Category Archives: Chinatown

Chinatown shown the door

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Or maybe, Chinatown shows the door. Because the Chinatown BIA has embarked on an ambitious scheme to improve the physical look of the properties along the street by painting the doors and façades of various buildings. Not the whole buildings, but the parts closest up to pedestrians on the walkways.

They have commissioned the concepts from the Ottawa School of Art. These were on display to the public and merchants last week. Now the schemes will be revised to reflect the comments of viewers, and painting the doors and some windows will commence later this month.

The CBIA focussed on some of the more dilapidated doorways, those that enter non-public spaces (ie, service doors), and windows of active businesses as well as some of the storefronts used primarily for storage or wholesale purposes.

Here are some of the works:

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Above: painting an unloved doorway with flowers.

 

 

 

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Above: Painting the door AND the side panels and roof

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Above: painting the panels under an active shop window.

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above: painting some “filler panels” where previous doorways and windows have been blocked up

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above: painting on boarded up windows

My pic of one one concept did not come out. You will have to look for it on the street. The concept was to take a recessed doorway and the side windows leading into it, and painting a trompe d’oeil so that it looks like a curtain now hangs over the recess.

Yet another thing to liven up the neighbourhood and another reason to get out and walk.

A little rain for the Urban Food desert

Much of the west side of downtown Ottawa is a food desert. Consolidation has been happening in the grocery business for a long time. Individual vegetable mongers and butchers gave way to the one-stop shopping convenience of the groceteria, then the larger grocery store, and most recently the Superstore, whether in big-box malls or spread across the urban fabric.

The resulting decline and disappearance of the smaller stores inevitably leaves some greater distance between the remaining or new grocery outlets. This space is sometimes called a food desert. Like any ecosystem, it also offers a niche for the nimble and specialized.

Walking along Somerset just a few doors west of Rochester I found a small raincloud of hope. Urban Grocery and Fine Foods has just opened. I talked to Jeanette about her hopes for the store.

As befitting the first day open status, there were more package goods than fresh. But there was fresh bread, dairy, and fruit. She plans to expand these departments as sales increase and turnover justifies bringing in more perishables. It’s the old chicken and egg situation. Speaking of which, eggs were reasonably priced. The supplying dairy is Cochrane’s which is apparently reputed to be more creamy than the mass-market dairies.

The store decor had a variety of “retro” fixtures:

The store stocks are variety of goods with an emphasis on local suppliers, fair trade, gluten-free, organics, etc. Obviously, she cannot compete with the giants on price, but the store is big enough to have a good selection of stuffs for the speciality market and the in-between grocery runs.

Her main outside sign isn’t yet up, but the store is easy to spot by the colourful window paintings.

Outside on the sidewalk I spotted a Zodiac Mouse twitching his nose in anticipation of a morsel of cheese. For Mr Mouse and the residents in the area, the drought may be ending.

The shadow knows …

 

The city can talk all it wants about how walking, cycling and transit are high on its list of priorities, but the real test is where the feet hit the ground, the wheel hits the pavement, etc.

An attractive, safe-feeling pedestrian environment welcomes walking, so that it becomes a desirable thing to do, rather than a “have to” or “should do”. Goodness knows, we have been very successful in making motor car travel the default choice. This bias in the public realm won’t be undone overnight.

But sometimes there are very little measures that really help. The benches along our newly rebuilt traditional mainstreets in Chinatown, Little Italy, West Wellington, Westboro, Bank Street … all help make the walk more attractive for a larger segment of the population.

New technology opens up new possibilities. The Chinatown benches, for example, have laser cut steel backs. The Asian motif helps reinforce the character of the street and ‘brands’ the experience. And there are very subtle, unexpected benefits too. Consider the interesting shadow cast by this bench:

 

 

The shadow alone will never make you walk the street. Nor will the inset zodiac features. Or the ped lighting. Or the decorative garbage cans. Red bricks do not compel me to walk. But together, the synergy builds to an invitation to walk.

Main street’s modal split

Annie Hillis of the West Wellington BIA (WWBIA) sent me the following data. They conducted a four-day survey in June, asking 830 people found along their typical older-city main street how they came to the street, their post code, and their shopping habits. The WWBIA main street runs roughly from Bayswater westwards along Somerset & West Wellington to Island Park.

The modal split numbers surprised me. 

Forty six percent of those found along the street got there by walking; 26% by car; 13% by bike; twelve percent by bus (numbers throughout this story are rounded off).

