming generations. The investment in Light Rail Transit will open and sustain a new pursuit of civic and national pride in the urban quality of our capital City. Our downtown streets will be reoriented to favour and comfort pedestrians, cyclists and transit users, recognizing that all travellers end and start their trip on foot. With this healthy and active orientation, our streets themselves will begin to be praised as among our city’s most coveted public spaces that in turn spark investment and that are befitting of the highest quality of buildings and open spaces along them”.

Queen Street will be a key street to the future. Currently the only two-way street downtown, it is a fairly claustrophobic, narrow canyon. It is a minor street destined to become the main pedestrian experience. The north sidewalks are very narrow east of Bank Street. The exit stairways and elevators to the underground stations will come up in what is now the parking lane on the south side of Queen (pic below).  There will be loss of some on street parking and planners have to figure out how to disperse crowds of 5000 people per hour. The sunny side of the street is the north side.

The sketch below has been marked up in a workshop focus group. The north parking lane is gone, replaced by wider sidewalks and pedestrian amenities. The south side parking lane is now paved in the same material as the sidewalks, and may even be at the same level as the sidewalk, separated from it by removable bollards, so that the parking lane can be incorporated into extra-wide sidewalks for events like Canada Day. Cyclists mix with traffic; and in the distance you can see a typical stairway entry to the LRT just beyond the two parked cars. Street furniture (ie mail boxes, benches, light posts, signs) will be all aligned with the trees to maintain the clearest possible sidewalks.

 

Two blocks north is Wellington. In the working sketch below (and remember, no decisions have been made…) there is a two-way bike lane suggested on the north side of Wellington. This helps make a more complete network of bike-friendly streets in the downtown connecting the major tourist points (bixi-bike tourism) and the major paths that approach the downtown but seldom connect with each other (this bidirectional bike lane would connect the Confederation Boulevard bike circuit, to the Alexandra and Portage Bridge bike lanes, etc). The two way path alignment was selected to minimize conflict with turning vehicles (the north side has few turn opportunities, and will apparently have fewer in the future as the Parliament Hill security perimeter expands) and to preserve sight lines to the Hill. Eastbound buses (and the whole STO route problem/scenario remains unsolved as yet) will stop at the curb; but what about westbound STO buses and tour buses? Tour buses in particular want to deliver passengers as close as possible to the destination. Bus riders may be let off onto islands between the bike lanes and bus lanes, but total available road width is a constraint. Double left turn lanes may be a thing of the past. The suggested public space configuration in the sketch will help remove the sense that Wellington is a huge barrier separating the downtown and Parliament:

Albert and Slater will be changed drastically once the main bus routes are removed. It seems uncertain just how many fewer buses will be there.  Some objectives along these streets are to integrate the public sidewalk space with the building setbacks and available private spaces along the street. Intersections will get much wider crosswalks. The parking lane is on the right side of the street, paved to match the sidewalks. It would not be a rush hour traffic lane. There would be bulb-outs at the intersections and midblock locations for trees. The bike lane is on the left side of the street, placing the cyclist close to the vehicle driver’s field of view and not hidden on the “far side” of the vehicle. There may be opportunities to squeeze in delivery bays between the bike lane and traffic lane. But essentially, the bus lane space has been given over to non-vehicular uses. Remember, though, that bike lanes have a higher capacity than car lanes.

The only north-south street that has been sketched out thus far is Metcalfe, and only north of Sparks. No analysis has yet been done for O’Connor, Kent, Lyon, etc. And as far as I could tell, they hadn’t yet addressed what to do south of Sparks. Frequently suggested is returning the streets to two-way status, the traffic planning fad of one way streets being largely past its acceptable date. Such a major change is beyond the mandate of the Downtown Moves plan. When examining the N/S streets, several new factors come into play. First, most of the parking spaces north of Queen are closed much of the time for security reasons. They can be repurposed a bus loading zones or para-transpo zones. Tourists walk slower and in wider groups than office workers, so the sidewalks connecting Sparks to the Parliamentary precinct should be wider. Then we might as well continue the wider sidewalks down to at least Albert to help disperse the commuter hordes arriving from the LRT stations. These north-south streets are also major locations for street vendors, so might as well plan for them now.

What’s next?

The Downtown Moves teams will be refining the sketches/scenarios for public space downtown. They have to run them by the traffic people to assess what it does for vehicular movements, goods movement, safety, special access needs, security, taxis, etc. They have to run them by the various downtown private sector groups, such as hotel owners, office building managers and owners, etc. They do have numerous photo examples of similar changes done successfully in other cities.

