Category Archives: Dalhousie

Actual treasure map to the “beer train tunnel” under Albert Street

Today’s Citizen has a fun story * by Ian McLeod  on the fabled beer train tunnel under Albert Street (this section was formerly known as Wellington Street). Every time there is major work in the area, the rumours spread of vast underground caches of beer, chilled and ready to take home by the lucky workers who can find them.

This was a great motivation for the Perez workers who built the 1980′s townhouses on Walnut Court (the southwest end of the tunnel and former brewery site). Let’s just say there was lots of excavation superintendents at the time.

Ditto for the workers who tore down the old warehouse building on the north side of Albert, the reputed north end of the tunnel. The Carbide building was the longest / largest in the British Empire when built, extending from [what is now] City Centre Avenue to Broad Street.  This building was used, amongst other things, to construct trans-Atlantic telegraph cables and accessories.

When the Parkway (not yet the Ottawa River Commuter Expressway, or John A Macdonald Parkway) was first used for express buses to Kanata and points west back in Andy Haydon’s day, half the building was demolished to permit the buses to get to the parkway via a new Preston Extension (its closing subject of a story here  just a few days ago…).

In the Citizen story, we are told  ”officials with the City of Ottawa’s communications office [said]  there was nothing in municipal records about any tunnel, much less a lost train”.

Hmm. Just how much do the communications people know?

How about this engineering drawing. A City drawing, no less, coming to WSA via the Old Dalhousie Ward heritage committee:

(click to enlarge)

It shows the intersection of Preston (coming up from the bottom of the drawing) and meeting Wellington (now Albert) running across the width of the drawing. The tunnel itself is shown to the left with the dark dotted outline. Enlarging the drawing shows the tunnel is 352′ west of the Preston intersection.

Since each sidewalk square is about 5′ wide, simply walk 70 squares west of Preston and you get here:

 

Notice the cracks in the pavement!

Aren’t they about 9′ apart!

OMG, its the tunnel !

Isn’t this enough to get the gardeners in those houses excited?

But wait, the Old Dalhousie Ward heritage committee has more City info. Here’s a cross section of the tunnel, looking east along the former Wellington, now Albert Street.:

The tunnel had to squeeze under the 51″ water main on the left, incline up a bit to get over the 3′ sewer pipe, and then descend a bit to get under the second 51″ water main. The drawing clearly shows the tunnel is 7′ high by 9′ wide. About 66′ of the length is under the city street.

Now back to reality.

Albert is up for total reconstruction in 2013, and the old tunnel will be excavated and filled. At that point, rumours of a train in the tunnel, or a gizillion cases of beer (still miraculously fresh after all those decades) will be tested. Until then, the fumes, the rumours, may be enough to cause the contractors to work harder, and maybe stay a bit late into the dark of night.

* Read more at the Citizen story: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/abandoned+rail+tunnel+lost+train+somewhere+beneath+LeBreton+Flats/7596660/story.html#ixzz2D3ZBlHfL

Charettes — or is it charades? — on the west side

The City of Ottawa’s CDP on the Bayview-Carling area has long been an embarrassment. Not that its key worker bee has been lacking, but rather that the city has endlessly unfunded it, delayed it, postponed it, and frustrated it, while many of the prime lots have been spot rezoned, frequently from a two or four storey height to twenty, thirty, and now forty+ stories.

But there are many more sites yet to be rezoned, and the developers are lined up four deep for rezoning, so the City flew in its favourite swat team Urban Strategies, of Toronto.

Here are some impressions of the George Dark – direct from the Centre of the Universe — charette exercise. A charette is a fancy french word for a brainstorming exercise whereby a bunch of people gather around to discuss — and perhaps resolve — a design problem.

This was done by viewing overhead projections of some designs adopted by other cities that had similar problems. By hearing frequent anecdotes about how Toronto has already successfully solved our (much smaller) problems. And by gathering ’round a 6′ x 6′ printed out air photo of the neighborhood with styrofoam scale models of the approved high rises and a lifetime supply of generic apartment building models to be positioned around the map by George Dark or his colleague Eric. Although the lifetime supply ran out before the end of the first afternoon, and the model maker worked on for many hours over two days cranking out “another 18 storey” or “a six story plus two, set back”, or “a fieldhouse, one loft with some two”.

the base model, before the Helicopters started raining down new buildings onto the neighborhood. No one was hurt, though, as the new buildings were styrofoam and not brick.

I can’t give a blow-by-blow account of the exercise, as it would be two days long. But here are some personal observations.

Mind your Wills and Mays

Mr Dark is a charming and eloquent person. He is likeable. And he has lots of experience in large scale development. Vocabulary is important. A lot could be gleaned by listening carefully. The area will get lots more highrises. There will be lots of intensification. We will have to adjust. There will be major changes. We — the residents – must change.

Developers may choose to provide this. They may include streetscaping. They may have underground parking. There may be landscaping behind the infills. The City may decide to add a park.

