double click to enlarge The seriously-ornate royal arch to be constructed over Somerset Street near Cambridge in Ottawa’s Chinatown district. Fundraising is going well, and a crew will be coming from China in Spring 2010 to install the arch. Continue reading Chinatown Arch
Alight at night … click to enlarge gingerbread house and UCV Church Photos by Michelle LaFontaine. Continue reading More Christmas Lights at Upper Canada Village
These photos are of the light festival “Alight at Night” held every evening at Upper Canada Village throughout December. Photos by Michelle LaFontaine. Continue reading Christmas Lights at Upper Canada Village
Shown above is the first elevations of a six storey condo proposed for Scott Street. Small buildings like this are called boutique buildings. It will have about 30 units, with one commercial space on the ground floor. Since the lot has access only on the Scott frontage, the building face has the storefront, main entrance, then parking garage ramp, all in a row. Exterior is brick and stucco with glass balcony railings. The building is proposed for the vacant lot immediately west of West Village Private, which joins Scott at the same intersection as does Lanark Avenue, near the Metropole … Continue reading New Scott Street Condo
The City is busy paring back bus services. Residents in the Preston area are probably glad to get back to having the No 3 on Preston again. And in the spring, the bus stops will again have shelters, benches, and trees for shade. Once the bus transitway is converted to LRT service (sheduled for 2017 or so) then the no 3 bus route will follow Preston to Albert to Booth Street and the LeBreton LRT station, then over to Gatineau. It will no longer go to downtown Ottawa. Riders on the north-south routes will be taken to rapid transit stations … Continue reading Future of No 3 bus route
The route, from downtown to westboro Possible intersection-free alignment along the LRT through LeBreton flats. The CBC afternoon show will do a live segment on the BikeWest project Monday just after the 5pm news. If you can’t listen in, I’ll post a MP3 of the interview in a few days. Continue reading BikeWest on CBC radio Monday
At this location on Preston, the mailboxes used to be sitting on the grassy area beyond the sidewalk. When the corner sidewalks were laid, this little paved area appeared offering splendid access to boxes. Civilized. Continue reading Mailbox heaven
I have a number of neighbors that manage to avoid shovelling snow as much as possible. Options include just driving over the snow bank and packing the snow down with your four wheel drive SUV, hiring neighbors or plowing services, etc. This house on Rochester always has its porch plastic wrapped to break the wind and keep the snow off. Last year, and this, it has its steps covered too, in a dropsheet version of those canopied entrances to elegant hotels and really ritzy apartments we see in the movies set in NYC. I am not tall. I walked up … Continue reading Let it snow
Both houses are on Primrose Street. The top one had its second floor stucco exterior wrapped in “house wrap”, which prevents air infiltration but allows the passage of vapour (usually out of the walls). I am disappointed they did not put any additional insulation between the wooden strapping that has been applied for the new exterior cladding. I am a strong believer in insulation, but probably like for the City Living houses “renovated” along Albert, the person doing the renovation doesn’t pay the utility bill, the tennant does, so additional insulation is not installed. Next door is the green house … Continue reading A tale of two houses …
One of the biggest toy hits of Christmas 2009 is the Zhu Zhu Hamster. It’s cheap ($8-$12), small, has zillions of reactions to human stimulus. Zhu Zhu is Chinese for Pig. So it’s a PigPig Pet or PigPig Hamster. So I went looking for it. Not at Zellers. They said it was only at ToysR-us. So onto the 95 to St Laurent. Nope, they don’t have them. The staff cheerily told me the toys are all being reserved for the Toronto market. If you live in Ottawa, you can’t get the top selling Christmas toy because the retailer has decided … Continue reading No Toys for Us
Metropolis Magazine has a short article about how badly Las Vegas botched its monorail system. Burried in the article the careful listener might hear some warning sounds about the joys of un-amalgamated cities or urban planning districts that fail to include major sectors (who knew the Las Vegas strip is not part of Las Vegas City and is in fact unincorporated?). The double-decker buses on the strip are a success though. I last rode them a few years ago, and there were crowds of people at every stop. Most of them had never ridden a bus in their adult lives, and … Continue reading Transit woes worse than Ottawa ?
