Category Archives: little Italy

Condomania on Carling: Domicile joins in

Domicile has a proposal winding its way through the bureaucratic maze at City Hall. It’s for a 18 storey condo building on Rochester Street, between the Queensway and Carling Avenue, near Dow’s Lake.

Here’s what the street looks like now:

Domicile owns the lot running from Pamilla Street and Rochester (the intersection in the foreground) all along Rochester to the red brick wall of a 3 1/2 storey low rise.  Domicile already has permission to demolish the elderly house in the middle .

Here’s an aerial view of the lot set within the south Dalhousie neighborhood:

The Queensway runs east-west across the top of the picture, and Carling Avenue across the bottom. The big black office tower is the Feds, the Logan building housing NRCan. Preston Square, the popular mixed-use development on Preston, is shown at the top centre-left. Domicile’s lot is just to the left of the Logan black tower, outlined in red. We can zoom in to see it up closer:

Notice the long, low building running parallel to the left side of Domicile’s lot. This is Barry Hobin’s office building, running all the way through from Pamilla to Norman Street. It was so prescient of him to buy a few years ago before the land rush.

The lot is currently zoned for 14.5m, or 5 stories. But that isn’t a hindrance.  Domicile is proposing a 18 storey building. It would have 132 condos, 3 “townhouses” facing Pamilla, 113 parking spaces for residents, and another 25 for guests. There would be 1453 sq ft of commercial space facing Rochester, enough for one large or two small storefronts.

Here are two street level views of the proposed tower. It is a big change from Domicile’s usual buildings, which are dominated by brick exterior walls punctuated with individual windows. This appears to be an “all glass” tower. Hobin is the architect. Ottawa Hydro contributes those third-world-ish wooden poles holding up electrical wires. They add character to the ‘hood.

 

The building is quite severely stepped back in a saw-tooth pattern from the southeast corner to the southwest corner. This exterior pattern is more expensive to build than a square building.  I’ve been trying to figure out if this is done to maximize views, but I do notice it lets lots of light onto the lot next door. Which is owned by Domicile’s architect, Barry Hobin. If and when Hobin retires, and develops his lot into another 18 storey tower, it will offer him significant benefit, opening up vistas and letting light in. If I were building on Domicile’s lot, I would give long thought to potential conflict of interest in letting the guy next door design my building, but then I’m probably too cynical and paranoid to boot.

Here’s the street view from Pamilla Street. In the left pic, that Volkswagen is parked in front of Hobin’s building site, with Domicile’s stepped back façade behind. I notice the Domicile building has a projecting flat roof on the top floor, something Hobin also put on the midrise recently constructed by Thiberge on Richmond Road a few doors east of Island Park. *

 

Here are some aerial and perspective views from different angles. The first is a flat elevation:

Rather more interesting is this one, that adds in several approved or proposed buildings:

Starting from the OTrain on the left in the above pic, notice the diagonal placement of the Arnon towers (positioned that way until the City decides it doesn’t need his front corner for the OTrain or LRT). The artist shows great restraint in putting only two towers on the Dow Motors lot, since there is room (going along the tracks) for at least four. Claridge’s 42-storey Icon tower is shown at the corner of Preston and Carling. This building is getting a redesign, see tomorrows story.

A third building has appeared on the Arnon block that currently holds two mid-rise red-brick office towers (shown in blue) designed by Alistair Ross. I vaguely recall that he had original planning permission for three towers on this site. The front lawns along Carling that belong to the feds are shown holding a parade of towers.

Moving down Rochester, there is an unknown tower, and then Domicile’s proposed tower. In the background, the giant parking lot and former trucking terminal belonging to Arnon, immediately south of the Sakto complex at 333 Preston (Xerox, Adobe, et al) is shown with two towers. I am aware that Arnon is talking to the city about what to put there, including a large retail presence, maybe someone’s grocery empire.

All of the above anticipated towers are roughly in accord of what I know of the City’s thinking on its Carling-Bayview CDP, and certainly also in the mindset of George Dark, who recently held a planning event in the neighbourhood that saw a veritable meteorite shower of high buildings impact onto the neighbourhood.

Most curiously though, is the 18 storey high rise put right on Preston, at Norman. If my memory serves me right, this is currently a large lot holding a two storey office building including the Bank of Nova Scotia. Hmm. Isn’t Sketch-up wonderful?