There’s your opinion, and the right opinion

Several times during the presentation someone would say something along the lines that they liked what was here now, and why change, or that they didn’t like something. Often, the moderator rolled with the comments and carried on smoothly. But more than once those comments elicted a sharp “well, that’s your opinion, it’s only one view, and others think differently”. Someone playing along with the preferred dialogue of how many more buildings can we fit along the street, never got reprimanded, but did get elevated into the select club of “we think”. A more than subtle nudge along the direction of correct thought according to Dark Vader.

Fortunately the Agenda 21 intervenor was ignored, and the Glebite who thought a stadium or Senators ice hockey rink would be perfect for Dows Lake got politely navigated by. It proved harder to avoid the lady who thought we should be discussing, in detail, all the possible options and their advantages for a Carling Avenue main LRT line from Kanata that would end at the corner of Carling and Preston.

I’ll see you “four” and up it by “two”

Planning speak can be very curious. If a member of the public present said an area could accept be intensified from two stories to four (ie, stacked townhouses), Mr Dark would repeat out loud “four stories”, thus informing the speaker that he or she had been heard. Within 30 seconds, George, warming up into the next paragraph, would summarize this as “four to six”. About sixty to ninety seconds later he would pause in the middle of his new topic, and in a sotto voice, turn to his faithful assistant over by the big sheets of paper with coloured markers, wave his fingers, and say “six to eight”. And thus the morning went by.

Planning is a sort of high stakes poker, with condo floors being the  chips.

The first time I heard Mr Dark say “eight stories transitioning down to ten”, I figured he had made a slip of the tongue. Obviously eight goes UP to ten. Or ten goes down to eight. But throughout the days, I heard this over and over again. Six transitioning down to eight. Sixteen down to eighteen. Words mean exactly what he means them to mean. Alice should have been a planner.

New Park Proposed

A lot of time was spent on the suggestion of a new major chunk of parkland along Beech Street, to occupy the entire block west of Champagne and north of the Emerald Tower, although at one time it was suggested that another building might be squeezed in between the Emerald and the Park. To acquire this park site would cost somewhere in the five to seven million dollar range, if we go by the selling price of similar lots in the area.

While the park idea was well received, it does create two park parcels bisected by Champagne. So another hour was spent speculating on how the City might have a closable street through there, or how one could possibly mitigate that, and what colour one might use to paint the bollards.

Note that there was no suggestion that a large development site be sacrificed to park land; that was specifically rule off the table. Can’t be done, said George. However, the Beverley Apartments, modestly priced accommodation for the modestly waged, well that could go to create an urban playground for the better waged incomers who will live in those gleaming glass towers. As for those displaced residents — too bad, so sad.

The Great Wall of Carling grows a block deeper

Residents and observers of the rezoning applications along the Carling end of the neighborhood have frequently mentioned the proposed “wall” of high rise buildings along the street. Two twenty-something towers on the parking lot at Champagne. Three to five towers to replace Dow Motors. Soho Italia at 500 Preston (still somewhere around 30 floors), or Claridge’s 505 Preston (42 stories), and a buncha unnamed ones continuing along Carling as one goes east.

Until recently, the CDP planning team had alluded to a single row of towers along Carling. Our concerns that they would merely be the first row of many more to come further north, were downplayed. Mr Dark had no such compunctions. Yup, build another row behind them. Or two. At least all the way to Adeline Street. And start to transition down from the thirty and forty floor towers on the south side of Adeline by putting more high rises on the north side (yup, twenty floors on the north side, in the “low rise” area, would be a nice transition down).

Rochester – the previously missed opportunity

All the residential streets running east meet Rochester along the edge of the NRCan properties. The abrupt change from mid and high rise office buildings to low rise residential creates and “uncertain” zone, ergo the houses have been converted to restaurants, or parking lots, and empty spaces, just waiting for a clever suggestion of what to build there. Domicile  is first out of the gate, asking for 14 to 18 floors for a condo tower at Norman/Rochester. Dark’s model maker promptly produced five more to fill up the end of every block ending at Rochester.

Once the ‘low rise’ central neighborhood area got bookended by a long line of high rises, it was pretty simply to toss in a few 20 story ones along Orange Street, adjacent to Ottawa’s cute little airplane-sized-spirit-bottle Distillery Distict which would be fashioned out of the historic red brick Mineralogical Laboratory buildings (now vacant, condemned by gross contamination).

Once the row of Rochester high rises reached the current Preston Square development, three or more high rises were plopped onto the large parking lot between the successful Sakto development and the Prescott Tavern. Might as well throw in some six storey new buildings along Preston mainstreet too. And maybe behind them, throw in a few real high rises, sorta like the Adobe building lurking behind the successful row of shops immediately north. They simply won’t be noticeable, we were informed.

Deja Vu 1950′s, motor-centric Ottawa

I was very surprised by one of the urban strategies recommended. Not recommended, that’s too passive a word. Maybe “earnestly sold” or promoted, over and over. I thought that catering to the car was passe, but it sprang up from its coffin, the wooden stake extracted, and the nightmare began: Dont build a pedestrian bridge over the OTrain at Hickory. Make it a road bridge. To “complete” the neighborhood grid (completeness, it seems is only visible thru the windshield of a car, but not perceptible by foot or bike). And the OTrain linear park, new home of the million dollar bikeway now under construction, is apparently unlike the Byron streetcar linear park in that this one will be improved by the addition for three to six new cross streets every 200′.

