Category Archives: downtown

Spring Craning

An interesting demonstration of evolving design came to west siders this week courtesy of our high rise developers. Better design is everywhere these days. For that we can credit the popularity of industrial design schools, increased awareness of graphic design elements, and the popularity of design-centric programs on TV and the ‘net. Now we can see it on our skyline by craning our necks.

Up on Cathedral Hill, Windmill developments installed their crane for their new condo tower. It is the conventional design. Dare we call it the ‘old fashioned’ design?

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Notice the complicated support wires, the heavy concrete block weights, and the high superstructure. Basic engineering, hoisted high into the sky.

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Meanwhile, down below on the Flats, Claridge has just installed a crane for the next phase of the LeBreton project, a mid-rise apartment building (8 floors) and some all-concrete stacked towns.

This is one slick crane:

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There is no superstructure, few visible wires, the concrete blocks of the counterweights are sliced to create an aerial sculpture. The operator’s cabin is a tinted bubble that would be at home on Chris Hadfield (just like the space station, there ain’t much privacy there for life’s necessities).

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I had a house guest up from the US of A in February who remarked that Ottawa looked very dynamic and thriving, with cranes and construction projects everywhere. I guess five years of recession on the eastern seaboard has rendered cranes absent there.

We will soon see more cranes — Soho Champagne is blasting away the bedrock for their garage on Champagne and Hickory Streets, a crane can’t be far behind. It will replace the one Domicile just took down across the street at their Hom condo.

Over on Preston, Claridge is installing something that looks suspiciously like a sales office for their Icon 40+ storey building.

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Confederation matters (i)

The new Confederation LRT line stations for downtown Ottawa — as proposed by the winning consortium — are very different from the previous designs worked out by the City.

The City’s previous designs were very big on safety through environmental design. To that end, the downtown tunnel stations had a upper level mezzanine with the ticketing functions, that was then open to the track level one floor below.

In quiet hours, someone on the mezzanine could eyeball the trackside waiting areas. People waiting on the platforms could be confident that someone could see them easily from the mezzanine. All that openness promotes subjective safety, ie the safety the user feels, regardless of what the stats might say about safety.

The selected downtown station designs largely do away with soaring, multi-level openness. From what I can tell from the provided illustrations, the mezzanine level is an enclosed space. The train platforms are a separate space. They are only connected visually by staircases. The train platforms, in particular, are low-ceilinged boxes. I’ve seen condos with higher ceilings.

Downtown east, platform view. The highest ceiling is above the trains, where the wiring runs. The platforms themselves have lower ceilings.

Downtown west platform level. The ceiling appears to be about 9′ high on the backside of the platform. The sightline up to the mezannine is restricted to the width of the escalator or stairs. The escalators and stairs themselves block a view down the length of the platform. When arriving on the platform you won’t be able to foresee who is there.

Downtown east, sightlines from mezannine level up to the street or down to the train platforms is limited to the stairway locations.Are those florescent tubes in the ceiling  strong enough to light up the mezannine?.

Downtown east mezannine. Is the sightline to the platform level via the escalator on the far right of the picture, under the upper escalator and behind the utility closet?

It would be much easier to examine the Confederation Line station designs if plans had been published. Alas, the PR boffins favour pretty summertime “artist illustrations” so it is hard to figure out just where traffic flows or what the sightlines are.

I wonder if the City is going to sign a billion dollar contract without ever knowing just how this proponent is laying out the platforms? I, for one, would like to see a lot more detail before we commit to what is being offered.

For interest, here is a drawing of the original downtown west station design, with the highly rated centre platform, vaulted ceiling, and open mezannine. Compare this to the one the city is accepting from RTC, and weep:

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Playing Pedestrian in the Middle

It’s easy to make excuses why sidewalks so often don’t meet pedestrians’ basic needs. And sometimes there are genuine instances of “falling between the gaps” Like this one

Here the view westwards, along Lisgar:

.Do you see it?

Try this view, looking eastwards on the same sidewalk:

In the foreground of pic two is Hudson Park, condo by Charlesfort. It has a wider-than-normal sidewalk, about 6′ instead of the regulated 5′. Which is good, because the walk is busy.

The brick condo is by Domicile. The Domicile condo widened the walk in front of their building with cobbles and a curb, which is probably effective at keeping the edge of the landscaping verdant and the soil not packed down.

