Who Needs a Building Permit?

Another stop work order on a renovation on Preston Street. The upstairs has been gutted, new firewalls built, wiring and plumbing ... who would have thought a permit was necessary?

I gather the old Paradise water garden store will become an Indian grocery store.

Do renovators just try to do things without a permit to "beat the cost" of buying a permit? Or is to avoid the "rules" that might be in place (like zoning, permitted uses, FSI, etc) by hoping an as-built will get the go ahead that might not be possible for an application made in advance? Or is it that the City's building permit process is so slow that rennovators/builder'stennants cannot afford to wait for so long to get their permits?

Paying for Water Etc.

Ken Gray over at The Bulldog blog cites the following from a Conference Board study:  "Water charges based on the value of property-or any other fixed measure that is not directly related to water consumption-cannot provide consumers with clear price signals," said Len Coad, Director, Environment, Energy and Technology. "A cultural shift is required in how we manage our water system. Instead of relying on the tax base and allowing users to pay a below-cost price, those who use the service should pay the full cost of water, including capital expenditures."

I agree fully. The genius of our society is the marketplace, where prices are set and goods and services supplied to those who buy them, rather than according to political fiat. Governments are too often in the habit of taking over a market, screwing up the pricing to meet some social / political goal, making themselves a monopoly and then generating "rent" (excess prices paid to the owner or inefficient distribution including rent to labour). As "water bills" become sources of general revenue, they lose their value as price signals.

Piling on is another risk. That's when your supplier claims to charge you for the service but adds on other services that are unrelated. When the City rebuilt the playing fields at Pouffe Park a few years ago, they seeded the fields and kept soccer teams off them for one or two years for the grass to establish. Sod was prohibitively expensive, the City claimed. Then the Preston reconstruction came along, and the fields had to be lowered 3' to serve as emergency storm water storage areas. They were excavated, and then sodded (an operation detailed in earlier posts to this blog). Why was sod affordable second time around? Because, I hear, it was paid for by your water bills and not the City's general revenue. Scrutinized expenditure is more frugal than unscrutinized expenditure.

And what of the curbs, bulbouts, fancy paving and plantings of streetscaping efforts along Preston, West Wellington, Bayview, Albert, and Richmond roads? Are they just "restoring" the surface as part of a sewer and water project? Obviously they are significant upgrades. Is the City is fobbing off urban expenditures from the general taxpayer city budget to the water users?

Here are some illustrations of the restoration occuring after water works are done:

Prior to recent water works, this part of Breezehill North was narrow, had no curb, no sidewalk

Slidell Street where it meets the Ottawa River Commuter Expresway. Prior to water main replacement, it had no curbs or landscaping.

Bayview north of Scott used to have a partial sidewalk on the west side, now the street is rebuilt to a higher standard.

I like the new landscaping and streetscaping being done on these projects. I like the traffic calming, the bulb outs, the new streetlights, the tree planting, the snuck-in bits of bike path. But how many things are being snuck in that are harder to notice, like wider turning radii at corners to handle larger trucks on inner-city streets? Or intersection "improvements" that facilitate car travel at rush hours? What sort of stuff is being slipped into water projects in other neighborhoods, good or bad? I'd rather see the water bills pay for water infrastructure rebuilding and restoration to the existing standards, and "upgrades" charged to the appropriate  City budget.

Paving Preston

Just when it seemed Preston Street would never be paved, asphalt arrived. After months of seeing Hintonburg and other neighborhoods get their asphalt, the stuff is going down in Little Italy. The central section -- from Plouffe Park to the Qway -- is now paved. The two ends -- the Carling end, and the Albert Street end -- will be paved by the end of next week.

Lansdowne Live - More sole sourcing?

I note with interest that the City has given the go-ahead to the Lansdowne Live proposal with certain conditions, one being that there be a design review or something headed up by George Dark. He is a consultant. He is not cheap.

Was the review contract put up for tender? Or is it sole sourcing? Will all the opponents of sole sourcing Lansdowne Live take to the streets to complain about sole sourcing the process to "improve" the urban design?

Of course, maybe it's not sole sourcing at all...

