Category Archives: City Hall

Making the wrong arguments to planning committee doesn’t help

Yesterday, Planning Committee had an over-full agenda of contentious items. This meant huge waits for the assembled throngs. All seats were taken, and there were over 70 standees / folding chairs / sitting on the floor. For a 8+ hour meeting.

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The final votes were to approve various high rise developments, leading to the predictable reaction of citizen attendees that the process was unfair, rigged, or otherwise unsatisfactory.

I agree the process is unsatisfactory  and might dedicate a subsequent post to suggestions to fix it. And incidentally save us all buckets of money. But a large part of the dissatisfaction yesterday comes from residents making the wrong arguments to planning committee. Most of these mistaken arguments were in evidence at the 265 Carling (at Bronson) rezoning application from 9 to 18 stories.

One of the biggest errors is making an argument that isn’t highly specific to the project in question.

Asking council to reject a high rise “because it will increase crime in the neighbourhood” doesn’t accomplish much. The claimant presented no facts to back up that opinion.  If tall buildings promote crime, how come it isn’t a major problem now, given numerous apartment buildings nearby? Are buildings nine floors and under crime free while the crime wave begins on the tenth? Fact is, some high rises are crime prone. So are some town house clusters. And so are some low rise neighbourhoods. Does that mean we should ban single family homes and townhouses?

Obviously people in higher rise buildings care about their neighbourhood and crime. They were out in force at the meeting.

If high rises promote criminality, then this would be an argument for no high rises anywhere. Any and all objectors to rezoning would cite this crime-gateway-thru-highrise-living argument and no high rises would be built anywhere… which throws out a major local industry…and huge chunk of the Official Plan… to say nothing of reversing the rules in the Provincial policy statement and thus thwarting high rises in every lot, in every municipality in Ontario.

Sorry, the crime argument won’t convince planning committee to vote down the rezoning, because it was too generic (as well as probably being wrong).

It will generate [too much] traffic. Well duh, of course it will. But the proposed condo  is adjacent an arterial. And yes that arterial is busy now. It will get busier in the future too. But don’t mistake the origin point of a trip with the the problem. After all, building that same high rise six blocks or sixteen blocks or sixty blocks further away will generate the same amount of traffic on that arterial. After all, those cars are going somewhere (on average, over 8 kilometres per commuter trip). On arterials.

The main influence of the origin point is that the closer it is to the central area of the city, the less vehicular traffic it will generate. Moving the 265 Carling high rise out to Bayshore or Barrhaven will generate more traffic than at Carling and Bronson because the further out you go the more every trip has to be made by car since those places have constrained walkability. Objecting to a building in the Glebe Annex because of traffic is to invite worse traffic congestion (thru more tripmaking) when the people are housed further out.

And again, if this project is bad here, then every project is bad everywhere. There simply aren’t arterial roads sitting around with tons of spare capacity nor can we force people to only drive on those spare-space roads. They’ll end up on Carling or Bronson eventually.

Sorry, the busy arterial argument is unlikely to sway council.

Building a high rise near the intersection of Carling and Bronson will make it more dangerous for high school kids to go to school or cross the street. Really? So we shouldn’t build any new buildings near any high schools? Presumably that argument applies to grade schools too. And community centres. And routes to school too. Or parks. Or routes to parks, of which our neighbourhood always had the least amount of park space of any area in the city.

Sorry, another fail.

But more people living near Glebe HS or other established schools might reduce driving and school busing. How many student parking spaces are there at Glebe?[even one?] At Woodroofe? [a bunch] At St Mark’s in Manotick?[lots and lots].  There’s a reason people like living in the built up city (walkability) and others prefer suburbs or exurbs (driveability).

The Glebe Annex neighbourhood, claimed one speaker, is family friendly, with little kids. High rises won’t have any kids. I sympathize with this emotion, I too favour kid-friendly streets. But 70-80% of households are child-free … are we proposing to forbid them to live in the Glebe? Can we force empty nesters to sell their Glebe homes to make way for breeders? Can we force them to sell only to breeders? Even at a loss?

Again, that argument wasn’t site specific to 265 Carling; and applied pretty much equally to every apartment anywhere in the city. I vaguely hope someone somewhere is compiling data about how many more people are now having babies or raising kids in apartments, given that single family homes in the central city are out of the price range of most young families.

