Sparks Street

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Ugh, these things?



God forbid - I already find heritage streetcars a little kitschy, but these 'trolleys' have all the tackiness, but none of the quality or charm. They exude cheapness and a lack of taste.

A thousand times no to a bus trolley.

Certainly not my first choice either, but that would be the best we could do at this point.

[Kitchissippi]

It would be far more eye-catching to go for futuristic trolleys instead of ersatz heritage streetcars-on-wheels

[OTSkyline]

First one looks kind of cool, the other two look like plain Airport shuttles...

But still, I don't think I would want the city to spend money on these "touristic buses" to do the loop around Confederation Blvd... I dont think its worth it and think we could come up with better ideas.

[waterloowarrior]

merged various Sparks Street threads and moved to Transportation...

[acottawa]

Can't find a link, but local CBC news had a story on a planned 500k renovation (less clutter, new paving, more trees, muskoka chairs).

[citydwlr]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Can't find a link, but local CBC news had a story on a planned 500k renovation (less clutter, new paving, more trees, muskoka chairs).

Saw this too. I don't really get the Muskoka chairs though...Not a fan of that part. But, it sounds like they will remove those horrible cement/steel obstructions at each end of each block of Sparks Street. They also said something about planting trees down the centre of the street.

UPDATE: Here's the video on CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada...ID/2441588976/

[J.OT13]

Since the new BIA president has taken the position, we've seen some significant steps forward on Sparks.

[S-Man]

The BIA has done good work, but I worry (and lie awake at night wondering) if their good work has somehow hurt the NCC's feelings.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by S-Man

The BIA has done good work, but I worry (and lie awake at night wondering) if their good work has somehow hurt the NCC's feelings.

How dare they take action to improve Ottawa!! And without a 20 year study!? Absurd!

[NOWINYOW]

Sparks St. needs residential housing. Apartments, condos and the like.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by NOWINYOW

Sparks St. needs residential housing. Apartments, condos and the like.

I'd like to see the feds selling a few of its Sparks buildings to private developers for conversion or in some cases (certain buildings from 60s to 80s) redevelopment.

[rocketphish]

Sparks Street stupidity:

Sparks Street market vendors told to stop selling hot food

Michael Woods, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: May 30, 2014, Last Updated: May 30, 2014 5:49 PM EDT

The future of the fledgling Sparks Street Market is in doubt after three vendors have been told they can no longer sell food there, according to the market’s manager.

“They’ve been told they’re not allowed to vend, period,” market manager Lawrence Henderson said of the vendors selling hot food at the market, which runs Thursdays and Fridays between O’Connor and Metcalfe streets.

The reason, Henderson was told, is the Sparks Street Business Improvement Area has received complaints from permanent business owners concerned that the street vendors are taking away customers.

However, BIA chair Sam Elsaddi said vendors are “welcome to stay” as long as they don’t serve freshly-cooked food. But those who sell cooked food become lunch destinations and compete with the year-round mall merchants, he said.

“I’m here to protect the existing businesses, the ones that pay taxes all year round,” he said.

Henderson said he was “incredulous and confused” at the decision because everything the vendors sell was vetted and approved by the Sparks Street Mall Authority.

“I understood that they have to respond to their membership complaints, and the BIA executive is taking the steps they need to respond to those,” said Henderson, who is a vendor at Pretty Fours Patisserie, which his wife owns. “But these vendors have already committed money, time, and resources to attend this market, based on the fact they had an agreement for a year.”

The market began last year, when a handful of vendors sold goods on Thursdays and Fridays on Sparks Street between Bank and O’Connor streets. This year the market was expanded and moved over a block. It features 10 local vendors selling items such as produce, baked goods, artisan crafts and freshly-prepared foods.

Henderson said he wants the BIA to honour the original agreement with the vendors, and for them to stay for the rest of the season.

But Elsaddi said the agreement with the market makes it clear that vendors are subject to review and approval by the BIA. The contract, he says, states that the manager will only recommend vendors that are local producers, are not re-salers or offer products that do not present a “substantive conflict of interest” with the mall merchants.

He said the idea behind the farmer’s market was to have a space for local vendors to sell goods such as fruits and vegetables, cheese, and other such products, not meals made on the spot.

Jasmine Leese and her father Greg Leese, who run the Hot Potato Company, said they are “very disappointed” that they’ve been told to stop selling hot food after only 10 days of operation this season.

“It’s kind of like we had the rug pulled from underneath us,” Jasmine Leese said, “It’s a big shock.”

Leese said she isn’t sure whether the family business will be back next week, but she wants more time to show that they aren’t taking customers away from the brick-and-mortar businesses nearby.