Finally, here’s a Photo-shopped view from the Arboretum cycle path along Dows Lake. In this view, the forest of condo towers has been thinned down to just Domicile, Claridge, and Mastercraft-Starwood.

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* for a closer up view of the baseball bill on a condo, see http://www.westsideaction.com/look-up-way-way-up-jerome/

Main street’s modal split

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

The modal split numbers surprised me. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Tree makes way for Bambinos

The Preston street BIA has been planning for some years to install a sculptural bit of landscaping at Preston and Gladstone. Called the Bambinos, it is a concrete installation suggesting family, and a soccer team, and is a gateway to the Italian community.

Some serious digging has been going on at the corner of Preston and Gladstone recently. I can only presume that they are installing the foundations for these sculptures.

the new hole on the southeast corner, near the Adult HS tot-lot. Now that’s a play structure with an exciting view !

Looking deeper into the hole. The concrete box to the left is an underground Bell tel chamber.

 

 While preparing a new foundation on the northeast corner, they uncovered an older one. Notice the tree on the crest of the little hill, beside the red stake:

Last week, they decided another tree had to go to make room for the Bambinos. Astonishingly, it took barely 20 minutes between the arrival of the wood cutting service, and its departure, having speed-cut the tree, chopped it into sections, and then chipped it into a bazillion little chunks to serve out its next life a wood chips.

the busy intersection keeps on flowing while the tree crew arrives

as fast as the tree is chopped, it is fed into the chipper to become mulch

branches are removed, starting from the base of the tree and working up

Lopping the branches off the trunk. Forty years to grow, 20 minutes to denude

the remaining trunk of the tree is quickly cut into short chunks to feed into the chipper

High rises: Gladstone southwards

Yesterday’s post covered high rise intensification — on an east-west axis — along the north edge — the Carling Avenue line — of our  community. Today’s post covers a north-south line drawn roughly along the OTrain cut from Gladstone to Carling. It is not clear if the drawing (second pic, below) puts the line along the OTrain cut or Preston Street itself. This post is somewhat speculative. Here is the area in Google Maps:

Recall that there is a proposed LRT station on the OTrain corridor near Gladstone. Generally, the station is drawn running from Gladstone to the Queensway, with its north exit at Gladstone and its south exit around Young-George Street (which is why Preston has those underused traffic signals at George). Recall too that the City has apparently decided it will not build the Gladstone station at the same time as the OTrain service is upgraded in 2014, even though that will require trains to slow — but not quite stop — at this area.

The drawing below is labelled “7- Urban Morphology“. On the right is the north end of our neighborhood transept, anchored by the Gladstone Station. Shown on Gladstone are some high rises, perhaps these are on the Enriched Bread site or the BA Banknote site, which will become available for development shortly. Or maybe they are on the city’s own signals works yard site, or the back of the St Anthony club on city-owned land.

Maybe we could extort some funds out of the developers under Sec 37 to install the Gladstone OTrain station now or when the residents move in, rather than 20 years out. Better to train them to use transit from day one.

The Queensway is shown as a low point in the profile, and then there are some high rises south of the Queensway. I presume that these are on the block-sized site owned by the Young Street garage, between Preston and the OTrain cut, as the lots on the west side of the cut, along Young and Railway Streets, are already wrapped up in the throes of low-rise intensification.

Very faintly drawn on the diagram are the 600 m radii from the stations, intended to show convenient walking distances to transit and the city’s zones of intensification. Given that there isn’t any vacant land on either side of the OTrain cut in this area south of George, I am puzzled at the set of three graduated high rises shown south of George. Maybe it’s just a signal to developers to start buying up houses in this residential strip in preparation for redevelopment (one developer is already busy here).

Curiously, the profile shows “existing fabric” where the two 600m zones overlap. Surely this is the most prime location for intensification? And yet the authors of the drawing (whom we don’t know, but have suspects) show this area left as about a 33′ height limit. The zoning also permits converting these houses into businesses … so we might see low value conversions and land assembly rather than larger redevelopment. I suspect this designation will be inviting to challenge at the OMB.

The profile rises back up again as it gets within 400m of Carling Avenue and the OTrain station there.  This station currently has only one exit; city policy requires two. Will the second be south or north of the current stair? The buildings between “existing fabric” and the Carling transit station would scale at about 10+ stories.