Driving school children

Grade school in Orleans with large circular driveway at the front for dropping off the kids.

I am astounded when I (occasionally) go to Orleans or the western suburbs and see new primary schools with huge driveways/waiting queues just for parents to drop off their kids.

Back when my kid went to St Mary school I was on the PAC. The safety issue of children walking to school came up repeatedly. I thought most concerns totally unreal. I did not realize back then that most of the kids never walked anywhere and had no "common sense" for using sidewalks or crossing the street. The were chauffered everywhere by car. Kids caught the school bus 300' from the school, waiting a half hour in the freezing cold of winter rather than walking because it was too cold to walk (and these kids had no major intersections to cross). How dumb! (Being car-free our kids had a lot of street sense and sense of direction).
Parents wanted more crossing guards or a policeman in front of the school to stop speeders / dangerous drivers / make the dangerous crossing safer for their precious offspring. So a group of us parents spent two mornings watching cars in front of the school. Something like 75% of the traffic on the street was either teachers driving to the school or parents dropping of their kids. Since there were only 8 classrooms, not many cars were driven by staff.

We watched in astonishment as cars rushed the stop sign, barely slowing down, just to drop off precious at the door. Cars double parked. Cars queued up through the instersection just to drop off junior right at the door, not 40' up the sidewalk! In short, any danger to kids was caused by the parents themselves.

This finding was not well received. My suggestion that we make the entire block around the school a no-stopping zone / no passenger drop-off zone, so kids would have to walk the last block to school and thus be on quiet, almost car-free streets, was considered lunacy.

Then I found this blog that shows Holland is making the zones around schools into no drop off zones in order to promote child safety and health. I was born 20 years too early, or in the wrong country.

http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2009/11/stopping-ban-by-schools.html

Erotica, Objectification -- Thoughts on Preston Street

Worker gives final dressing to a piece of new sidewalk on Preston.

A few months ago I read a 1980's book by Camile Paglia. In it, she thought construction workers would never stop whistling or hooting at passing females. In Camile's mind, this was good; feminists who objected to this behaviour were bad/deluded.

This year I have noticed how well trained construction workers along Preston have been. They are polite and helpful to pedestrians, especially the elderly. They stop moving big intimidating pieces of equipment when we approach. They do not hoot nor holler at women or school girls in kilts. They make construction sites passable.

I was walking along the gravel bed that will someday be a sidewalk, about 30' behind a very fashionably dressed woman (skirt, heels, a real "looker") when a parked car beside her flashed its lights and tooted its horn. A few seconds later, the next car in the row did the same. I watched more closely, and as the woman approached the next pickup truck it too "tooted" and batted its eyes. I glanced back, and there was a cluster of workers, hands in pockets, enjoying the scenery. Expression via remote control.

Was Camile right? The less subtle behaviour has been replaced by new expressions. The 80's (and 90's)  was full of crude political correctness and behavioural modification attempts. Awareness of women-as-object has forever shaped my consciousness and how I perceive what I read or see. We are shaped by the environment we mature in. (And it is of course an ongoing process).

I recently read two books by West Wellington author Sharon Page. These are best selling books (they are available in the Library too) in the fast-growing "women's erotica" category: romances with sex. Lots of it. Graphic. They contain the usual themes previously lamented by feminists in the previous generation's criticism of male-oriented "porn": bondage, coercion, exhibitionism, first time, reluctance, teacher-pupil, etc, but with much of the focus directed at male anatomy and functions. The romance element adds a good veneer of respectibility, so they don't feel "dirty" .

So who wins? Camile wanted construction men to notice women, and they still do. The "noticing" is more refined. Do female construction workers ogle male pedestrians and cyclists? -- I never noticed. Fem-lib wanted objectification of women ended, and we've come a long way, baby.  And now best-sellers celebrate men as sex objects. Romance glues it all together.

They Tried ...

There is a traffic detour around the sewer control station being reconstructed on Booth Street immediately north of Albert. The four lanes are very narrow and the traffic persists in moving too fast. This week, safety no doubt improved immeasurably with the addition of a yellow sign in each direction showing a car beside a bike. Does this mean "no passing" or "share the lane"? In either case, the temp lanes are so narrow no one can pass a cyclist in the same lane.

Preston Street infill

Infill housing on Preston Street gets its exterior skin on. The ground floor will be retail units.

Writing Wrongs in Ottawa

Paul Dewar, MP, gives the welcoming remarks to the weekend conference of crime writers and wannabe's held at the OPL.

The CBC's Alan Neal read the exerpts from Rick Mofina's newest book "Vengeance Road". For some reason, he selected paragraphs dealing with reporter proceedure. If I ever write a book, I'd get Alan Neal to read it aloud - what an excellent reader!

Gates of Lemieux Island re-installed

The access road to Lemieux Island water plant has been badly torn up for the construction of the high pressure water mains to the Island. Finally, the road is reappearing, although as you can see from a careful examination of the photo the new road is relocated to the left. During the construction, the ornate gates -- which look like they belong to Her Highness the GG instead of here -- were removed and this shows the eastern side gate and pailings reinstalled.

The City taketh away ...

Just a block down Albert Street from the new tree planting at the parking lots, the City has removed a dozen trees from their City Living housing projects. These trees were in front of the project at the corner of Albert and Booth, and Albert and Rochester (the trees were removed on the Rochester street side) and the corner of Albert and Preston.

As shown in the pictures, these were mature trees, planted about 25 years ago when the housing projects were built. The housing is now undergoing "renewal" by recladding the stucco with artificial wood; and removing the brick sound barrier walls to be replaced by plain pressure-treated plywood panels.

The above picture shows the CCOC housing that separates the two City Living projects. It's trees (and brick sound wall) have not been removed. They are large maples, providing sound and dust abatement for the housing units.

The city giveth ...

I rejoice when the City provides some nice landscaping in Dalhousie neighborhood. The City owns some temporary parking lots along Albert Street, between Bronson and the transitway turnoff at the Good Companions centre.

They spent some time last month rigorously pruning and thinning the existing tree and shrub growth around the lots, possibly to improve the social safety of the parking lots by making them more open and exposed.

Then they added some topsoil, mulch, and planted a dozen trees at the entrance of the lot, which faces Brickhill Street (a tiny street that services the parking lots and connects to Old Wellington). I have never seen such tiny (skinny) trees planted by the City (some of the trees were larger caliber, some were mere whips).

I am curious though, why the trees were planted in a area that is planned for redevelopment, including major equipment staging area for  the DOTT project (if it gets the go-ahead), where there are no nearby houses and few people to see or enjoy the trees, while the City steadfastly refuses to plant trees along the new multipurpose path running from the same transitway/Albert intersection westwards to Bayview station.

The Little Park that could (n't?)

Several previous posts have featured this little garden strip at 301 Preston, immediately north of the Queensway in Little Italy. It was installed several years ago when part of the playing fields at Commerce / Adult HS were removed and paved over as pay parking lot.

During the construction of Preston, I have seen giant steel trench boxes, outhouses, lumber, hoses, tools, you name it, all stacked or dumped on the garden. Yet each time the junk was removed, the garden plants (lillies, grass, few shrubs) resurrected themselves.  This last set of damage is more fatal. Whole sections of garden were removed for the installation of a new fire hydrant and sewer access hatch (person-hole?).  If you look closely at photo two, the tree has been removed -- roots and all -- from the garden left towards the back on a tilt. There is no sign the plants or shrubs were kept.

The Preston Street BIA plans to enlarge the garden in future, to take up the whole zone from the fence to the sidewalk. It will be very welcome.

Put my foot in it ...

I have been known to put my foot in it ... some may feel I always do. But in this case, it was literally not figuratively.

I was walking on the new sidewalk along Preston at Primrose - you know, the one with the missing sections and occasional mountain goat sections where you have to leap over walls, scramble up gravel mounds, etc. I steped into an area of sidewalk that had been filled around a utility hatch. It was a good foot below the finished sidewalk level so I got some good momentum. Alas, the cement there was not dried and I left a souvenir footprint. A few hours later I noticed the dimpled wet cement now had two safety cones on it.

The hazards of being a blogger...

East Berlin, c1976

There are lots of stories in the papers and MSM these days about the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After graduating from University I went backpacking in Europe for a few weeks. Airfare was $640 on a 747; it is not much more today for advance purchases.

I crossed into East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie. It was compulsory to convert some West Marks into East Marks at the (poor) official exchange rate. It was not permitted to reconvert the East Marks upon exiting the "Democratic Republic". I had to wait for several minutes at the crossing while the guards photocopied my passport and visa (chargex?) card. [Is it filed in Stasi archives somewhere?]

After strolling about the main square, visiting the big department store, being chased everywhere by people wanting to buy my Quebec jeans or convert money, seeing the Pope's Revenge, etc, I took the metro to a distant stop with the intention of walking back for a half day just to see the non-downtown parts of the city.

I got off near Treptower Park (?) where there was a huge Soviet War Memorial and cemetary. Many of the neighborhoods were built in "super blocks", the latest socialist urban layout. Each block was huge and would encompass several of our city blocks. Each one consisted of peeling-stucco identical dirty gray apartment blocks around the perimeter, with some more towers in the mid block. A few units had balconies, most did not. In the centre was a park and primary school. A sidewalk ran around the perimeter of the superblock, and then there was a boulevard space between the walk and the road surface. The boulevard was thickly planted with shrubs and had one or two barbed-wire fences in it. Crossing the street was only possible at the corners and one mid-block crossing. Several superblocks were connected at mid-block crossings to feed into a high school. Around this neighborhood of superblocks ran very wide barren boulevarded avenues, often with no crossings and lots of barbed-wire in the shrubs. The system was designed to keep kids "safe" in a sanitized zone. While understandable in a society traumetized by war and oppression, the resulting urban grid was dreadfully depressing.

I stopped in at a small bakery on a street. My friend and I talked in English, looking at the buns. The few other shoppers, all women, all in dowdy coats and kerchiefs, looked alarmed and left, shuffling along the wall behind us to get to the door. The shop keeping lady pulled down the blinds in the window. We selected our "lunch" and she refused our payment of East Marks, putting her hands behind her, her back crazy-glued to the rear wall behind the counter, her face twisted in .. fear? As we left, she locked the door behind us. I hadn't exactly considered myself an intimidating person until that time.

Slow Progress

Minto built these stacked townhouses (a two or three-storey unit above a two storey unit, each with sidewalk-level private entrances) a few years ago. Earlier this summer, there was a fire in one of the units.

The whole row of houses was evacuated, and remains empty to this day. Some units are boarded up at the rear. Others sit with six month's accumulation of grime and dust on the windows and porches.

The units are wood-frame construction. There is not a sprinkler system. In addition to townhouse-looking stacked units, a number of low-rise apartment buildings in the city are also wood-framed (hint: usually three or four floors).

The long period when these units are closed makes me wonder what happened to the occupants. Are they all in temporary apartment-hotels? That will be expensive; did they have insurance to cover this? And just how many personal possessions did residents get to take out? I would be unhappy to be kept out of my home for six months or a year. It would make a huge disruption in my life. Will the wedding pictures and kid's birthday pictures be unkeepable when exposed to smoke damaged housing for half a year? Will moving back reinstate the sense of being "home", or will people be alienated from their former lives?

The for sale sign on an adjacent row of houses makes me wonder what happens to residents of the damaged units who have to "move on" to other jobs or other cities or find its time to move to a different house. How do you unload an uninhabitable house? Indeed, will owners in adjacent undamaged units be able to sell, or is their property value depressed by the presence of fire-damaged units? Some buyers probably won't notice the closed units; others would be scared off by the signs of fire damage.

BikeWest Report available to download

The current version of the BikeWest document is available to download from here:  http://www.ericdarwin.ca/BikeWestReport.doc  It is a fairly large file as it has a lot of pictures along the proposed route. It took me almost 30 seconds to down load it.

Dalhousie Community Assoc responds ...

Wearing my other hat, and with much input from other members of the Dalhousie Community Association board, the DCA sent two letters. One to the Marie Lemay of the NCC regarding the bad idea for bringing Rapibus to Ottawa over the POW bridge; and the other is detailed comments on the current state of the Downtown Ottawa Transit Tunnel study.