Hopefully, with continued leadership from the politicians (ie, no wavering in face of NIMBY’s who might lose a parking space or who believe cars rule) there can be a balanced discussion and evaluation of the transportation and urban design possibilities.

The Downtown Moves team will read the comments you make to this post, so fire away. And tell your councillor if you like the direction the study is moving, but save him or her the nit picky details as the study is still early on. We need to encourage the process towards a better downtown and not bog it down.

City wins battle; Mayor losing the war

Last night the City held a public meeting to tell residents all about the plans for Bronson. Well over a hundred people turned up. All were glum, and subdued. Resigned. Was I alone in sensing the seething resentment beating inside those winter coats?

Recall that Bronson was widened from a street to a road back in the late 50′s.

It was a bad road back then. And it only got worse. It’s bad for motorists. It’s bad for residents. It’s bad for landlords*. It’s bad for anyone who tries to walk along Bronson’s pathetic sidewalks. It’s life threateningly bad for anyone who tries to cross it. There are no winners when it comes to Bronson.

The people at last night’s meeting know better than to send their kid to school if that involves crossing Bronson. Not if you want the kid back home, that is. On the other hand, it might be useful to send the mother-in-law to lawn bowling if that involves crossing Bronson AND you want to inherit sooner.

The audience last night were exposed to a flock of engineers and consultants and contractors. Entertainment consisted of a city staff reading giant Powerpoint pages, word for word, jargon by jargon, eye-glazingly slowly, while showing them up on the block wall. The total word count read must set a record for pius bumpf.

So after a year of planning and sweating and public meetings and backroom meetings, let’s compare the new Bronson Avenue to the current one.

It will be bad for motorists. It will be bad for residents. It will be bad for landlords. It sure won’t encourage anyone to walk along it. As for crossing it, the major crossing points at Laurier, Gloucester, Primrose, Somerset, Christie (nod to my grandma’s house on the corner there, although she fled decades ago…) and Gladstone –didn’t get one inch shorter, or any safer, or improved in any way. Nada. The new Bronson will be exactly the same as the old Bronson.  The only concession to peds is the new crossing at Arlington. Harvey’s must be pleased.

So how could the City labour for so long and so mightily, employing planners and engineers and political capital to come up with exactly the same mistake as was first perpetuated in the 1950′s? Have we learned nothing at all in over half a century of traffic misery?

That is not a rhetorical question.

Consider the state of traffic planning in Ottawa in 2012, during the second term with Mayor Watson at the helm.

King Edward is overbuilt, ugly, dysfunctional. It is not a nice as it was before we started all this rebuilding back in the 1960′s. And the City turned down the chance to tame it, apparently thinking it’s just fine for next fifty years.

Rideau Street is the busiest pedestrian street in the City, with over 7000 people on the sidewalks. It is to be reconstructed. And the City is going to improve it by … narrowing the sidewalks so the motorists can have lanes 2′ wider. Yes, you read that right.

And so on to Lansdowne. I suspect many approve of the new plans because they are better than the existing decrepit parking lot. But there is a lingering sense that we aren’t doing it well enough. We aren’t achieving its full potential. And the transportation aspects, well, we’ll figure something out closer to opening day.

Did I mention the City’s persistent attempts to widen Albert Street to six lanes where it runs through LeBreton Flats? Great urban environment that will make. We’ll be able to queue up cars bound for Pointe Gatineau three abreast instead of two abreast.

Mayor Watson, our comeback mayor,  has gotten to where he is by having a good nose for the direction the political winds are blowing. But are is sinuses letting him down when it comes to traffic planning? He’s had his way with Bronson. He won the battle. But the voters in the area are left bruised and resentful. As are the voters in lowertown, the Glebe, and … Moscow.

 

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*interestingly, the traffic non-improvements prompted speaking out by landlords and a major property developer. Will wonders never cease.

Winter bench

I have started to look out for examples of outdoor benches or patios in use in the winter. In just a few days, I have  spotted a number of them, sometimes in the oddest spaces.

Ironically, the easiest to spot are the ones with people there. But I am too shy to take shots of real people living their lives, so the only shots I’ve taken are empty spots that show signs of recent human activity or that the property owner cares for the spot during the winter.

Here’s some nice clean tables on Bank Street ready for someone to plunk down: