Parks in the old urban neighbourhoods like the west side are often quite small. The one on Elm Street is fairly typical. It is a bit-larger-than-normal pocket park installed when some houses burned down. A few years ago it was … Continue reading From Parking to Parks, a nascent trend?
No 15 Elm Street, near Booth, was the home Joseph Guillaume Laurent “Larry” Robillard and his brother(s) grew up in. On Nov 8, 1941, 73 years ago, Sgt. Robillard of the Royal Canadian Air Force was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal. He downed two enemy aircraft while protecting a descending parachutist. Then just 20 years old, the resident of 15 Elm Street had already shot down a Messerschmitt 109 on 22 June . During a patrol over Lille, France, on 2 July 1941, then a novice pilot with less than a month’s flying under his belt, he saw a descending parachutist and moved down … Continue reading Local Heros
On Pamilla Street an infill developer severed the side yard of a small single — the blue one to the right in the pic — and greatly intensified the site. The neighbours objected, took it to the OMB, lost, and the building went ahead. Why was it controversial? Well, the usual developer sins. They took the front and back yard set back minimums as the permissible maximum building size. So the infill house is huge — so huge, it is in fact 3 houses on one 23′ lot with shared driveway. The neighbours objected to the height, the car traffic, and … Continue reading Intensification not without its drawbacks
Miracles do happen at City Hall. Not often. But one is unfolding right now. Pay attention. Instead of paving over more of our scarce parkland for vehicle parking, instead of just whining forever about the lack of City park space in our downtown neighborhoods … our parks dept has actually agreed to expand a park onto the road allowance. And removing some vehicle parking too! Yes, this miraculous green space expansion is happening right here in little ole’ Ottawa. Chaudiere Park is a small pocket park on Elm Street in West Side Ottawa. The proposed expansion replaces on-street parking with a … Continue reading From Parking to Parks
Chaudiere Park is a well-used large-ish pocket park on Elm Street, between Rochester and Preston. It’s about 140′ along the street, and about 100′ deep. The park is dominated by a very large, very deep wading pool that delivers a freeze-your-bones-it’s-so-cold experience to kiddies for six weeks every summer. There is a large sandbox on the east; a basketball court on the west. The general impression is a sea of pavement. and Chaudiere Park on Elm is a newish location for the former Chaudiere Park on LeBreton Flats, which was relocated to Elm after the “slum clearance” expropriation in the 1960’s. As such, it deserves a proper park … Continue reading Parks Planning (ii)
The modest house shown above on Elm Street is typical for the neighborhood. West Side homes have seen many stories played out. But this story is far from typical. This is the home Joseph Guillaume Laurent “Larry” Robillard and his brothers grew up in. On Nov 8, 1941, 70 years ago, Sgt. Robillard of the Royal Canadian Air Force was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal. He downed two enemy aircraft while protecting a descending parachutist. Then just 20 years old, the resident of 15 Elm Street had already shot down a Messerschmitt 109 on 22 June . During a patrol over Lille, France, on 2 July 1941, then a … Continue reading Noble residents
Ah, real estate porn. Featuring objects you cannot afford, splendors you can only dream about. And the opportunity to second guess and dump on the people that did spend the money to do what you wouldn’t have done! There have been many previous posts about the innovative infill houses on the west end of Elm Street. On a single 56×100 lot the developer, Sage, has inserted four houses, replacing one that wasn’t much larger than a couple of shipping containers. From the street, it appears to be two single homes; and from the backyards it appears to be two homes. The four homes have different … Continue reading Real Estate Porn: the Elm edition
Dufferin Park in Toronto is justifiably well known for its innovative features. The boy on the left (picture, above) is by the spigot that flows water into this large sand lot, complete with oversize logs that seem perfect to stimulate little imaginations while containing the mess and providing bum rests for parents. Can’t you just hear Ottawa park bureaucrats commenting on the “safety” of that big log bridge? (shown above) Actually, watching the baby crawl up out of the ditch was hilarious and inspiring. The Dufferin Park neighborhood and adjacent Trinity Bellwoods neighborhoods appear to me to be in the “Glebe” level of affluence. A number of … Continue reading Waterparks in the City
Everyone knows the traditional main streets: West Wellie, Preston, Chinatown, Bank Street … The very success of these streets ensure they attract popular businesses with enough clientele to afford the rents. But where are the retailers that cannot afford main street? Ottawa lacks many low-value retail spaces, where specialty niche businesses, startups, and some just-plain marginal businesses can locate. Gentrification and the revival of main streets are desirable, but have the effect of squeezing out these small firms. So they slip into little-noticed spots unattractive to mainstream, main street retailers. I previously mentioned the hotbed of nifty niche novelty firms on the west side*. … Continue reading The Secret West Side
The City has done a review of all the infill housing put up in the last few years in selected central area neighborhoods. Staff went out and photographed every house from the street. I must commend them for actually doing part of the study out in the real world and not from charts and drawings in the back room. It wasn’t that many years ago that the City reprimanded staff for actually going out in the field. It is a practice I would like to see more of (the going out in the city part) by planners. There are been a … Continue reading Better infills through consultation
Costco likes to locate in industrial parks. They essentially run a retail store but in industrial space. The reason for this is that they then pay industrial property taxes, which are hugely lower than retail commercial property taxes. On a smaller scale, we see the flight of retail businesses out of Westboro as it becomes “trendier” — same way as businesses fled the Glebe or New Edinburgh in their heydays of rapid gentrification. I previously mentioned that Cohen’s Vintage Lighting moved out of Westboro and onto Spruce Street. (Before that, they had been elsewhere as Architectural Antiques, then Hintonburg, then Westboro, now back to … Continue reading Industrial gentrification on the west side
Some infill houses are going in on the west end of Elm Street, near the Just Rite storage building, which formerly was the Vimy House war museum workshops, and before that the Champagne Streetcar Barn. Champagne was a mayor of Ottawa. The old barn is the building to the left, in the picture; it has a new stucco façade facing the street but the original brick walls on the residential sides. The backhoe is digging trenches in the street to connect to sewer and water mains. Looking at the piles of dirt dug up, notice all the timbers. These are … Continue reading Archeological Dig on Elm Street