And that existing ped bridge at Young, get rid of it, put in a car bridge. And some new roads. Put one along the east side of the OTrain cut, to connect up those dead end streets to make it easier for motorists to circle the block looking for parking (actually said !). Can’t we extend those other dead end streets over to join Railway Street on the west side of the cut? George wanted to extend almost all the streets over the cut. I say almost all, because he notably didn’t want to extend those streets that would go through the high rise development sites along Champagne, only those that would deliver motorists to the low rise residential area.

Rentlentlessly criticized and hounded by residents, who continually came back to the undesirability of the Autowa plan, Mr Dark later conceded that the new north-south road might be more like a mews, a lane, cute, mixed use with kids playing on it. The east-west roads would be full size, though. I have no doubt that More Roads will be in the final report.

Why did he want that north-south road along the east side of the OTrain cut?…

Blockbusting revisited, and the Fonze jumps the tracks

Anyone experienced in urban planning exercises quickly learns the standard block busting methods used by cities and developers. Buy a property. Let it run down. Abandon it. Forget to turn off the water when winter comes. Declare it uninhabitable. Make sure it looks ugly. Someone sooner or later will report children nearby playing with matches. Soon the neighbors will applaud when some civic minded functionary suggests demolishing it.

I couldn’t help but think of the analogy when dealing with the short dead end streets running west of Preston. They are short. Some with as few as six houses. More commonly, ten to fourteen houses, on 25′ lots. Most of the residents at the charette wanted these areas preserved for low rises — four floors or less. But the planners enthused about rebuilds along Preston going to six floors. And maybe a taller building behind, where they were be invisible to passers-by. And at the railway track end of the streets, why not intensify the block ends with some new apartments. Like 18 stories high. If you haven’t done the math, the street is now left with very few low rises. And if someone in that short block should happen to apply for a higher building, why that’s up to Council to decide in its wisdom whether that would be desirable. Calling Katherine Hobbs!

And those 18 story high rises, repeated at each dead end along the railway track, was why we need the new streets running along the OTrain corridor. And once Fonzie gets those  Champagne high rises to “jump the tracks”, the block busting is well underway.

Did I mention that major developer is suggesting an 18 storey high rise is appropriate for their site on Norman?

Leading the Charette, George Dark (at left) is flanked by Bob Fobert [Fotenn planning consultants], the head of Charlesfort the condo builders, and the head of Arnon corporation, the condo and office builders. In the foreground, a slightly discouraged-looking resident — hello Aline! — holds up her head.

Florida, Spike, and the Gang 

Am I super-sensitive, or what? I was irritated each time we were told with some enthusiasm that Rod Lahey (architect of many of the glass towers) was moving into an older industrial building on Beech. This is definitely the stamp of approval, the Richard Florida creative -class blessing our previously obscure neighborhood. And he is following on the steps of Barry Hobin, also a landowner who has his offices here, and who was present but not captured in the photo above.

Lahey’s office was represented at the meeting by a junior architect. Let’s call him Spike. Who exuded confidence that his employer’s new high rises would bless and elevate the neighborhood out of the dark ages. We would soon arrive at the gates of nirvana! You poor souls don’t know how lucky you are. We do. We will refashion the neighborhood into a walkable live-work-play transit-oriented-utopia. He so looked forward to working in his new offices.

I got the impression at one point he was being paid to be at the meeting by the Dark crew itself, but surely after the city-planning-department-hiring-fotenn controversey, they couldn’t have thought doing it through a subcontract would be less obvious. Could they?

Spike may change his mind in October, though, because I learned he actually lives in Greeley or some place exurban like that, and plans to drive to work everyday. Alas, the new Lahey premises don’t seem to have any parking, but that’s just a minor glitch for a site that is surely a retirement-nest-egg for the Lahey fortune. Another thirty story condo there would fund many a winter in Hawaii while the habitants slug through the snow on the five foot wide sidewalks.

Roderick Lahey, Architect’s new offices, Florida North, come to Beech Street, in delightful proximity to the Prescott, such a quaint and cute place to observe the locals in their rapidly disappearing habitat

Of restrained smiles, grins of glee, and smirks

While observing George Dark work by the teams of architects and developers and city planners, I noticed that many of them were readily identified by their tight little smiles. Lips compressed. Often corners of the mouths turned down slightly. But still obviously happy, just not laughing out loud.

Whazzup? I wondered. Were they happy to be participating with the local peasantry, in a joint collaborate urban planning game of charette? Or were they grinning with glee at the positive snowstorm of styrofoam high rises scattering over every corner of the neighborhood? Or was it a smirk, of the I-know-something-you-don’t school?

The “professionals” were readily separable from the locals whose most common posture was arms folded across their chests. Their frowns outnumbered smiles tenfold.

Of the city planners present, I thought they didn’t share the smirk enthusiasm. More than once I saw frowns of dismay.

Big Cheeses don’t smell when absent

The sessions were attended by the aforementioned residents and property owners and architects and developers and city planners and planners-for-hire.