Only 26% by car? That’s pretty low. And it seems it’s always traffic and car parking issues that people focus on whenever there is a city study, infill project, proposed high rise condo, or cycling or sidewalk improvement.

Granted, West Wellie has an extensive hinterland of houses and some major apartment buildings on both sides of it, so it is in the centre of its market zone.

In contrast, the Preston BIA (“Little Italy”) lacks a hinterland on its west (cut off by the OTrain cut). There is lots of vacant land to the north, and south, due to our civic fathers’ foresight in “slum clearance” without the “urban renewal” that was supposed to follow along.

Many of the merchants along Preston have a regional and ethnic focus, drawing all over the central urban area for clientelle. I don’t know of any merchants who actually live in the neighborhood anymore, so they end up with a “windshield mentality” whereby they judge things by the way they live and move, which is behind the wheel of a car.

Chinatown actually has a hinterland to the south; and a truncated one to the north (the LeBreton Flats area was cleared in the early 60′s; 600 homes were built in the early 80′s; and now some apartments are being built albeit not yet contiguous with the existing neighborhood. But its merchants by and large are also focussed on a narrow market segment. They also cling to the notion they are a regional draw, which is less true every year; they haven’t yet switched gears to serving the local market (yes, there are some dependent on a very local area draw, but they tend to be newer businesses, smaller ones, not yet calling the shots the way the established Asian businesspeople do). The lesson from West Wellie might be that more goods and services aimed at the adjacent neighborhood would be viable. And that infill projects and intensification would be good for business.

So, back to the 46% who walked to West Wellie. About 78% of them lived close to the street, in the same post code. Not surprising, as distance grew between the shopping street and residence they were more likely to use bike and bus. A surprising  6% of the walkers lived quite far away from the street, many in Gatineau. I suspect they didn’t walk from home, more likely they walked from work at Tunney’s Pasture or other employers in the area.

Fifty three percent of the cyclists (who, recall, comprise 13% of the people surveyed) also lived within the KIY post code, showing once again how bikes are convenient for quick shopping and main street business. West Wellie makes a big deal of how it welcomes cyclists; I don’t sense the same welcome in some other neighborhoods.

Motorists made up 26% of the found ins along the street. Of them, 16% resided in the K1Y post code zone; 25% resided in nearby zones; 32% in other Ottawa zones; and almost 7% from Gatineau.

In general, those who walked and biked came more frequently to the area; 70% of walkers spent money weekly; 62% of bikers spent money weekly. This is in contrast to motorists, only 36% of whom visited and spent money regularly.  In fact, 38% of motorists were infrequent shoppers in the area (less than once a week), whereas only 10% of walkers and 11% of cyclists were infrequent shoppers.

Who shops, what they spend, how often they spend, and what mode of transport they use, makes for a fun data set. But the data is also dependent on the current make up of the surrounding neighborhood. There is still an abundance of low-income households in the area, who maybe don’t have a car. So it would be risky to extrapolate the current modal breakout to newcomers in the area, who may be of a more affluent character. Are people walking by choice, or by necessity?

It would be of interest to canvas residents of some of the new, upscale infill developments (eg St George’s Court) or condos to see if their behaviour is ”normalized” after they have been in the ‘hood for a year or two. Just how important is walkability to their decision to live where they do; and do they exercise that desire or not?

I’d love to see similar survey data collected on a regular basis for all the traditional main streets, perhaps every second or third year. I’m sure shopping centres collect that sort of data even more often to ‘prove’ their value to tenants. It’s time for the City and BIA’s to document and track changes to their market area on a regular cycle. Only with facts can we manage growth and change.

Just look down: Adventures in the Chinese Zodiac

Pedestrians on the newly redone bit of Somerset in Chinatown between Booth and Preston are in for a real treat. The sidewalk is paved in blocky precast concrete squares with a textured surface finish.

For some time, walkers may have noticed some squares marked out like this:

These red dots marked where a few blocks were to be removed and replaced by a same size granite square inscribed with a shallow bas relief of a stylized Asian zodiac animal.

These make the street great fun to walk with kids, and amusing for adults too. The zodiac is repeated four times: twice on the south side, going from Preston up to Booth; and twice on the north side, going from Booth down to Preston. (There is a spare set in storage for replacements).

Two years ago, while in Boston, I saw a number of granite insets in their pavers near their Chinatown arch:

These became the inspiration for the Ottawa Chinatown experience.