The suggested heights at Carling station are higher than those suggested at Gladstone, but no height in meters or stories is indicated on this drawing. Recall that in yesterday’s post, the Carling profile suggests 40+ stories here. If this drawing is to scale, that puts 20 storey buildings on the Young St Garage site, and maybe 10 stories at the Norman Street land-assembly of Urban Capital group, but I’ve heard that had not flown by City planners who demanded something lower.

Very curiously, the drawing stops at Carling Avenue. The area south of Carling is shown undeveloped. Yet for decades, the grassy area south of Carling, right up to the Sir John Carling Building, has been designated as a mixed-use development area. This always surprises people who think a field of NCC lawn is destined (doomed?) to remain vacant land forever. In the last versions of the Bayview-Carling CDP, the mixed use development area was being shifted a bit from being only west of the OTrain to include both the lawn west of the OTrain and parts of the NCC parking lot for the Dow’s Lake restaurants on the east side of the OTrain cut. This would make a more continuous series of buildings along both sides of Carling from Preston to Sherwood. I haven’t yet heard a suggestion as to how tall they might be, but I was the NCC I would realize that the land is worth more if developed to the 40+ storey height of the north side of Carling.

In the future, we won’t want for a lack of high rise condos in the west side.

Controlling creepy car lots

One of my pet grievances is parking lots on the edge of the sidewalk. Too often motorists or the lot owner “creep” all the time onto the sidewalk.

In the streetscaping treatment of West Wellington the City employed portable planter boxes, planted with currant bushes, to keep the cars back. They didn’t do this for every parking lot. But now, a few years on, I saw these planters being installed in front of yet another used car lot. Bravo! When the lot is redeveloped for urban purposes, the planters can be redeployed.

I delighted in noticing that the lot owner was not moving his cars back during this operation, having parked them right up snug to the lot line. Looks like a game of chicken going on here.

The treatment along Preston emphasized in ground planting a lot more than did Wellington. One consequence of this is that it is easier for car lot keepers to creep into the planting beds:

Note that the curb doesn’t keep cars far enough out of the shrub beds and there is not room to install planter boxes as the curb is on the lot line. The only remedial measure is to call 3-1-1 to report the infraction, and hope bylaw shows up to ticket him.

Another favorite irritation is the uncooperative property at the  corner of Breezehill and Somerset. I blogged a month ago about the sudden disappearance of a very large tree, probably on city property, which the city is remarkably uncurious about.

all that remains of a large, healthy maple

For years, this property has been steadily filling in the OTrain cut to expand his parking lot, merrily chopping down some largish trees in the process. (The PO denies this, saying only that he pruned a few weedy shrubs to reduce crime). Recently, a dotted yellow line appeared on his parking lot. The City is reclaiming the public right of way, with jersey barriers and a fence, that has to be installed by crane over the Somerset viaduct railing as the PO has denied the City permission to cross his lot to install it. Nonetheless, a barrier will soon appear, and  all 4 of the cars shown on the left (in the pic below) will be trapped on the escarpment if not moved by then. Yeah !

An Excess of Moral Equivalency

Commemorative Plaques at Dante Park, Gladstone/Booth

Dear gentle reader: this post may offend some of you with tender sensibilities, so do not read on if you are sensitive about Italians, Catholics, Afghanis, Muslims, Fascists, Tamils, Tamil Tigers, the War Measures Act, moral equivalency, PC, are Liberal, or liberal, or easily offended in any way. You were warned. And then I ask of the reader some latitude, since I am unsure myself what I think of the situation described below:

 

First, to get us warmed up, some satire:

ThePublic Citizen, October 21, 2070: Mo Kadr stood beside his father’s name today at the unveiling of the Muslim-Canadian Commemorative Plaque. “My father Omar”, said Mo, “was only interested in the well-being of his people and his religious rights. Along with his father, Ahmed, he fought for justice. He was misunderstood and our family suffered great injustice as a result.”  To make up for that misunderstanding, albeit 60 years late, Liberal MPs were present at the unveiling of a commemorative wall that listed several dozen  who struggled for their people, who were arrested or imprisoned for “terrorism” back in the early part of the century. Right after their names are an edited list of Canadians who died in Afghanistan in an unjust war. A woman soldier, a journalist, and a male soldier from Newfoundland were selected to symbolize the other Canadians who lost their lives in the struggle for Afghanistan self-determination. Omar, unfortunately, had died just a few weeks before he could see his name publicly rehabilitated; he died at his palatial seaside mansion in Hawaii which he had bought with his $100 million “reconciliation” money belatedly paid by the Federal government… Etc Etc.