Sunlight and views are important for some people. They are very important for me. But I don’t have a legal right to never be in the shade. Heck, you know the tall building over at Tunney’s Pasture? I sometimes see the sun setting behind it … which means I am in its shadow … despite being two kilometers away. Sorry for the speaker at Tuesday’s Planning Committee, but the the city just ain’t gonna reject a building because it blocks your view to the west, or might reduce the brightness of light. It has standards, rules, that specify a certain distance between buildings to let in light, that’s all folks.

No one has a right to forever preserve their current view of the Gatineau Hills, or the Peace Tower, or the city scape off in the distance. Development happens. Telling council to reject this high rise because it blocks your view isn’t likely to happen, and only sets you up for rejection. Council isn’t being contemptuous when it disregards arguments it hasn’t any legal  or moral right to enforce. There are only a very few protected view planes in the city, and until some politician is buried on the roof of the Fitzsimmons building, the Glebe isn’t one of them.

Planners currently are concerned with controlling, manipulating, creating .. skylines. They refer to the view of several high rises as a composition. They currently like a composition that comes together to form a peak. At a node, like a transit station or major intersection. So a cluster of apartments at Bronson and Carling that has some low rises, some mid rises, and the centre a single peak tallest building, appeals to them. Ergo, pointing out that the latest building, in the centre spot, is taller than the others is perceived by planners as a virtue, not a drawback. All the more reason to approve it. And here comes the locals pointing out the very feature that planners like while mistaking it for an argument to reject the proposal.

While each approved new building is not strictly speaking a precedent that allows subsequent applications for similarly tall buildings, we all know that the emphasis in Ottawa on compatibility means that proposals that blend in have better chances of survival. So builders cite nearby buildings to justify their project. And residents cite these same buildings to argue that the new building is out of context. Both are employing precedent, one to oppose and one to propose change.

It strikes me as ironic that today’s apartment dwellers on Carling object to a new high rise while themselves living in buildings that when proposed a generation ago were “out of context” and incompatible, according their then-neighbours. And those two storey houses built by the tract-builders of the day may have irritated those that preferred the Glebe when it was semi-rural. You know, those folks that in their turn displaced the original forest dwellers of the area.

So when I read that residents attending planning committee leave feeling that their concerns were ignored, that the process was a sham, that it was all cooked or pre-determined, or that councillors were showing contempt by checking their emails, whispering with staff, or other wise multi-tasking, I both agree that its a messy system, and feel that a big part of the problem is people bringing the wrong arguments. I would never have the patience to be a councillor listening to irrelevant arguments all day. In fact I couldn’t take being a spectator at the Tuesday’s session, and left before noon.

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Sidewalk parkers move on!

A reader responded to a previous gripe here about motorists that park on sidewalks. He suggested I conspicuously take a picture of the scofflaw.

So when I came across this car on Preston Street, I first noticed that there were abundant on street parking spaces, and off street ones too in the Preston Hardware lot across the road. I stopped in front of Mr Motorist and spent a little bit of time setting up the picture. With a little squeak of the tires (sort of an attempted squeal, but he wasn’t going fast enough) he pulled out and parked legally in space fifty feet further down the street. He didn’t feed the meter. Hmm.

So I tried it again, a bit later, this time in front of City Hall. I don’t recall there being a big problem before with motorists parking up close to the Lisgar entrance, but now they just seem to ignore the bollards and block the pedestrian walkways.

 

When I came out, there was a different white truck in the spot. So I whipped out the camera, the driver sees me, and presto, van rolls away. A coincidence? Or guilty conscience?

 

 

this pictogram reads: park here please

Bike repair station

I noticed recently that Ottawa City Hall will be providing some sort of bike repair station at their nifty new bike parking facility. The one shown above is at my son’s university. They were to be found in numerous places around campus.

The bike can be lifted up by its seat and inserted into the bent metal pipes to hold the bike up off the pavement so the crank or wheel can be spun. The tools are all attached by a sturdy cable, and are supposed to be placed in the tray behind the red sign but obviously people prefer to let them all hang out. Look carefully to see the tire pump to the right in its own little armoured silo.

This looks like a very simple and easy to make device. Any local iron shop should be able to bang them out quickly.  I wonder if the City’s will be as simple and cost effective, or …

Cheap, an oversight, or lack of oversight?

Down on LeBreton Flats things are quieter right now. The music concert season is drawing to a close (did you notice, the HoDown patrons were much better dressed than the Bluesfest patrons? Cowboy boots, hot pants, checkered shirts, and straw cowboy hats….hee hah!).

Claridge is finishing up his current building, but not yet started its next bunch. You can actually hear the birds chirp, and see them flitting from stunted popular tree to stunted shrub amongst the bomb-crater landscape that typifies much of the Flats.

