Category Archives: City Centre

Lonely house on the parking lot

The area along the O-Train corridor has undergone lots of changes from its original industrial beginnings. Occasionally, an old building survives.

Notice that it has a real slate roof, there are few houses or buildings left in our neighborhood with slate roofs. In this case, it probably was to provide additional fire proofing from the sparks that flew out of the many steam engines in the area.

David Jeanes tells me this may have been the home of Ottawa Stair Works. Probably built right after the Great Fire in 1902, the building then faced Somerset Street which was not yet elevated up on the viaduct as it is now. The area behind it, now the City Centre parking lot, was first the D Kemp Edwards Lumber Yards, later the Argue Coal Company yards. In this 1912 fire insurance map the building was located, but not shown on the map, immediately right of the blue building labelled “planing mill”.

Somerset Street runs across the bottom of the pic; the blue building is approximately where the south end of the City Centre warehouses now is. The building is shown in its correct location in earlier maps, just not the 1912 version.

It was later used by fashion apparel establishments, and for hobby, toy, and picture framing businesses. It now appears to be empty.

All this is a long way around to saying that the community association has suggested to the Bayview CDP planning team that this old structure should be kept or relocated on the site when the area is redeveloped for the three planned condo towers and commercial development. It would make a pleasant contrast to the modern towers that will surround it, and could function as a coffee shop, bike dealer (it would be right on the new O-train north-south bike route being constructed this summer, as it could be just north of the new Somerset bike underpass).

What do you think? Should it be saved and incorporated into the new project?

Sim-City model: Bayview-carling CDP

The City has been sporadically doing up a CDP (Community Design Plan) (which is a plan of dubious effectiveness under the Official Plan) for the O-Train corridor running from Bayview Station to Carling Avenue.

Residents frequently ascribe its tardiness to a desire on the part of the City to see all the developable land purchased and rezoned before the plan is drawn up. In that way, the city won’t have to continually amend it.

The City is committed to having CDPs done for all the stations along the OLRT. Having seen some of the in-progress ones I’d have to say they are better than nothing.  At least they might tell some residents (and Swiss immigrants) that they won’t be getting what the current zoning is for.

And having seen some of the completed ones, I have been left shaking my head that they could ever have been passed with any sincerity as to upholding them. I just don’t see scattered four storey infills as the definition of intensification. Nor will the OMB.

With that in mind, let’s look at the Bayview CDP. In particular, the Bayview Station end of the plan. (Recall that the Carling end of the plan is undergoing a feeding frenzy with Ottawa and Toronto developers gulping up every lot; and the middle section, around Gladstone, is about to get a lot hotter with  upcoming development of the former printing plant that occupies one entire block at Gladstone and Breezehill).

The City has decided against holding a real world public meeting on the plan, instead exploring an online public meeting. You can find it here: http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/carling_bayview/index_en.html The last item on the menu on the left of their page is titled Online Open House, click and…   

There are three videos at the site; the first and second are for the very patient raw beginners (you know, the equivalent of the first dozen display boards at a real meeting, which are full of text, and you just skip over to get to the meat in the last few panels on the other side of the room). The third video shows the recommended plan. It is 20 minutes long, but is worth watching. (Remember, it’s still quicker than going to a real meeting…).

Here is what the area looks like, as seen by a future migrating Canada goose:

In the centre is the LRT Station, although we are not sure yet if it exactly there, or somewhat further to the left (west) directly over the OTrain tracks. The green buildings running off to the upper right above Albert Street are the approved plans for LeBreton Flats, currently likely to built in 2067 (our bicentennial) if the current buildout pattern is continued by Malhotra’s great grandchildren who will by then be owners of Claridge.

Immediately below (south of) the LRT Station is the proposed Phoenix triangular development at 801 Albert. This is for two 35 storey office towers employing about 6500 civil servants and having a total of 200 or so parking spots since everyone will come by transit or bike path. Having seen these proposed plans in some (preliminary) detail, the office complex ain’t too bad for the site.

Running further south in the picture along both sides of City Centre Avenue the planners envision mixed use developments that are highest closest to the O-Train and lowest adjoining the existing houses of the neighborhood.

I look forward to presenting these pictures at future planning committee meetings and OMB hearings when objecting to office highrises in the areas they now show as continuing to be low rise residential. Indeed, the L-shaped building in white at the lower right (in the above picture) is the proposed Domicile condo at the corner of City Centre and Somerset (present home of International Paints and Fine Thingys Antiques). Planners show it as 5 floors; the developer is already proposing 12.

Here is the city’s artist impression, the perspective from Dalhousie:

The pink houses are the existing neighborhood residential. Preston Street runs on a diagonal on the lower right; Somerset runs on the opposite diagonal lower left.The top- most pink townhouses are Walnut Court; beyond them is the proposed LeBreton project in turquoise ( a pleasant break from the yellow brick now being used). Notice how the buildings step up from stacked townhouses adjacent the pink neighborhood, to high rises along the OTrain. The tallest twin towers are Phoenix’s, opposite the Bayview Station. Immediately south of them (a bit to the left in the pic) are six blocks of towers built on the City Centre warehouse complex site.

The City has kindly shown us a persective from Hintonburg too:

This time the view is from a hot air balloon just north of West Wellington after it met Somerset at the triangular park shown on the lower right. The elongated low rise white building is Tom Brown (yes, I know its orange in real life, just pretend…) which has had some whopping big additions put on the west, north, and east sides of the existing building. The city has also shown a new ped bridge reconnecting the chopped up parts of West Wellie, allowing us to walk over the OTrain tracks and use the bike paths to be built there in 2012.

Off to the left (north) are new white buildings for the Bayview Yards area. One of them sports a curved middle section, evocative of the old train roundhouses that used to be nearby. Beyond Tom Brown, on the other side of the OTrain, are the two tall Phoenix towers, and to their right (south) are the Equity City Centre buildings.

Alas, just chopped off the far right edge of the picture is the site at the corner of Breezehill and Somerset, beside Devonshire School, which Claridge is now clearing in preparation for a yet-unrevealled condo and shopping complex.

The last view of this exciting mega-node sim-development is from Mechanicsville:

 

It shows the view from the 28th floor of the proposed Urbandale condo tower on Parkdale Avenue. In the foreground is Laroche Park; off to the left is the Ottawa River Commuter Expressway and the river itself. The proposed  condo towers on the far side of the park may be some time coming because they are on contaminated soil (the uncontaminated lands were reserved for non-buildings) and no one yet has the heart or dollars to remediate the crap found there. Notice how the buildings rise up as the view goes east, to their highest point (on the Mechanicsville side) at the west end of the new Bayview Station itself.  The penultimate height and bulk of building is still the Phoenix buildings in the distance on the south side of Albert at City Centre Drive.

While the decision to hold a on-line public consultation has been controversial, it is still useful. Most useful of all are the 3-D sketchups of how the properties could develop. The buildings shown are, of course, a planner’s wet dream, nicely stepped up in height and density, and varied in form. Builders prefer to build clones of the previous building, or in pairs, to save money. But unlike 2-D flat drawings of zoning codes, the 3-D view allows way more people to imagine what might develop.

IF the plan passes, and the zoning is put in place to match the pretty sim-city models shown, will council have the courage to insist on the zoning being followed? Or will council continue to fob the hard decisions off to the OMB?

Now that you’ve seen the pic, go to the city site http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/carling_bayview/index_en.html , click on Online Open House (last item on the menu on the left) and watch  video #3. Some sweet voiced lady will walk you through the Bayview of a Brighter Tomorrow!

Planning the O-Train bike path

Okay, so it’s not really a “bike path”, the City doesn’t have any of those. We have MUPs, or Multi User Paths, which are shared by cyclists, dog walkers, parents with wailers, grannies with yappers, kids alone,  etc. (It makes an interesting contrast: on roads, cyclists are told to play nicely with cars, buses, and tractor-trailers going 70km; off road, cyclists are sent to play with various pedestrian folks).

I’m on the PAC (public advisory committee) for the O-Train path that will eventually run from the Ottawa River pathways south to Dow’s Lake. The City will construct the section from Bayview Station to Somerset (or maybe Gladstone) in 2012. (This doesn’t mean you will ride on it in 2012, unless you winter cycle next December 15).  

looking north from Somerset viaduct, towards Bayview and the Ottawa River

 The path will follow roughly the dirt trail on the right side of the fence (in the pic above), unless we can convince (ie, pay for ) OC Transpo to relocate the fence a bit further left (west) since they don’t need the large right of way they fenced. Nor, BTW, does the fence follow the property line, which is six inches out from the concrete pillars holding up the elevated service road along the back of the City Centre Building bays.

The path will go under Somerset using the newly constructed underpass, subject of many previous posts, and then swing back upslope to join Somerset on the south side roughly where the billboard is located. A flight of stairs may also be installed, to forestall the inevitable goat path that would appear as peds shortcut the longer bike/wheelchair/perambulator pathway.

the as-yet unlit underpass with its virgin walls

 I wanted to make a checklist of points for the PAC meeting, so I don’t forget anything, and thought I would share them with you, gentle reader. The “experts” at these meetings are generally very nice, but can be overly bureaucratic (corrupted by the motorist-mindset at City Hall) and it never hurts to remember what the user thinks is important.

 1. the sloped path on the south side of Somerset needs to have all overland drainage run away from the path. If there is an upslope area, an intercepting swale is necessary to prevent early morning and early evening “freezing” patches in spring and early winter.

2. the flat path going overland should be elevated at least 12″ above the surrounding soils, to promote drainage, reduce flooding when the soil is frozen and it rains, and so users feel higher than the surrounding areas to have good visibility and enhance subjective safety. Of  course there should be a gentle gravel slope leading off  the edge of the asphalt to prevent erosion, cracking, and cyclist spills

2b. since the path is shared by various users, including commuter cyclists who are likely to be emulating Lance Armstrong velocity, it needs to be w-i-d-e.

3. there should be rest areas along the path (mainly for pedestrians, but useful for dog walkers, and parents with wailing 2 year olds who want “out”). I am not a fan of the NCC-style bench-up-tight-to-the-path solution, and benches are expensive to install and maintain. Instead, I’d like to see stonedust-paved bulb-out areas that lead rest-takers 10′ or so off the path, where they are less likely to get run over by MAMILs (middle-aged men in Lycra), and can relax, sitting on large flat boulders as benches. The City has a generous stockpile of these rocks heaped up along Pinecrest Creek transitway just north of the Qway. Let’s put ‘em to good use here…

4. the path needs to be lit, with ped-scaled light fixtures, like at the east end of Corkstown bridge over the Rideau Canal, or along the Albert Street MUP just west of Bronson. Parts of the area along the O-Train corridor are “behind” warehouses etc and need to be lit up to enable their use by women and people with various sensitivities towards safety. This path will eventually form a very important and busy feeder link to the Bayview Station as well as a link to BikeWest and the ORP. We can’t afford not to light it.

well-lit Albert MUP

5. the city is apparently considering a fancy 21′ staircase structure on the north side of Somerset, by the City Centre complex, for peds to access the path, and for cyclists who are gung ho to carry their bikes up the stairs instead of riding around to the south side. This stair costs lots of money, I would rather it be spent on extending the first phase path all the way to Gladstone; leave the stair to the future. The stair, BTW, is because some think it “too dangerous” for westbound cyclists to cross the street without a traffic light to access the bike path staring from the south side of Somerset …

6. Similarly, at Gladstone, the path would come out right by the billboard on the NE corner of the rail overpass. Last time I talked to the City, they were alarmed at the idea of installing curb cuts here so that cyclists could access the street to cycle onwards, or to cross the street: “But there is no traffic light there, it’d be too dangerous”. Fie on that. Put in a bit of chicane or maze to slow down cyclists so they don’t speed across Gladstone. Or put in a half-light, with activator buttons 150′ down the trail on each side. But don’t “promote” cycling by forcing them to dismount and carry their bike over the curb to get to the  -eventual -  continuation of the path on the other side…

