Quote:
Originally Posted by Montelroy
I was at the meeting last night...
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Glad you could make it (welcome to the Forum, btw!). It was a pretty good meeting, discussion stayed pretty on-topic -- relatively speaking ;-) and there were some important points for the Planners to hear. Too bad the actual city planner on the file couldn't be there (illness), especially wrt some of the problematic requirements that City policies impose:
- no lay-up spaces for moving and service vehicles for one;
- that tall towers must be 20 metres from other new towers but only 9 (IIRC) from old existing towers is another;
- arterial roads are being targeted for development, but access for development is deemed not to be a function for arterial roads;
- that City Planners completed the LRT-TOD plans for the parts of town with NO development pressure first, meanwhile dealing with these proposals in Mechanicsville and along the O-Train Corridor one at a time with no community-specific plans in place to guide them;
- and personal rant: that City Planners don't really do much "planning" at all, no consideration seems to be given to what sort of services these new residents will need: day care spaces, school spaces, park spaces, health and social services; the study of "adequacy of services" seems to be limited to the token look at traffic capacity, which in Mechanicsville means saying "well Parkdale Ave already has a failing level of service, and since there's nothing worse than a failing grade, a few more cars won't have an unacceptable impact, right?"
UPDATE: to be fair they do have the engineering consultants look at all the utilities, too; but these are barely the minimum of services that are needed to be assessed for adequacy.
I also note that reps from TEGA themselves were conspicuously absent. I still think TEGA's intention is to get the re-zoning and flip the property. I don't expect that we will ever see "The Rhombus" built as shown -- but do any of our optimists want to take that bet? ;-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Montelroy
The biggest question on my mind...why is the city cramming Parkdale with giant condos, and letting Bayview Road sit empty? The city will get rid of that old Public Works building and put in some sort of theatre or event venue (supposedly), but what about the rest of the stretch? I've heard rumours that they will put condos there, but have seen nothing to date.
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The City's concept for the Bayview yards from the O-Train CDP process can be seen in the second video here:
http://ottawa.ca/en/city_hall/planni..._oh/index.html (they're mostly from the 2006 plan based on NSLRT, so expect them to change a bit.
As for 7 Bayview (the old City workshop and associated lands), Councillor Hobbs' vision/concept is here:
http://ourkitchissippi.ca/news/on-tr...for-7-bayview/ You can bet that this area will be a big part of the CDP discussions in the neighbourhood when these get going in the New Year. Because of the size of the vacant lot around/behind the now-heritage-designated public works building and its location at the northeast end of the neighbourhood (and to the north of anything that will ever be built at LeBreton), the proximity to Bayview Station and the high capacity of Bayview Rd, I think that a couple of VERY tall towers could be built behind with minimal negative impacts, and that the associated development charges (writ large) would support some brilliant repurposing of the the old building as a centre for the community facing on to a revitalized Laroche Park. I'll be saying so when the time comes; we'll see what others think.
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