Rather than a Chinese character that was not very engaging to non-Chinese, I suggested to the streetscaping public advisory committee that we employ similar blocks along the sidewalk, but with the zodiac animals, which will eventually cause children to demand to be walked along Somerset. Somewhat sceptical, the City challenged me to get them a cost. I tried getting prices from granite countertop makers, but they don’t normally carve their counters. At last, I asked cj fleury, who did the carved granite sculptures on Preston, and she directed me to tombstone makers, who carve all sorts of things into granite, from jpegs, using computer-driven routers. I got three prices, and the city agreed in less than 30 seconds that they could be funded from the landscaping budget.

Initial designs modified zodiac clip art from the web, which eventually became original illustrations by dint of repeated fixes. The first decision was whether to go with outline figures:

or bas-relief figures, such as this chicken:

The Chinatown BIA preferred the bas-relief, and worked with the contractors to refine the figures. The final stones came from George Brown & Sons, memorial makers, at the corner of Gladstone and Bronson, so they are even “local”.

Care had to be taken to ensure that the Rat and Mouse and Snake were not so realistic as to be frightening or off-putting to visitors. The Rat become Topo Gigio-ized and the other figures stylized and acceptable to a wide group of interests. Care was still required in placement to make sure there wasn’t some inadvertent connection between a symbol and the adjacent business, whether viewed from an Asian cultural view or western view.

Here are some of the shallow bas-relief figures you will see on the sidewalk. For the rest, you’ll have to come out to see for yourself !

Genuine Asian Zodiac figure for Rat: Topo Gigio

 

 

A rooster designed by a committee …

Beware, there be dragons in Chinatown !

 

Chinatown Art Installation

The City sets aside a certain small percentage of its major capital projects budget (such as road reconstruction) for art installations. West Siders know the ones: Preston Street granite postcards from the piazzas, West Wellie’s marble veggies, the red chairs in the Glebe.

The just-getting-completed reconstruction of Somerset between the OTrain tracks and Booth had a very small art budget. One that had to cope with three distinct areas: Chinatown, the bit of Little Italy around Preston, and the OTrain viaduct-bridge. With public consultation, the decision was made to have two installations: one on the Chinatown hill, and one on the viaduct hill.

The chosen installation was glass chandeliers mounted on the ped light fixtures. Today, installation crews were busy mounting the pieces on the viaduct:

And a bit further along, they have been mounted on the Chinatown lampposts:

Now that they are installed, I must confess to being underwhelmed.

This is not to blame the artist, or the jury. The whole process is bureaucratic, with everyone from snowplow crews to the BIA’s to merchants to traffic signals people getting involved. The right of way is constrained. No use can be made of the big open space over the actual streets themselves (it might distract the motorists from their speedy way…) or an island in an intersection or roundabout.

There was no place to install a single big item, since the centre block was already occupied by the Postcards sculptures and Vietnamese boat people monument. Nothing could hang off the sides of the viaduct, or use the handrails. Ottawa Hydro offered cooperation in installing lit art, but all such proposals were rejected by the jury.

You can see the alternatives at this earlier post: http://westsideaction.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/public-art-for-somerset-street/

Sunlight, and at night lamplight, is supposed to shine through the chosen installations to cast interesting light patterns on the sidewalk pavers.

The ped lights on the viaduct over the OTrain should have a dozen giant planters installed  this fall, between the lampposts, each with two locust trees planted in it. This will further reduce the visibility of the art.

Yet to come: 48 granite sidewalk inserts with the Chinese zodiac characters carved into them. This is not part of the art process, it is part of the sidewalk pavers design.

Please feel free to use the comments field below. And, just for info, the Bronson reconstruction is likely to use one or two larger pieces as “gateways” rather than a lot of smaller pieces along the street.

Signs of Life on Somerset Street

Somerset has been going through a difficult time for the last few years. The rise of suburban supermarkets with an Asian focus has rendered obsolete the mom-and-pop small stores along Somerset in Chinatown. Many have disappeared. Only a few grocery stores are surviving, eg Kowloon Market, which even seems to be thriving and is a bright spot on the street.

In the section from Booth to Preston, business has been complicated by two years of road reconstruction. But the sidewalks are back in place, the benches are installed, and at a large vacant storefront this sign has appeared:

I thought it noticeable that the sign is not in Chinese, and it doesn’t promise more Asian foods.

Spotted on the north side, just down slope from Rochester. Keep your eyes peeled !