7. the city-owned right of way along the O-Train is quite wide between Gladstone and Bayview Station, I’d like to see it all treated as parkland. This means rough landscaping it all, demarking the boundaries to prevent encroachment by dumpsters, dumpers, and vehicles. And to prevent adjacent building sites from encroaching onto the public realm for “staging”. Given the wide open nature of the area, with no overhead wires, I’d like to see the area planted with big trees — burr oaks, chestnuts, walnuts, and other large-growing trees. If the city can’t afford to do it, supply a few planting beds and let the community plant tree seedlings. I wouldn’t like to see the city ‘cheap-out’ by leaving the O-train corridor as a untended unloved industrial track wasteland, to be clear-cut every decade or so to keep down nature. This is a prime green connector between the Ottawa and Rideau River ecosystems, we should be proud of it.

7b. The Bayview Station designs all show water run off from the station roof being directed down stone channels to the valley floor. I’d love to see a proper water run-off storage pond built, to moderate run-off and reduce flooding, and because they are attractive and good for urban wildlife (ducks, raccoons, etc).

8. the Bayview Station design is an amazing shape-shifter. Every time we see it, it has moved to a new location, with its main entrance at the OTrain level, no at the Albert level, no it’s on the bridge, etc etc. Pretty much constant in the latest designs has been a delightful accommodation of the north-south cycling route, sometimes it even runs right through the station (the non-fare-paying part). It is important that this cycling link be kept, and that it be rideable (not a “dismount and walk your bike” zone)*, shareable, and generous sized.

8b. as the bike path ascends from the valley floor up to the Bayview station platform level, the slope should be long, and gentle, with a generous “flat” zone as riders approach the station. This will require more fill to construct the long slope, and thus more expense, but the path and slope must be visible from top and bottom, and from the Otrain platform, to conform with principles of Crime Prevention through Evironmental Design (CPTED)

9. this north/south bike path (oops, MUP) also needs to connect well with the E/W bike path proposed for construction in 2017 along the north side of the LRT line from Bayview underpass to LeBreton Station to the downtown.

10. could the NCC please, pretty please, complete the Bayview Station to ORP link at the same time, in 2013, as we all know they are bustin’ a gut to close the Preston Extension (and if they don’t do it, the LRT people are telling us they will, as early as 2013, for our own safety, to keep us out of the LRT right of way).

11. can the City please do the southward sections in 2013, so that cyclists can get over Gladstone, to join the existing path along the OTrain, up to Carling, where a half-light crossing is due to be installed in 2012-13, enabling cyclists to join the driveway paths or go south to Carleton, Mooney’s Bay, and other destinations?

the 1963 section of the path, from Young to Carling, is plowed in the winter

There are lots of other considerations for the pathway design. The group discussions at the PACs are often fun and educational. They really bring out the truism that together everyone achieves more.

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*for those that care, the last station design for Tunney’s showed the Bikewest path as interrupted by the Station waiting areas, and it definitely looked like it was a “stop, dismount, and walk your bike” zone rather than a ride-through-shared-space-carefully zone. Sigh.

The Secret West Side

Everyone knows the traditional main streets: West Wellie, Preston, Chinatown, Bank Street … The very success of these streets ensure they attract popular businesses with enough clientele to afford the rents. But where are the retailers that cannot afford main street?

Ottawa lacks many low-value retail spaces, where specialty niche businesses, startups, and some just-plain marginal businesses can locate.

Gentrification and the revival of main streets are desirable, but have the effect of squeezing out these small firms. So they slip into little-noticed spots unattractive to mainstream, main street retailers.

I previously mentioned the hotbed of nifty niche novelty firms on the west side*. Art-is-in bakery at unit 112 in the City Centre building is doing gangbusters, and friends who drink coffee tell me the brew is excellent. On the western end of Elm Street is Patrick Gordon Framing, and right next door in the basement industrial building is FunkyFurniture Company, dealing in mid-century modern furniture. Backing onto these two businesses, but facing Spruce Street, is another refugee from gentrification, exiled from rising rents in Westboro: Vintage Lighting.