Councillor Holmes dropped in three times. Her staff was present for the whole event. Of Councillor Hobbs and her staff — missing in action. Ditto Cherneschenko, and McCrae (the intersection of Carling and Preston is home to four wards, but most of the action is in Holmes and Hobbs’ wards). The City’s new policy planner chief boffinette came by to hear the opening remarks, but only a few weeks into the planning job, she didn’t feel it was necessary to stay for long.

The NCC sent a representative, who talked rather freely and openly for a civil servant, although she strung so many four syllable abstract words together in each sentence there was a certain ambiguity to what she might have said. NRCan/Canada Lands Corp was represented by one of the hats worn by Mr Fobert-Fotenn, who was also present on behalf of several property owners, developers, and possibly the City planning department itself.

While planners worked inside, just outside City surveyor’s were busy, giving the impression the City was acting promptly to implement the change.

Was the exercise worthwhile?

Well, yes. I learned something. That you could put an awful lot of high rises in a neighborhood if you really try. That what Ottawa really needs is a lot more of Toronto. That highrise condos selling for $450 a foot are the new definition of affordable housing. And that the people buying these new affordable homes will be delighted to pay yet more levies to improve the neighborhood, since the only way we may get local improvements is through the benevolence (or sec 37 extractions)of developers. There will be no real estate bust, esp. for condos.

The future is bright, and shiny, and made of glass. And is very very tall.

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.

Future shape of high rises in Carling and Preston areas

Preston Street is an odd mainstreet, in that it has minimal hinterland of dense residential development. Hintonburg’s and Westboro’s main street areas are more densely built up and have large catchment areas on all sides with a mix of low-rise and high-rise built form. Preston lost its eastern residential areas when 50′s urban renewal wiped out existing urban fabric to replace it with commuter office towers (NRCan), a commuter high school (Commerce, now Adult HS), and a commercial strip predicated on a city-wide market (the ethnic Italian community) rather than an indigenous market. Thus merchants champion converting housing to parking lots, and since the merchants rarely live in the neighborhood, might be more easily convinced of the merits of selling to developers.

Preston Street, the heart of the remaining bit of Little Italy (which used to include all of what we now call Chinatown) is unusual too in that it is in valley, a syncline caused by the Nepean Gloucester Fault Line, parts of which are visible near Lemieux Island,  by the Russian Orthodox church on the transitway, the bowling green beside the Queensway near Parkdale, and Hogs Back.

Notice below the intersection of Carling-Bronson on the top right, and trace your finger along Carling to Preston and then Sherwood and then up the hill to the Farm:

I was interested  to come across the drawing below, whose origin shall for the time being remain unspecified. The faint title of the page is “neighborhood analysis”, and the top part of the sketch is a profile of the existing Preston-Carling area as seen looking north from somewhere over Dow’s Lake.  The building on the far right is the Fitzsimmon’s Building, aka the Nortake Building, and probably known as something else now, right at the corner of the Carling and Bronson.

The tallest existing building in the mid-point area is the NRCan 18 storey office tower at Rochester. There are plans to build a similar office tower immediately to the north of it, presumably that is the light gray shadow, or it could be the OCH red brick apt building in the distance at Gladstone and Rochester. Note that all the area from about Bell St N to Norfolk is marked as having “NO MAX”, which presumably refers to the height limit. I think this refers only to the NRCan lands, and not to all the lands beyond going back to the Queensway …  (Try double clicking on the image to make it larger).

At Preston Street, there is one 9 storey apartment building existing on Sidney Street, a half block down from Carling. The taller gray buildings are presumably the Adobe and Xerox towers at 333 Preston Street.  Off to the left of Preston, beyond the OTrain cut, are the CMPA office buildings and then the Botanica apartment buildings on the anticline — the geological rise up cause by the fault line.

It’s worth taking a minute to examine this drawing, and absorbing what is there now.

The second part of the drawing is proposed buildings. I am not sure who is proposing this build-out scenario. It might be the city, or it might be a developer. Nonetheless, the gap between the developer’s consultants and the city planners is not very wide in this neighborhood, so it’s probably fair to assume this isn’t some wild fantasy.

Start at the Bronson end of Carling again, and note the higher building beside the Fitzsimmon’s tower. Is this close, at Carling, or is it beyond, maybe the development proposed near McDonald’s on Bronson? There are rumours of high rises at the newly-vacated lot at Bell/Carling, but these aren’t on this profile. Nor, for that matter, are any developments on the soon-to-be-vacated and sold vacant lands scattered amongst the NRCan buildings.

There is the potential to create a urban sidewalk facade running from Cambridge to Sherwood, should all those high rises have commercial storefronts on the ground floor or second floors (to take advantage of lake views). Can we actually create a new mainstreet atmosphere here?

Preston  Street is shown clustered in the future with high rises. The Claridge 42 storey building is shown, and kitty corner across Preston is the Soho Italia tower at about 32 stories. Several high rises are shown on the current Dow Motors Honda site, which is several blocks large, and conveniently has no height limits, which might account for the 42 storey buildings shown there (Richcraft now owns the site). On the west side of the Otrain cut area the proposed Arnon high rises on the parking lot at Carling-Champagne, and beyond them the Soho Champagne twin towers and then the Ashcroft towers where the dog pound used to be. Domicile’s HOM condo is now shown just beyond the existing CMPA office buildings.