You can read both of these letters at http://www.dalhousiecommunityassociation.blogspot.com/

Tea and Chips

Lunch time crowds outside Minto Place on Albert Street at Kent. The tea pot is titanium. The chips are fried. The stomachs ... are iron.

Smells like Lawyers

St Mary school was one of the Little Italy and Civic Hospital neighborhood english-catholic french-immersion grade schools for west siders. My daughter went there (that was years ago...). The school was small, but attracted a local clientele and was not closed in part because the alternative catholic school was not perceived by parents as being an attractive choice. Over time, the board eroded the school, removed the french-immersion program, and eventually managed to kill the school. It is now a teacher ed centre, I think. The building sits on a huge block also occupied by another school building (rented out to a succession of private schools) and a church.

The sandy area in the picture above used to be the play structure. It was physcially built by parents and kids one Saturday. The kids moved materials and tools around, goggled at the cement mixer, and were excited and helpful. The parents and kids and teachers had fund-raised for two years to get our third share of the twenty-thousand dollar cost. The other thirds were from the school board and the city. The school board was responsible for maintenance.

We soon discovered what the board's maintenance policy was. Was a wooden post chipped or splintered or cracked? Tear down the whole piece of equipment ! I was so naively astonished that repairs were not in their vocabulary, that maintenace meant only removal. The first bits of structure were gone within a year. The big platforms, ramps, slides, monkey bars ... all evaporated, bit by bit, each summer vacation.

Then the school closed. No kids ... what do they need a play structure for? The last elements, including the ever-popular zip line, are gone. The rented school building is fenced off.  Now there is just a giant kitty-litter zone. I suspect that I see the narrow-minded influence of lawyers here ... it is not a school, there should not be a playground feature, it might attract kids which would mean liability issues, better to tear it down. They have not (yet) locked the gates to the grassy fields remaining. I am sure they are working on that.

NCC to Quebecers: Back [on the] Bus

 

Proposed modernist Bayview LRT station is elevated and long. The proposed STO bus terminal would be off the left. Click to enlarge photo.

Planning in a Federal capital region is not just about good planning on utilitarian "planning' terms. A good chunk of it is political planning and symbolism too.

In the past,  separatist elements in Quebec made hay from the disparate images of the Quebec side of the river (low rise, lower income housing, industrial mills) and the Ottawa side of the river (shiny high rises set high on a green hill). They drew a direct line to the federal purse, discrimination, second class status, etc.

The response from the Feds was politically / symbolically motivated. The Portage Bridge appeared, the Ottawa River Parkway was rerouted so that Wellington appeared to go directly to Hull while Ontario users had to "turn" to continue in Ontario. High rise cubicle farms sprouted on the Quebec side. Museums and prestige buildings materialized. Confederation Boulevard.

The major planning decisions for roads, transit, and buildings, in the Ottawa-Gatineau area have traditionally had a strong Federal political element.

Today, I fear the Feds are about to step in la merde in a rather big way.

Ottawa planned and built its transitway (bus rapid transit, or BRT) a few decades ago. It was a reasonable decision for the size of the city as it was then. It was always designed to be convertible to LRT, which is where we are heading now. On the Quebec side, the City is now planning and constructing its own BRT system called Rapibus. I presume that Gatineau is making a rational decision given its population density, geographic area, costs, etc.

The problem comes in the downtown area where the two systems -- LRT and BRT -- will meet.

There is currently a front-running proposal in the NCC-chaired interprovincial transit study to bring the Rapibus system over to a terminal in Ottawa. If the Prince of Wales railway bridge is rebuilt as a two-lane BRT for STO buses (a repeat of the Alexandra Bridge solution adopted almost half a century ago) the national unity optics are terrible: English commuters ride sleek and shiny LRTs to the downtown, French commuters ride old-technology diesel buses to the periphery where they are then permitted to transfer to the LRT.

Election 2020: If I were the PQ, I'd be snapping pictures of the two modes from an aerial point over the Ottawa River looking south, ie the view from Quebec. It would show the Federally-funded bright red trains entering the modern very long elevated glass and steel Bayview Station, and Quebecers shuffling past bus shelters on their traipse through wind-whipped snow to get to first class transit.