For many months work has been under way to install an exterior elevator shaft and new entry porch on the north (Lisgar St) side of McPhail Baptist church. I rather expected a ultra-mod addition — you know, glass box, exposed steel frame — and am pleasantly surprised to see how well the contractor blended the old brick and new, kept the same foundation materials, etc. Continue reading Elevator added
The city continues to upgrade the streetscaping along Preston. All new street signs are being installed at the intersections. While each cross street got its sign (one on the west side, one on the east side) not all of the intersections got the Preston Street sign, as shown here. Continue reading Wayfinding in Little Italy
Faithful readers of this blog will recall I promote a cycling project called BikeWest. It calls for a off-road bi-directional cycle route parallel to Scott and Albert Street between Westboro and the downtown. The city owns the land all along the streets, on the north side. I am concerned that the DOTT LRT project could block BikeWest at two key points, Bayview Station and Tunney’s Station. Since transit committee was considering the LRT project, I spoke at the meeting, and asked friendly councillors to present a motion. But I got more than my minimal goal. Transit Committee passed a motion instructed … Continue reading BikeWest motion passes Transit Committee
It probably reflects some deep psychological disturbance in my early childhood potty training … but I find I notice sewer lids, (wo)manhole lids, catch basins, access hatches, etc on our streets and sidewalks. They do add interest to our quotidian walkabouts … at least to those who notice them. The photo above is of a new fancy sidewalk made of interlocks. The stones are cut in an even square around the access hatch, and the perimeter filled in with cement. There may well be practical reasons for this, but it does somewhat spoil the look. I notice that on Wellington … Continue reading Sewer lids, access hatches, etc
the Cornerstone women’s housing apartment building (42units) will be built at the corner of Booth and Eccles, on the site of the former Desjardins/IGA/Loeb grocery store Diane Holmes, Royal Galipeau, Jim Watson, Sue Garvey, and Yasir Naqvi Sue Garvey speaks to the large turnout that came to launch the project Continue reading Cornerstone Project launched
Our fair city continues to insist that it is pedestrian friendly. Of course, this friendliness comes second to being very friendly to motorists. At first glance the above photo is so typical of Ottawa surely it is nothing worthwhile noting? But consider the engineering and design effort that goes into designing a road and sidewalk system that consistently delivers a slushy puddle at hundreds of thousands of sidewalk dips all across our city for four or five months of the year. Consider the thought and effort that goes into ensuring pedestrians are directed onto steeply sloping sidewalks at exactly the same geographical … Continue reading Sidewalks by Design
These photos on Preston Street south of the Qway overpass were taken by Rachel Pereira. They highlight what a huge change has come over this street as it has been renovated by the City and the BIA and individual merchants. In case you missed the pun, the Elegant Romatic terms come from Sunday’s Citizen story by Maria Cook on the rejuvenation of Preston. Here’s the photo link: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/photos/Gallery+Preston+Street/2335008/story.html; and here’s the story link: http://www.google.ca/reader/view/?tab=my#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.canada.com%2Fottawacitizen%2Fblogs%2Fdesigningottawa%2Frss.aspx; which is to Maria Cook’s on-line edition. Continue reading “Elegant, Romantic” and Christmasy
When reconstructing Preston, some of the dead-end side streets (and there are many) were temporarily opened up to resident access by removing street closures or temporary easements over private properties. The above posts are on the street closure on Elm Street. All the posts were damaged removing them from the ground in the spring. Crews reinserted the posts this fall. Neighbors will be watching to ensure they are replaced with unbroken ones in spring 2010. Continue reading Casulties of the reno
One of the delights of the Preston Street rehabilitation has been the Preston BIA’s remaking of the Queensway underpass into an interesting highlight of the street. Instead of the former dark and dreary underpass, the framed murals and background murals are great eye candy. The west side is Preston Street yesterday and today; the east side is the immigration story. In the spring, the east side sidewalk will be further developed into a place to linger, with special sidewalk light fixtures and paving. The north end of this zone opens onto the parking lot at 301 Preston, which is converted into … Continue reading Corso Italia
This picture is taken along the city parking structure on Laurier Avenue. Along the south-facing side is a pleasant-but-thin garden. The perennials have been cut back flush to the earth. Notice the hole in the centre. There was a matching hole at the other end of the garden. These were homes to spectacular Yucca plants. Looking straight out of the Arizona & New Mexico deserts, these exotic looking perennials are hardy in Ottawa and send out tall bloom spires. Alas, the mature plants are gone — victims of city maintenance crews or theft? I collected some seeds off this plant in … Continue reading Yucca Yuk
I attended a small group meeting of cycling advocates with Inge Molenaar, cycling honcho from Den Hague, the bureaucratic capital of The Netherlands, who was brought to Ottawa by the NCC to share cycle planning lessons. The instructing was made more pleasant by the Embassy treating attendees to hospitality afterwords. Some observations: The Hague will have 6 to 9000 indoor bike parking spaces in their new central rail station. I wonder if there will be any safe or secure bike parking facilities at Ottawa’s new LRT stations, or will there be a bent-paperclip rack stuck on the lawn? I also … Continue reading More Cycling Advice
Canus Plastics, on Lisgar, half block east of Bank Street, is slated to become another condo tower as residential infill and intensification continues in the downtown. The building is by Starwood Mastercraft, who are also building condos on Parkdale and 125 Champagne (the latter being the Acquerelo site) near Carling OTrain station. Click on the map to enlarge for readability, or go to their site http://www.sohovipclub.com/. Continue reading Lisgar street condo coming
Plouffe Park can be found behind the Plant Recreation Complex. Part of it runs along Preston street. Part of it used to run along Somerset street too, but the City found it convenient to convert the kiddie playground into a parking lot so motorists don’t have far to walk so far to the Complex to get their exercise …. Along the Preston side, pedestrians parambulating the Little Italy wide landscaped sidewalks are presented with numerous opportunities to rest their derrieres on benches. There are also several planter sections that double as benches along the sidewalk. Naturally, skateboarders will sometime discover these concrete edges … Continue reading Sk8ers UnStoned on grass …
The NCC invited Inge Molenaar, chief cyclist of the Den Hague city bureaucracy, to tell the NCC what it should do to make the National Capital Region cycling friendly. As part of that visit, she gave a public presentation Monday night. A few of her points stood out to me: — ebikes will extend the comfortable cycling range from 8km now to 16km. The Hague will continue to let ebikes mix with pedal bikes on bike paths. Mopeds, on the other hand, being faster, are kept on the roads. — they have a practical policy guideline for where segregated bike paths … Continue reading The Den Hague experience