These drawings shown an interesting examination of current and possible future development related to the geography and geology of the area.

One tidbit for amusement: the Soho Italia excavation analysis (they are going five or six floors down for the garage)  refers to the site draining towards Dow’s Lake. Of course, it is the opposite. Dow’s Lake is uphill, held in place by a dam upon which QE Driveway now runs. The dam was burst once before, in 1900, to flood the lower Preston area and stop the Great Fire. It does make me wonder sometimes about the accuracy of other research that goes into building applications. For interest, stand on the Carling sidewalk and notice how the lawn goes UP to the lake. If you picnic on the grass, you can’t see the lake.

Tomorrow: a similar profile of heights and buildings, drawn from Gladstone to Carling. What high rise fantasies are to be found along Preston??

Civic Gateways (absence of)

Ottawa is nicer than many other cities. Despite the criticisms of the NCC, they do engage in long term planning and city building that generates a sense of grandeur or pride. Without them, Ottawa would be vastly impoverished, just another short-sighted mid-sized city planned with short term expediency the governing rule.

Ottawa is engaged in a worthwhile planning exercise for the downtown core, called Downtown Moves (DOMO). The removal of the bus lanes by 2017-18 creates the opportunity to remake the surface streets in a more livable and pleasant way. And not just replace the bus lanes with parking lanes. For this strategic thinking the city must be lauded.

But only if this isn’t just another expensive study that sits on a shelf being ignored.

One of the shortfalls of the City is its lack of considering large-scale gestures that make a place identifiable. Virtually all of Ottawa’s iconic sites, parks, and monuments are Federal. DOMO opens the door a crack (albeit a very small, understated crack) to something a bit grander.

One of the distinguishing features of Ottawa is the number of Y-shaped or triangular intersections. Confederation Square is the major iconic one and is the number one identifying feature/place of downtown Ottawa, despite it being a somewhat lifeless square much of the time. It’s not so much a place as somewhere to cross through.

DOMO identified a bunch of threshold points that separate the Town from the Crown. I think they understated the potential of the other civic gateway points.

The two gateway opportunities that might be very useful are at either “end” of the Albert – Slater one way pair. At the eastern end, the triangle is nicely landscaped (by the NCC) but it is elevated and is merely a traffic island on the roof of the NAC garage. It’s visibility is not helped by the McKenzie King bridge being mostly a bus road, where uses look out the side windows of the bus rather than forward.

I think this site has enormous potential for a monumental gateway feature with high visibility, without interrupting the Elgin – War Memorial axis. And this not need mean an expensive feature. The function of planning is to identify the opportunity, and preserve the spot, so that at some future time when a monument or feature is looking for a home, there are prime spots available.

Here is a closer up view, which gives a better idea of the significant area available:

The old Lorne Building along Elgin was recently demolished and a new EDC-clone building is going up in its place, which will provide a slightly more uniform backdrop to the vista.

One of the appealing things about the triangle is its similar shape to the War Memorial triangular-square. The section of Albert by the NAC is currently pretty much a pedestrian and urban wasteland, despite the pretty music being played by Oscar Peterson. The NAC is toying with some strategic plans to improve their building, including a main entrance on Elgin, and enclosing the largely-unused rooftop terraces with glazing to make conference or performance spaces. This could enliven the sidewalks which are wide but dead right now.

And at the other end of the downtown, Albert and Slater rejoin. The current configuration at the western edge of the core is another make-do compromise. Albert is overly wide west of Bronson; Slater is routed along the former streetcar right of way along the escarpment. Both sections of road west of Bronson are candidates for road diets once the transitway is replaced by the LRT-in-a-tunnel.

Long term thinking calls for the removal of Commissioner Street between Albert and Slater, to “regularize” the intersection, and the relocation of Slater to be more like this:

The above scheme was drawn by traffic engineers to optimise/maximize traffic flow. It would not be difficult to overlay a city-building, livable streets type revision.

Alas, the area is “outside” the DOMO study zone by 30 feet. And the Bronson reconstruction project (now underway) won’t be considering it. Nor will the Albert reconstruction project (2013+) which runs west from the putative join of Albert-Slater at the current debouche of the transitway. In short, no one is responsible, and the opportunity may simply die.

It’s main hope lies in that it is symmetrical to the eastern gateway point at the NAC, and just might get roped into the plan because of the planner’s love of symmetry and balance. But I’m not too hopeful. Throughout the DOMO process I found their interest and keenness to be on the east side of the downtown, how it relates to Rideau Street or Elgin, and to Parliament (all of which are proper areas of study) but whenever I brought up the west side, how people might get from the Future City on LeBreton Flats, or old Dalhousie neighborhood, or Chinatown, their eyes glazed over and pat phrases about “other studies” tumbled out. The near west side remains unfashionable.

But the DOMO study is not yet put to bed (or on the shelf, as the case may be) so I still have hope someone might spend a day looking at the west side of the downtown core. I am always an optimist. There is always hope.

Rearranging the benches on RMS Primrose

 Two neighborhood parks on the west side are getting major surgery this year. The redo of Chaudiere Park on Elm Street seems to have found a winner design. An especially innovative feature will be the expansion of the small park to take over a few parking spaces on Elm Street, although that feature may not be constructed until 2014 while bureaucrats fret over jurisdiction (it’s good to keep them busy on the innocuous).

The remake of Primrose Park, a larger site just a block further north, is much more curious. The park was originally designed in the early 1980’s as center piece of the first phase of the innovative LeBreton Flats community of 600+ houses. Houff was the designer at a time when new urban park designs were at a peak of creativity. Dufferin Park in Toronto was a frequently cited inspiration.

The interior of Primrose Park, with Rotary Home on the far side. The trees are wrapped for protection from / to toboggans, as the city insisted on planting trees at the foot of the toboggan slope as the paths aren’t plowed in the winter therefore the slopes would not be used. Parks planning has progressed since then…in the new plan, the lovely oak in the centre may be removed, now that it has matured some.

Alas, the park that was built seemed to accentuate the flaws with some scarcity of the virtues. Toronto got a world famous park; Ottawa built a squib.

The fenced kitty litter pan / tot lot was too small from day one, and an awkward grade change to the adjacent Rotary Club Home constrained it even more. A modest play structure was maintained by the parks dept so as to quickly become the sine qua non of minimalism. Even the smallest tots expressed their Little Miss Sarah Richardson design cred by avoiding the space.

The park sloped inward to its centre, which made some people feel it was isolated. The waterplay feature that was – and continues to be – such a central feature of Dufferin Park never worked in Ottawa, in part because it was mostly asphalt instead of sand, and the city elected not to supply tap water (too expensive) instead relying on surface water drainage which – surprise surprise – turned out to be polluted with cat and dog shit.

Dufferin Park water feature in Toronto (above) was the inspiration, but Primrose Park fell far short of its model

The perimeter “wild areas”, designed to be left to grow in a sort of woodlot where kids could explore, were beyond the ken of the parks folks who insisted on mowing the vegetation biweekly so the kids would be seen and “safe”.

Parts of the park were originally designed to spill-over on the adjacent streets, the hovering guardians of public order and safe streets (for motorists) reintroduced firm barriers to discourage street play.

So in 2012, the City arrives with ideas to remake the park. These ideas exclude the history of the park. Are they specifically designed to thwart the features of the original plan? The new park designers seem blissfully unaware of why it the way it is, so instead of working with what they’ve got, they proposed a total remake right down to regrading the site (the large mounds that make up the topography may be formed from contaminated soils, why do I see sudden high expenses coming …).

The new layout for Primrose Park rearranges more than just the benches

A lot of the public input at the first public meeting held months ago expressed resident dismay that a lot of the remodeling seemed to be for the sake of remodeling. Despite the tender loving care of our parks crews, a number of the trees in park thrived, and thirty years later have reached a noticeable size. The renovation plan removes a number of them. We haven’t seen a same-scale ”before” and “after” plan though, just the after, so it’s difficult to figure just how many mature trees gotta go.

The existing entrance plaza at Rochester/Primrose. The apple trees on the right gotta go. It’s harder to tell if the maples remain in the regraded space. This planted area will become the new paved plaza at a different grade, replacing the old paved area shown below.

 The other major public concern is the conflict between those who use the park as a dog run, and those who have children. This conflict has been simmering for decades. I rarely took my kids to this park, just a block from my home, because of the dogs. Others at the meeting expressed similar concerns. Dog walkers felt kids and dogs go together naturally, and if it weren’t for the dog walkers there would be no one at the park at all (! — think about that comment for a moment).

The main entrance to the current park is at Rochester/Primrose, with an entry plaza and tot lot. The city first proposed to close this area completely, even removing a park entrance, but in the latest plan the entrance is back, and has been expanded to include the current tot lot space (relocated elsewhere) with a piazza and picnic tables, a sort of urban square to promote lingering. This design should be a functional winner, even though it necessitates removing most of the mature trees –apples and maples(?) included — and shrubs in the area.

say bye bye to the apple orchard

Keep in mind, though, that is also simply relocating the existing brick piazza space from a point a bit further west to this corner, and replacing that bricked space with … grass. The shuffle of functions goes on: the main dog run feature of the old park was the central field. Once regraded and flattened, it will become a larger tot lot and water spray pad feature. Both will be welcome additions. The spray pad feature at Plouffe Park is crowded, and the (potentially) long hours of pad use here should be popular (there will still be a wading pool a block away at Chaudiere Park on Elm). Kids remain a secondary users of the park, however, being fenced into an area comprising about 1/3 of the park. Other than the entrance piazza, the other 2/3 of the park is left to be an off-leash dog run. (Dog runners will be also gaining new graded parkland along the new OTrain MUP, an area much larger than this park).

The urge for the park planners to change things remains strong, however. The brick sidewalks along the street and in the park will be replaced by … concrete and asphalt paths. The still-sturdy octagonal-pattern concrete retaining walls will be torn out and replaced by curving concrete walls, without disturbing the 30+ year old trees growing just a few feet back. Should be interesting to witness.

Retaining walls and stairs will be removed without disturbing trees or roots; and replaced by a new concrete wall

The brick table area will be replaced by grass; the apple orchard will be replaced by a concrete piazza. Mature trees will be replaced by saplings. (A previous incarnation of the plan replaced more of the mature trees with a giant steel roofing structure for shade, fortunately that was hooted down by local residents). Existing red pavers will be replaced by new pavers lacking the patina of age. No consultation about colour, pattern, size, or permeability. Existing semi-permeable pavers will be replaced by concrete and asphalt. Ahh, progress.

The coloured asphalt water pond will be replaced by an interlocking brick pond. I’m optimistic it will work better than its predecessor.

The main walking paths that transect the park will now cut through the centre of the dog runs, which will prove to be interesting, maybe more so for the skeptical observer at a safe distance than the school kids and pedestrians themselves. I’m sure the dogs will love it.

One of the very curious features of the new design is the north edge. The park abuts the back yards of Ottawa Community Housing townhouses. Residents complain of urine and excrement smells (four- legged or two-legged?) outside their back yards. Some park users complain of garbage tossed into the park. The yards don’t have gates to the park. Originally supposed to be a naturalized area where kids could play amongst the shrubs and bushes, the city understands this mandate as being to  clearcut around the trees.

The new plan again calls it a “naturalized area” but installs a new chain link fence about six feet out from the OCH yard fences. The zone in between will be “engineered wood fibre”, which is park-speak for wood chips, with an entrance only at each end of the zone. It will, in short, be an alleyway with limited access points.

I’m not sure how this passes the CPTED folks (community safety through environmental design) and I think within a few days of a dry spell we will see an urban bush fire scorching the path and the fences. I really don’t see how this alleyway design will improve things; I think it will encourage the very behaviours it is supposed to discourage. The chain link fence itself might survive, though, as it has been remonikered as a “green screen fence”, which means a hedge is planted along the chain link so the dogs can’t see it. Ah, the joys of park-speak.

The far northwest corner of the park has two exits into the OCH properties. The junction of the two has been identified as the pic nic table of ill repute and Big Drug Dealing. Numerous park users called for the removal of the pic nic table, seemingly assured that one simple motion would eliminate neighborhood drug dealing and teenage sex ed. Personally, I think it would have just relocated it to some neighbour’s driveway.

So I was surprised to see in the new plan that the infamous pic nic table was replaced by a shade structure with seating. Is it designed that if you can’t see the behavior, it isn’t a bother? Or because rain puts out the matches and discourages wandering hands? And why isn’t the structure designed to be a small stage? The Company of Fools production in the park last year drew huge crowds. With some clever design a stage could draw on the adjacent slope (aka winter toboggan hill) and paved areas to accommodate throngs of thespian-deprived west siders.

In sum, I see the city spending lots of money to remake the existing park into another park. Some features will be welcome, ie the waterpad and new (if anodyne and safe) play structure. The entrance plaza merely relocates the south side plaza to the south east corner. As for the rest of the changes I am not sure they really are improvements. Just changes. Rearranging the park benches on RMS Primrose. Speaking of benches, there has been no consultation on the style of benches, style of lighting, pavers, or other features. Clean slate for the park planners.

I would have loved to have seen a public advisory (PAC) working group set up;  in my experience PAC’s make real improvements to city designs. Right now, I’m  a bit doubtful that we are getting high value for the money.

 In a contrast to the safe parks people project, local residents are discussing means of taking back parts of Rochester turning circle into play space for youngsters by street painting. If the city can’t see its way clear to expanding parks, maybe it can be accomplished through guerilla action by taxpayers themselves acting first without seeking prior approval from the bureaucracy.

City’s tallest office towers proposed for west side

Phoenix DCR is going to Council in August seeking rezoning of the parcel of land known as 801 Albert Street. They are proposing a 34 storey office tower; a 31 storey office tower, and a 7 storey office tower. Currently, the tallest office buildings in Ottawa are Place de Ville at 29 stories and Place Bell, both in the downtown core.

The parcel of land they propose to build these on is right across Albert Street from the existing Bayview transit station and the adjacent OTrain station. The triangular parcel of land is immediately north of the 8 storey City Centre office tower (the City Centre site has long been OK’d for developments in the 8 to 22 storey range), where City Centre Ave meets Albert. The site is bounded on the west by the OTrain line and new north-south multi-user path (bike path) on which construction begins later this month.

Here is a bird’s-eye view of the triangular site, located immediately south of (ie above) the word Bayview  (station). Our bird is flying somewhere above the Ottawa River, looking south:

The proposed office towers would have about 1.3 million square feet of space. The site is very difficult to develop, being crisscrossed with sewers and water mains. The developer was pushed off by the city back in 2010 when they initially sought rezoning, pending completion of studies about the condition of the infrastructure and the possibility of relocating some of the pipes (one pipe is to be relocated by the developer).

The aerial view below reverts to a more conventional view with north to the top of the picture.

The closest residential housing to the site is immediately east (right), the townhouses of Walnut Court.

Working closely with city planners, Phoenix has managed to insert three buildings between the pipe rights of way. They are well set back from Albert due to a major pipe crossing the site just south of Albert. They used this setback zone to create a forecourt for motorists arriving at the site.