Not much to look at the from the outside:

located beside a small office building home to lost causes and micro-businesses, the lighting store is downstairs

But once you enter the door into a dark but high ceilinged space, a wonderful world of recycled light fixtures appears:

If you can, enlarge these pictures on your screen. Try to figure out the chandelier in the left foreground; and look closely at that Dan Brown-themed globe/astrology light fixture just in front of the ladder. Incredible. No doubt the holy grail of light fixtures is somewhere in here.

While talking to some developers recently, I commented on how much I like the old Centretown plan feature that put small retail shops at street level of most apartment buildings. These house a neat array of not-ready-for-mainstreet businesses, such as foreign-language bookshops.

Alas, condo developers generally don’t like these small shops in their condo buildings because they complicate the paperwork; our Councilor prefers all retail be directed to the  traditional commercial streets (the lone storefront proposed for 89-91 Lisgar has been banished); and some residents fear anything commercial will become a noisy bar. Fun little retail zones as found on Elm and Spruce won’t last long. The condos are coming, the condos are coming!

Surely there are other vibrant little side streets somewhere in the City, home to the less-popular tastes. Please share where you find them.

For previous related posts, click: http://westsideaction.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/rising-action/

http://westsideaction.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/industrial-gentrification-on-the-west-side/

Rising Action

Steer your footsteps towards the City Centre complex on City Centre Avenue. At the southern end of the ground floor (near the Somerset end) there is a new bakery. A big one. Artisin Bakery has until recently been primarily a wholesale bakery, with about 70 high-end hotels and restaurants as clients. Now, from their new premises at City Centre, they have opened a new retail outlet for breads, cookies, pastries, tarts, cakes, and sandwiches.

Kevin Mathieson is the owner. A Winnipegger, he has had his hands in flour forever. He apprenticed with the best in New York, Paris, Monaco, and Zürich. He uses organic grains, and all goods are hand-made and slow-raised.

The retail part of the new bakery is just starting up. Underfurnished, it desperately needs a decorator  to transform it from  functional industrial to funky “industrial chic”. I sampled some pastries while at the bakery, and they are to die for. The bakery outlet is open to the public Tuesday to Sunday. If you aren’t on your way over there right now, you can mouth water over the web site www.artisinbakery.com.

Being cheap  interested in baking, I inquired about baking lessons. Kevin is considering a few Saturday baking lessons in the new year, but the idea is still fermenting and no dates have been set.

This pic of the interior sales counter was taken in low lighting conditions on Monday, when the retail portion was closed.

Thanks to Claudette on Spruce Street who alerted me to this wonderful addition to our west side neighborhood.

Ugly Betty Building Better Brown?

The City Centre warehouse/office complex on City Centre Avenue near the Bayview Otrain station is often derided as the ugliest (commercial) building in the city. Actually, there are other contenders. And a frequently mentioned ugliest (residential) building is not so far away.

The owners — Equity International — have recently made some changes to the building. About a year ago, the huge Citv Centre red neon signs were removed from the top of the building. Then earlier this year, the building was washed. Now it’s undergoing a brownwash. The horizontal concrete stripes around the building are being painted black. While I give thanks that the building is being cared for, I am less certain as to the merit of the colour scheme selected. Dull. Rather like those tan brown bricks favoured by one of Ottawa’s luxury highrise condo builders. Does anyone thrill to brown brick?

Will the owners address the really ugliest part of the building, the two storey warehouse wing that runs all the way over to Somerset Street? These units lack wall insulation, and could really use a facelift. A similarly ugly warehouse behind the Rideau Street library was reclad a dozen years ago with colourful metal sheeting and looks much better. In this case, the building cries for the addition of exterior insulation and new cladding. Then add a few more trees to the islands in the parking lot, and the complex will be set to go for another 20 years.

If you conclude by this that I am a tad pessimistic that the complex will be soon demolished and replaced by millions of square feet of office and residential space, you read it right.

Disclosure: until I retired and sold my biz, I was the largest tenant in the City Centre complex (warehouse wing).