And where the two meet …

 

I don’t know if that planter space between the two condo corporations used to have a shrub in it. It doesn’t matter, because its been ground out of existence by now. So we have a nice long length of widened walk interrupted by a mud patch.

It doesn’t matter who is to blame, or responsible. The right thing to do would be for the Hudson Condo (for they own the plot in question) to pave it in concrete or matching cobbles. Do it strong enough to support a walk plow, so it doesn’t sag and become a depressing puddle in the future.

I can think of a number of other places in Ottawa where these walkway gaps exist. I’d appreciate if readers could send me photos of any places where similar conditions for motorists exist, ie a lane that suddenly ends then resumes a few feet or yards further on.

 

Digging up the Laurier SBL

Cyclists on the Laurier separated bike lane (SBL) should have noticed some discrete trenching going on in the lane.

Apparently using a saw blade, a narrow trench is being cut along the curb that separates the lane from other traffic:

The work is being done at night, so trench itself constitutes the evidence. Every so often, there is another cut at right angles, going towards an adjacent building. To keep debris out of the trench until the cables can be installed, a plastic cap is put on:

The  fibre optics cable that is being installed by Globility (Primus) and they have pretty much  finished their work on Laurier Ave.     The project includes Laurier as well as Albert, Slater, Kent, Bank, O’Connor and Metcalfe.  The entire project should be completed by mid September.

 

 

When condos replace offices …

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

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

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

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

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

a sales centre grows just beyond the Telus garage entrance

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

Alas, no view of the back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

The City is monitoring much more than cycle traffic on Laurier

The Citizen reports today * that the City and Carleton U are monitoring cyclist and motorist behaviour along the Laurier separated bike lane (SBL). They are using video equipment to record behaviour of individual users and interactions amongst users.

The citizen story doesn’t tell us HOW they are doing this, or give us the larger picture. Here is a photo overview of one video camera installation. The camera set up was used to record 100 hours of the intersection, then moved to the next, til all 8 Laurier intersections were monitored.

(above): the recording device consists of some equipment boxes at the base, a yellow clamp attaching it all to a stationary object, and the very tall thin pole. The camera is at the top of the pole, as shown in this pic:

(Above) looking way – way – up, Jerome, the monitoring camera is quite small at the top of the pole. Coincidentally, the regular signal pole right beside it has a much larger real-time camera used by the traffic signals branch to monitor traffic congestion and modify the light sequences to speed up rush hour traffic.

Here is a close up of the equipment at the base. Presumably the battery pack and recording or transmission equipment:

The equipment pictures above were taken 12 October, 2011, when I first noticed the equipment along the Laurier SBL. I asked Colin Simpson what was being monitored and why, the city told me basically what is in today’s Citizen story, and the City asked me not to write about it since knowledge of the observation might influence the subjects’ behaviours.

But the observation of behaviour is not limited to the Laurier SBL. It is being conducted at other intersections too. For example, I saw the same equipment installed on different sides of the Rideau – King Edward intersection.  I recall the King Edward installation well because I was with a city infrastructure official at the time, and we speculated what was being monitored. I have seen it installed elsewhere too, but cannot recollect just where.

There is no doubt much to be learned about the behaviour of motorists, cyclists, pedestrians, tourists, cycle couriers, delivery truck drivers … I wonder how detailed the analysis would be since overall categories like “cyclist” or “pedestrian” can have numerous subsets that will affect behaviour. For example, female cyclists are now widely seen as an indicator species of infrastructure perceived safety. No doubt tourists behave differently from resident pedestrians, who might differ in behaviour by function (going to work vs lunch stroll vs walking to a meeting vs going home).

I hope that one day we will get the whole story of what was seen and learned, and not just the Laurier SBL which continues to be the focus of media attention.

*  http://www.ottawacitizen.com/News/Ottawa/Video+analysis+will+reveal+impact+Laurier+Avenue+bike+lanes/6995862/story.html

Doing something about the lack of trees downtown

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and stepping back a few feet, here is a view of the whole installation, on top of one of the select few parking meters posts that got turned into a bike rack. Hey, it could be worse. Mayor Watson might have added a pole with tin leaves to make fake plastic trees, as were proposed for Bronson Avenue.