Claridge builds the condos, and landscapes their grounds. He then landscapes the “public parkland” space along the new bike path. He builds the path too. This all part of the subdivision agreement he has with the City.

I have railed before on the lack of utility in constructing a bike path 100m at a time. As each building is landscaped, its bit of path is built. At this rate, there will be a complete path to Booth Street by 2018, and further west well after I am dead.

But I notice Claridge landscapes only between the path and his building. He does not complete the last few feet on the far side of the path:

If we depend on Claridge we might wait a wee while before these verges, edges, and leftover spaces are properly landscaped. If we wait for the City to act, we will all be dead first. Does the city really have inspectors to ensure that subdivision agreements are fulfilled?

There is a curious little building on the site; it houses switching equipment, with a midget-sized door. The landscape plans show it surmounted by a large trellis with plant growth. Alas, all I see here is grafitti-style artwork on its side:

Bike Parking at New LRT Stations

I sit on the public advisory committee for pedestrian and cyclist access to and design of the new LRT stations. Sometimes my comments are welcome there, and sometimes I feel like the skunk at a garden party.

After last week, I was a stunned bunny.

The subject was (again) cyclist and pedestrian access to the new stations. There was some useful stuff, like the likely walk-in catchment zone, the cycle-in catchment zone, and the zone where it is just too much effort to get out the bike so someone might walk; and zone where someone might decide, since they were already on the bike, to cycle all the way and skip the LRT completely.

the once (and future?) Bayview Station

The rule of thumb, according to the well-suited consultant from the West Coast of the USA, was about 2-4% of the walkins would be cyclists, and their catchment zone is 3.5km.

The consultants had tables that showed the expected transfers from bus to rail at each station, the walkins, and thus the cycle-ins. OC Transpo has then gone out to all the existing BRT stations to count the actual bikes to compare to the projection. All well and good. And did I mention that all the city staff and consultants at the meeting were swell and nice people.

But then the meeting swerved off into the surreal. Picture a large City Hall boardroom in all its splendor. Five or six senior city staff and consultants. Four public advisory people (late in the meeting, it grew to five persons…).

You see, the whole discussion was on “how many bike posts to put at each station”. There will be a minimum of four posts and rings, meaning 8 bike parking spaces, at two locations for each station (since each station has two entrances…). A few stations will have more, a few less.

And this went on and on. The City is being Frugal (was Watson eavesdropping through the walls??) with our tax dollars. They don’t want to install too many posts.

Except I had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that the staff was consuming more dollars talking than the posts were worth, installed, and by City staff to boot. This evening meeting followed up on a similar afternoon meeting, with wa-a-a-a-y more city planning and advisory staff attending (it was the great Technical Advisory Committee, those who are paid by the city as opposed to the lesser unwashed Public Advisory Committee, who don’t get paid). That American consultant had been flown in, and was being paid some per diem. Probably hotel rooms too. And all those city staff with lo-o-0-ng titles, none of which actually had the word pedestrian or cycling in them. And there would be secretaries, back room juniors, senior managers, PPT artists, and overhead to go with all that.

Now for a good part of this I wasn’t worried about how many bike parking posts they might put in. After all, most of the stations have enormous overhangs for most of their lengths, so more posts could be added later, possibly for less than $5000 each. At previous meetings, all the under-eaves space had been identified as bike parking. So much, we might be forgiven for thinking we were in Holland.

But wait, there was a catch (isn’t there always…). It gradually dawned on me that the reason they were so anxious to identify the actual amount of bike parking posts required in model and reality, was because the drawings now showed all the space not being used up by the posts, as being handed off to become planters and concrete walls. If a station is designed for 4 parking posts, that is all there ever will be in most cases. There will be no room to expand, unless other features are expensively removed.

I suggested that should there not be enough city posts, there were always lots of directional posts, no parking posts, bus stop posts, and other sign clutter upon which a bike could be attached. But no, we were solemnly told, there won’t be any clutter of posts as everything will be put on single ganged-up sign post pillars (yet to be designed). I hope my face didn’t show my true reaction to that statement.

And what could I say of the proposal that the downtown west station entrance at Place de Ville (by the door to the Podium Building, which is about to be torn down and replaced by a 20+ storey office tower) was to be allocated exactly 3 parking posts, while six inches away the entire overhang of Tower C (Transport Canada) is a sea of hundreds of spaces, all clogged with bikes. If the City had to go spit in the sea, it would take a hundred staff and consultants dozens of meetings to decide on the volume of spit, as if it made a difference.