 

Now, back to the present.

Last week, there was an unveiling of a memorial wall to honour interned Italian-Canadians in the 1940’s. I thought the whole thing was the epitome of moral equivalency gone berserk. I found it discomforting then, and still find it discomforting, but I find it difficult to explain just why. Bear with me while I wander through this minefield.

You can read the original Ottawa Citizen article here (I’ll wait until you come back): http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Enemy+aliens+unveil+memorial/5595480/story.html

 

So what bugs me? Let me count the ways:

-          The confusion between someone being interred during a war situation, but not actually charged with  treason, and being totally innocent of any activity harmful to Canadians. Who was rounded up from the Italian community? Was it an odd assortment of tile layers and laborers, or was it the cheerleaders for the rise and export of Italian fascism? Is it too much to ask for a reporter who is curious?

-          The deliberate equivilenting of civilian internees with soldiers who died fighting for Canada. Sorry folks, the internees did not make a sacrifice anywhere near that of the soldiers.  Soldiers who died deserve our respect and remembrance, as do all the Italian-Canadian soldiers who put their lives in danger for Canada (and whose names are curiously omitted from this plaque).

I find it odd to see in the original story a vague gloss of legitimate activities – “helping to build a church”—being put over any hard questions about the previous activities of the internees. After all, the Feds didn’t inter every Italian*.  Was the local leadership thoroughly and marvellously apolitical? Or was it expressing  strong fascist sympathies?  

 Is anyone else disturbed by the  cutesy overlay in the Citizen article of a little girl trying to save the statue [of a megalomaniac fascist dictator, but hey, who's noticing?] from rampaging Mounties? Sorry folks, either she knew she had to hide the evidence, or was trying to save her family’s fascist hero for seizure, but it is hard to put an acceptable gloss of innocence on this. Is it too harsh to read into that Citizen story … a child corrupted by paternal enthusiasm for a fascist dictator?

I don’t think we do society any favour by varnishing over some of the reality in the Italian colony in 1940’s Ottawa. Lets see, the Italian community in Ottawa was being lead by clergy directly imported from fascist Italy, some members watching fascist movies at the local theatre, cheering on Mussolini’s efforts to “civilize”  Ethiopia, spending evenings listening on the home record player to Mussolini  praising Herr Hitler,   …  what’s to question about this??

Definitely we need a commemorative plaque that assures us Italian Canadians participated “fully” in the war effort.

Don’t for a minute think that I believe all Italians in Ottawa were fascist sympathizers ready to sabotage the Canadian democracy or war effort. The vast majority of people simply don’t get involved in politics. Just as I don’t think that Muslims in Ottawa are all sympathetic to the radical intolerant versions of Islam. But a few are. Ergo, surveillance of imams sent from “foreign lands”, infiltration of social and political action groups, and the occasional breaking up of terrorist-related activities, not all the participants of which get charged with serious crimes.

In my view, the continual entanglement of Canadian populations with the war efforts of their former or ancestral homelands is a distressing artifact of an ongoing colonial mentality amongst immigrants who put too much value on where they came from rather than where they are. Whether that group is Canadians of British ancestry rushing to join the Mother Country’s war effort, Tamils funding the Tigers (whether voluntarily or through war taxes levied through threats of intimidation), French Canadians taking their anti-war lead from France’s hopping in bed with the occupying Germans, or Canadians cheering on messianic heroes of the oppressed (eg Osama Bin Laden, Mussolini, the Emperor, or whomever).

Go back to the second pic and re-read the plaque. Methinks it doth protest too hard.

Internees are not the equivalent of our war dead. 

The commemorative plaque at Piazza Dante does not edify or expand our knowledge; it corrupts it with a deluded veneer of moral equivalency run amok. I’d much rather see a frank acknowledgement that the community was divided, but after adversity grew stronger.

(above) The earlier war monument in the same Piazza. You can take this inclusiveness of “all soldiers” as being a nice, liberal expression. Or as oblique concealment that some Italians died fighting against Canadians.

Over a pasta and beans dinner (and too much red wine) we once had a long reminiscing retelling by a (now-deceased) Italian neighbor of his war experiences. I was younger then, and confused why I couldn’t get clear just where and when his exploits took place. Finally I asked him which army he was in. It took another Italian neighbour to spell out that some things had to be glossed over. But I don’t think that should be set in granite.

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*(that was saved for the Japanese Canadians).