Of course, the national unity side could score with a slightly different system: build the LRT line over the POW bridge to stop at Terrace de la Chaud and then run along the surface of Rue Principale to Place du Portage. Then the picture shows Federal money delivering the smart-growth green technology of the future to the voters of Quebec. I'd even paint the LRT vehicles on the first part of this great circle loop in STO colours, regardless of who operated them.

Which picture will the NCC be setting up?

Conversion to Transitional Housing

This elderly blue-clad apartment building on Holland Avenue just north of the Queensway has been purchased by the Ottawa Mission for use as transitional housing. Acording to Ms Vicki's neighborhood blog the Mission intends for its clientele to occupy about half the units. She does not identify who will occupy the other half - presumably it is market rentals.

I support the move to transitional and supportive housing. I strongly feel they need close supervision and much more "tough love" than laissez-faire.

I have three "second hand" experiences with apartment buildings undergoing similar changes. In one, my aunt was a long term tennant, along with mostly elderly people in a very stable market-rental building. A social agency bought the building and moved in a "few" clients graduating from mental health programs. Under the new owners, the building quickly fell into disrepair, the hallways dirty, vomit in the elevators, smelly stiarways, people ("weirdos") hanging about the entrances. The fire alarms went off 5 times a night. A special client was found to be doing it. He was not removed but counselled to take his medicine. The exodus of the middle class tennants accelerated, eventually my aunt moved too.

The second story is from Toronto, the Crombie Town area near St Lawrence Market. It was a mixed income building. My relative found it safe and a great place to live. Then the City started closing out Regent's Park, a notoriously bad housing project, for rebuilding. The mixed income nature of other buildings was "waived" to find room for the displaced Regent's tennants. The balanced mix of incomes, employment status, etc was lost. Security guards appeared. Taxis refused to pick up residents at the door; later they refused to drop off residents near the doors. Pizza deliveries stopped, it was too dangerous. Long term tennants fled. Gangs of menacing males clustered around the doors.

The third incidence is an elderly female aunt who lived in a high rise senior's housing building in downtown Ottawa. She enjoyed it, and the nearby Legion. Then the City (?) moved in a younger crowd. There were noise problems, rowdy parties, spaced out tennants, rumours of drug deals. She died before she could move out.

These three exemplars in my life will outweigh any number of unknown happy cohabitations in buildings. They will influence how I read and interpret "statistics" about the success (or not) of transitional and supportive housing. I note/recall stories I read in the MSM or blogs about crime in similar housing projects whether on Scott Street or in LA. As a result of these influences, I still support these housing measures but that support is dependent on strict on-site supervision. Unfortunately, such supervision will wax and wane with social work trends/fads/philosophies and the leadership (which changes over time) of the agencies involved. The housing never goes away. It does make me nervous.

Landscaping takes root on Preston

One of the true joys of the new streetscaping on Preston street in Little Italy is the abundance of landscaping. The architect has done a marvellous job of squeezing in hundreds of trees (many of small mature size, to fit into small pockets of space) and generous shrub beds. This bed was installed in the spring 09 on part of the street already rebuilt. The rich green shrubs in the foreground are backed up by bright red taller shrubs in the back. This is a pattern repeated in a number of blocks along the street, and is rich in colour and texture all summer and fall.

I usually feel the city is way too timid in its landscaping, reluctant to add or even replace trees because the spaces are "too small" or interfere with sight lines for traffic. The Preston Street experience is refreshing, as it demonstrates that aggressive planting works. I find it interesting to compare Preston with West Wellington in Hintonburg. Preston has way more "soft" landscaping squeezed into corners and in front of buildings. Some of this is due to the lower density of Preston, some is due to the choices of the BIA and community associations that had input into the plans.

LaRoma patio

La Roma restuarant on Preston Street in the heart of Little Italy applied to the committee of adjustment to open a patio on the small rear upper deck of the premises, facing the residential portion of the side street. It was approved by the CofA for a 12 seat deck, provided they put up a higher fence (the original metal railing is visible) and allow patron access only from the interior, not the firestairs.