The three buildings would only have 275 parking spaces in the four-level garage, and 22 on the surface, for somewhere around 5 – 6,000 employees. This is truly a transit-oriented development, dependent on the east-west LRT and north-south OTrain for all the employees to arrive. The buildings are designed for single occupancy, ie the Feds, with secure loading zones and mail rooms, etc. Recall that Federal buildings do not, as a rule, include much parking.

Proposed office towers, bird’s-eye view from the north-west, looking south. Albert Street is in the foreground, the City Centre complex is behind these buildings; the OTrain is to the right.

The building relates well to the adjacent streets. Residents and community associations put a lot of work into the CDP regarding this site. We wanted buildings to relate to the Albert Street grade on the north; and the much lower City Centre and O-Train grades on the south and west. This project has the auto court on the Albert level; and major pedestrian and cyclist entrances on the west at O-Train level, with direct access into the new Bayview Station at O-track level. Thus crowds of pedestrians needn’t be crossing Albert at 3pm every day… southbound and westbound travellers will find the shortest route via the ped path at OTrain level; eastbound travellers might go either via the path or cross the street.

The two tallest towers are linked above grade, and at grade by a lobby. The CDP calls for open access through the Phoenix site to the south, so that residents or workers at the (future) City Centre site will also have direct access to Albert and the transit station; although the new emphasis on the O-Train level as a pedestrian spine might reduce that need.

The south side of the building has some surface parking and garage entrances. According to site plans community members saw at a preview last September, the south side is being designed to simulate a street environment, with curbside parking, and the sidewalk along the south side will connect directly from City Centre/Albert intersection through the site to a new ped bridge over the OTrain connecting to the former Wellington right of way into Hintonburg (the bridge that used to be there was removed in 1970) . Phoenix is offering funding for the ped bridge and seems cognizant for making the south side pedestrian friendly and safe.

Most people tend to view the 5.3 acre triangular site as being “in a hole”, but it isn’t really. The problem is that Albert Street rises up on an earthen embankment to its bridge over the OTrain. The service ramp to the City Centre building has a similar slope; and then further south Somerset Street is also raised on a viaduct. But the Phoenix site is at the same elevation as Primrose, Elm, and Spruce Streets, and the City Centre site, and Tom Brown arena, Bayview Yards, and most of LeBreton Flats. I am confident that when / if built up as per this proposal the landscape will look and feel natural.

When the Dalhousie and Hintonburg CA’s, plus representatives from Walnut Court (townhouses immediately east of the site), met the developers last September, there was considerable scepticism that the suggested buildings did look nice but would the final buildings actually look like that? In particular, the innovative second skin of coloured glass panels on the north façade looked expendable should the developer need to cut costs.

In the rezoning application, the proponent wants to “shrink wrap” the buildings as proposed, so the exact saw-tooth south façade and building shapes and locations would be approved but any changes would require council approval (rezoning). Would this include the exterior as shown? We don’t know.

The preview session also raised some concerns about the west façade (no pic available) which is precast concrete punched with windows. The concrete surface was required to meet LEED standards and to reduce solar gain from the western sun.

The CA’s generally approved of the traffic access and signals as suggested. We felt the driveways would work as shown, for the traffic volumes projected. However, the parking needs to be almost all short-term parking, not monthly rentals, since if the garage is full of monthly parkers then day-parkers will flood the neighborhood. And the building, as planned, is only useful for Federal tenancy, since any other use, such as condos or a hotel, would require a lot more parking and more road access than is feasible to provide. We are also concerned that the relationship of the site to Albert Street be urban and not encourage motorists to speed up due to the large scale surroundings.

The ground level of the building has a horizontal “arcade” of white concrete across the front to provide eye-level interest. Personally, I’d like to see that extend out from the northwest corner of the building out to Albert Street, to more fully enclose the courtyard. There will be the usual food court and services inside.

As presently proposed, the building seems isolated and the surroundings bleak. It is certainly not part of any downtown or mainstreet fabric. But then, it wouldn’t fit well on any traditional mainstreet (West Wellington? Preston? Somerset?) due to its size. It is much more like the Tunney’s Pasture buildings, which are towers-in-a-bunny-field adjacent a rapid transit station. There is, however, the possibility of developing a more cohesive and usable high-rise neighborhood when the City Centre site is redeveloped and a pedestrian spine is required to run north-south from Somerset to Bayview Station.

The seven storey building on the east, the most triangular one, is  a meeting centre with conference rooms around some sort of atrium. Or, it could be office space. These are details to be worked out should the developer find a tenant, because this complex won’t be built unless they have a pre-signed tenant for all of the space in at least one tower.

The shadows thrown from these towers will go a long way in the winter. Fortunately, they go north, where there is no existing or proposed residential uses. The late afternoon western sun may throw a shadow onto the adjacent Walnut Court, Primrose, and Elm residential areas (the existing Tunney’s Pasture buildings do that already). Unfortunately, the shadow study doesn’t include late afternoon projections, despite Community Association requests:

 Summary: The site for this development is difficult to design well, and the proposed rezoning is highly dependent on the buildings being exactly as shown, and for a single tenancy office use. The quality of the ped and cyclist access via the western frontage is crucial for the easy movement of the six thousand workers to and from the Bayview Station.