How could something so rational and good like planning for bike parking seem to go so wrong? Too much effort was going into planning jargon and high concepts, at the expense of some pretty obvious common sense and right-before-your-nose solutions.

If I am still on the City circulation list for a copy of the study, I will report next week on the latest station designs, when I can post some pic too. Hint: some shrinkage in size and features. Think of a wool sweater in a very hot wash followed by a very hot dryer. A very very hot dryer.

 

Watson Pushes Envelope

 

A good politician manages to turn adversity into advantage.

Responding to criticism that new (again) Mayor Jim Watson would go to anything, including the opening of an envelope, he brought this up at his inauguration speech at the Shenkman Hall. The wording in his prepared speech is: “listening to the families I speak with at the church bazaar or the backyard BBQ. Some people poke fun at me for that, but it’s a point of pride for me. Over the next four years, I will join you in your communities and church basements, at your farmers’ markets and fairs, doing the important job of going to where you are – and listening.” In the version of the speech he delivered, he mentioned that he would proudly attend the opening of an envelope.

During the election he promised new action to clean up the Ottawa River and to stop the sewage we dump into it because previous councils [list former mayors here] decided not to spend money on the out-of-sight sewers in favour of more visible vote-getters.

So he’s been office just two days, and presto, a ceremony at the Booth Street sewage control station. I came along after the event, but I gather there was his honor, councillor Monette, Mr Baird, and others, officially opening the sewer. I sincerely hope he can deliver on his other promises that fast — I recommend you stock up on OC Transpo tickets for the first rides on the new LRT system opening next week..

Now am I alone in wondering if the above ceremony/press event doesn’t have a bit of deja vu all over again? Wasn’t it just earlier this fall that the mayor (at that time sporting a chrome dome instead of black plastic glasses) was there with various councillors and the same Mr Baird … opening the sewer?

It seems Mr Watson won’t just go to a letter opening, he will go to the re-opening of an already-opened envelope.

And I am sure it was just a coincidence that this came the same day that thousands of Ottawa West residents got constituency flyers from a Mr Baird touting stimulus funding for the sewers.

I am full of hope that competent days are here again, if city hall productivity is to be judged by their proficiency in organizing photo ops.

More Green Roofs Promised

In the recent municipal election, Jim Watson borrowed a plank from Miller’s Toronto. Watson called for more “green” roofs, and city staff to be knowledgeable about green roofs. Toronto did the same thing a few years ago. There the original impetus was that private sector owners would be obliged to install green roofs. This was later expanded to include some government sector buildings.

As a policy, it is a delight for the Mayor. He looks green and “with it”. The regulation cost is minimal. The real cost is borne by others. OBrien criticized Watson, and I was surprised when The Citizen criticized him for pointing out what should be obvious: it’s a feel good promise with high external costs.

Ottawa already has a number of green roofs, some west side examples can be found by entering “green roof” in the search button on this blog.

To me, green roofs are most useful at the ground or podium level where they can be seen and enjoyed. Atop a 24 storey office tower … not so visible. Of course, there they might still have some benefits in heat and rain absorption. But the area of a roof in built up urban areas is often small in relation to the wall area.

Rather than prescribe green roofs, I would rather see more effort put into green walls. We should identify what we want to achieve and then let the market find the means, rather than adopting the solution first and demanding it be implemented.

Toronto re-did the roof of the terrace around City Hall to be a green roof demonstration. Rows of pavers were removed and replaced with sedum in trays. The weight of the sedum trays is not an issue here as they simply replaced the concrete pavers.

The sedums and grasses are planted in patterns to make an interesting artwork on the roof. The grasses make eye-catching movements.

The green plantings made the roof terrace, about two stories above Nathan Phillips plaza, pleasant to visit. I image the previous all-concrete pavers version was incredibly hot or cold depending on the season.

Green roofs are not planted right up to the edge of the roof. About 12′ is left for workers and equipment along the perimeter of the building as access is required to the exterior skin of the structure.

In a rather dramatic contrast to the shallow roof plantings retrofitted onto City Hall, the private commercial complex directly across Queen Street, built in the same era as City Hall, had a green roof about 40 years before Mayor Miller:

There appear to be several acres of landscaped roof on the Sheraton Centre, most of it planted with trees that are thriving. The trees are over 30′ high and provide a lush view as well as usable gardens.

I also noticed in Toronto that new building roof tops all had enclosed mechanical penthouses to mask the rooftop equipment. In Ottawa, giant air conditioners and similar equipment are just stuck on the roof for all to admire.