Meanwhile, millions of dollars of your water bill payments are being spent to redo Preston Street at the front of the building, where the restuarant has a narrow open front porch occasionally used for dining. The new streetscaping in front of the restaurant will be about 20' wide. The wide sidewalks were installed to permit front patios that animate the streetscape.

Infill on Bell & Christie Streets

This infill project in Dalhousie is just about all complete. The sod is down, slender tree saplings planted, backyard fences completed. The building faces Christie and reads as semi-detached. The presence of side doors that are celebrated with wide steps, fancy door sets, and a little peaked roof suggest otherwise. In fact, the units can be used as a three storey unit with large ground floor rec room or the ground floor can be closed off leaving a two storey unit above with a balcony, and a small independent unit on the ground floor with its own door to the side of the building and access to the rear yard.

I am surprised to see front facade garages. City planners discourage or forbid them in our neighborhood now. The infill is on a formerly vacant lot that had a lot of small tree and weed growth on it -- either overgrown or naturalized, depending on your point of view -- and a fair share of garbage.

The builder went to considerable effort to use some quality exterior finishes (not plastic siding). The ground floor is "stone" and the upper floors stucco. The presence of horizontal belt lines addssome character and improves the scale and massing. The windows are higher than wide -- nothing looks more incongruous than "renovations" or infills with suburban-style wide windows. City policy actually discourages infill units from being built in the same architectural style as its neighbors from the 1920s, claiming these are "faux" references. If well done (and that's a big if) faux historic infill is fine with me.

Specimen Testing on Preston Street

I know an Olympic medal triathlete who complains not about the training, the odd hours, the inhospitable facilities, etc, but about the random pee tests. The testers come any day, any time, although she thinks they have a preference to come Saturday nights right after she has just had a potty break. Then they get to sit around for an hour in her apartment while she drinks water until they can observe her fill a specimen bottle.

Sidewalks and curbs on Preston Street also undergo specimen tests. Here are three containers of concrete taken from sidewalk pours on Preston at the corner of Elm Street. They are used to prove the correct type of concrete was used, and can trace any problems with the finished sidewalk back to the original concrete mix vs subsequent damage from abuse or other conditions after the sidewalk was laid.

"Cafe" update on Preston

The house conversion at 424 Preston to a "cafe" continues. Notice that since the pictures last week, the front foundation wall has been insulated and back filled, and insulation placed on top of the new floor. The presence of rebars suggests that concrete stairs and and concrete floor are to poured in place. This foundation finishing work has all been done since the photo posted last Friday which clearly shows the paper in the front window.

The paper in the window is a city "stop work" order, as the renovation lacks building permits, approvals, etc. A portion of the interior has been gutted and I gather a number of structural changes have been made. Is the renovation for residential use (no rezoning etc) or a cafe?

Infill Mixed Use development

Watching construction on Preston Street itself is further complicated by the similtaneous construction of this infill mixed-use development. There will be storefronts along the Little Italy widened sidewalk, and six apartments (rentals) above. The building is steel frame with wood construction.

Along with the camera-person, there was the usual collection of sidewalk superintendants out all day, every day, ensuring that someone else gets to work. And there is lots to see. This photo shows a three-wheeled fork lift that came piggy-backed on the long flatbed truck, it has picked up a load of floor trusses and is carrying them over the top of the parked pickup truck and will deliver them to the work site.

Underutilitzed lot on Champagne

Half way along Champagne Avenue is this drastically underutilized lot behind a 1960's-era apt building. The lot is used for surface parking, and is not a desirable long-term use of valuable urban land. Given that it has street frontage along Champagne, I expect someday the owners will apply to relocate the parking underground and build condos -- either apartment condos or townhouse condos -- along the street. Depending on the condition of the existing apartments, they may even demolish the building and start anew.

BikeWest on CKCU radio

I was interviewed by Danny Ghosen   of CKCU radio (Carleton U), on BikeWest, a week or so ago. Danny is from The Netherlands, the world's most condusive nation for cycling. He is in a state of shock at the conditions cyclists are supposed to ride in here. "Riding a bike on Bronson Avenue ... you've gotta be nuts" he told me in a conversation before the interview.

Click the link to listen to the interview. Unfortunately, the first few seconds and intro are not on the tape:
http://www.ericdarwin.ca/CKCU_Interview_1.mp4

Out with the old, in with the condos

The printing establishment currently located at the corner of Hickory Street and Champagne Avenue is the only remaining industrial use in this section of the Bayview-Champagne corridor. It once was an industrial heartland of the city, with convenient rail access (the tracks were relocated into the cut in 1963, before that they ran at street level). The old Sunoco fuel depot site has been cleaned up and is currently zoned for a 40,000 sq ft building. The former Campbell Iron and Steel plant at the corner of Carling/Champagne (now a satellite parking lot for the Civic Hospital) is in process to become several office towers (see earlier blogs on 853 Carling Ave) once the Bayview-Carling CDP is completed.

I hear the printing plant site pictured will soon be reincarnated as six townhouses facing Hickory and a eight storey condo facing Champagne. I imagine the neighbors will object, as some are already upset at the Merion Square townhouses and one condo tower (soon the second tower will be built). In my opinion, they are lucky, since the vacant and underutilized lands on the edge of their neighborhood are perfect for intensification (close to transit, have separate street access to the busy arterial Carling Avenue, and on the edge of the existing low rise neighborhoods but not in the middle). By building along the perimeter of this established area there will be less disruption to the existing areas and less pressure for intensification within the existing areas.

And recall too that the area immediately south of Carling, currently a green field running up to the Sir John Carling building, is zoned for mixed use high rises, but we wont see that for another three decades.

East Side of Champagne Avenue

The park at the corner of Beech and Champagne. It has bocce courts, playing fields (shown with ice-rink boards just delivered), a bicycle-polo park, and on the far side a play structure. The line of trees in the background is along the OTrain cut. Most of these trees will be lost when the cut is widened for the second phase of LRT construction, should the SW LRT service actually get built. This park could easily be expanded to the east by covering the cut with concrete girders and a playing field. The area on the other side of the cut is the north-south multipurpose path and narrow parkland corridor.

The Champagne animal shelter will be abandonned when the new shelter is finished out the 'burbs. The land will be sold, another excellent location for condos, with easy access to transit and the busy Preston Street of Little Italy, and with views to the Lake and downtown. The Bayview-Carling CDP will determine the degree of intensification, if the developers don't built it before the plan is resurrected.

Another house becomes a "cafe"

The conversion of residences to commercial continues in Little Italy. This house has had its front yard blown out and an enlarged basement put in. Presumably some new building will appear on top of the new foundation. I hear it will be another "cafe", a number of which exist already on Preston Street. I am especially amused by the cafe's that do so little visible business during the day but draw curtains over the windows and seem to be busy well into the night.

In the picture above, the black landscaping fabric is being installed in excavations being dug for tree planting wells in the new wider sidewalks as part of the streetscaping plan for Preston. The sign posted in the window may or may not be a building permit. Such details often do not bother developers getting in on Ottawa's next hottest neighborhood. The new location of the Black Cat Cafe (with no curtained windows at night) is on the left.

Winter comes

The skating rink boards have been delivered to Plouffe Park, behind the Plant Recreation Centre along Preston Street in Little Italy. Good bye soccer, hello hockey.

Champagne Ave condo site on the market

The Acquerello condo was in pre-sales several years ago but did not sell enough units to go ahead with construction. It was located at  the corner of Hickory Street and Champagne Avenue, one block south of the Carling Avenue O-Train station. The proposed building was quite large and offered nice layouts with views of Dows Lake and the downtown plus easy access to rapid transit.

The lot is now back on the market. Domicile has proved there is a market for condos at this location, with his first tower at "Merion Square" built, and another two condo towers nearing construction. With the City's continued push for instensification, I expect whoever buys the site will try to increase the density or height to take advantage of the views and location. One way to increase the FSI is to cover-over the OTrain cut to increase parkland as a tradeoff for more height.

Unfortunately, the City's Bayview-Carling CDP for the area along the OTrain was aborted several years ago. By the time it gets resurrected, all the larger vacant lands along the OTrain will already have development proposals. See previous blog postings on 855 Carling Ave, the lot next door.