“I don’t think we should give up,” she said. “We’re a small business and this is how we survive.”

Greg Leese says the BIA executive is thinking about things the wrong way; markets are incubators for local businesses and attract more foot traffic.

“It’s been proven around the world that markets do generate traffic and interest in areas,” he said. “Markets are a good testing ground for businesses. To me, the BIA should stop thinking the old-fashioned way.

mwoods@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/michaelrwoods

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...lling-hot-food

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

....................

...How is it that stupid people get into positions of power so often?

[rocketphish]

Last market stand standing on Sparks Street

Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: June 6, 2014, Last Updated: June 6, 2014 7:48 PM EDT

The Art Is In Bakery stand was the last of 10 food vendors still operating on Sparks Street Friday, but at least that one will be back next week.

The vendors say they have been driven out by the Sparks Street Business Improvement Area, which has restricted some market stall sales to protect restaurants on the pedestrian strip.

Stephanie Mathieson, owner of Art Is In, was trying to sort out plans at the BIA office late Friday but said part of the problem was “miscommunication.”

After a late-afternoon meeting with BIA president Les Gagné, she said her bakery stand would be back next week selling its regular range of baking.

Asked about the other nine vendors — companies like Pretty Fours Patisserie and the Hot Potato Company — she replied, “They’re gone.”

The BIA couldn’t be reached Friday.

The market began last year as a collection of vendors that operated on Sparks on Thursdays and Fridays. This year it had expanded, but any future presence now appears in doubt.

“Yesterday (Thursday) the farmers’ market manager told us that the market was done, so we weren’t allowed to come back,” Mathieson said.

But she says this was an error. There has been “miscommunication and a lot of frustration in the past few weeks with the BIA because they were restricting products that were previously approved”, she says.
Related

“There was just a big confusion about who was calling the shots.”

At one point vendors were told to stop selling pastries, but now she says the order is simply not to sell frozen pastries.

Sales of vegetables, fruit and flowers will be allowed, but not prepared food, she said.

Mathieson will have another meeting with the BIA on Tuesday. “They just feel very embarrassed that there’s only one vendor left, so they’re going to try to rebuild it basically.”

tspears@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-sparks-street

[drawarc]

Reminds me of the one time I went to a Fat Albert's in Centretown (now closed). I was told they couldn't serve pizza, because the restaurant next door also sold pizza.

[kevinbottawa]

There's a sign up at the old Zellers that says Bier Markt is coming Fall 2014. Perhaps Sparks can become another Clarence Street; lined with restaurants from top to bottom.

[MountainView]

Originally Posted by kevinbottawa

There's a sign up at the old Zellers that says Bier Markt is coming Fall 2014. Perhaps Sparks can become another Clarence Street; lined with restaurants from top to bottom.

They should have been more on the ball and opened in Spring/Summer 2014 to take advantage of Patio and Tourist Season. Now they'll be opening up in cooler weather and when people go back to work and don't spend as much money. Place has been empty for a while, it's a shame.

[Kitchissippi]

What?!? The Sparks Street BIA didn't complain that another brewery will take away business from the other places that already sell beer?

The Rib Fest and Poutine Fest offer prepared hot food (and in quantities that discourage people from eating anything else) which competes with the restaurants, and both events are officially sanctioned by the BIA. The food stalls in the farmers market by comparison only compete with chip trucks and hotdog vendors.

[canabiz]

Originally Posted by MountainView

They should have been more on the ball and opened in Spring/Summer 2014 to take advantage of Patio and Tourist Season. Now they'll be opening up in cooler weather and when people go back to work and don't spend as much money. Place has been empty for a while, it's a shame.

I agree, I would be more inclined to visit the place when I go downtown (I live in Barrhaven) for ribfests, poutine fests.

I don't have many reasons to go to Sparks Street and will check it out in time but they certainly could have raked it in if there was something in place by now. Oh well, there is always next summer!

[rocketphish]

Editorial: Allow a Sparks Street food-for-all

Ottawa Citizen Editorial Board
Published on: June 9, 2014, Last Updated: June 9, 2014 5:16 PM EDT

If the City That Fun Forgot were a country, Sparks Street would surely serve as the capital. It’s bad enough that the snoozer of a pedestrian mall is often devoid of life on evenings and weekends. Now, an eclectic mix of daytime food vendors has been chased from the space by a whirlwind of red tape.

To the Business Improvement Area behind the move we say: set the contraband cuisine, and the market, free.

The food fight surrounds a BIA edict banning vendors who had signed up to be part of the new Sparks Street Market — which operates on Thursdays and Fridays — from selling ready-to-eat food. The restriction wiped out most menu items on offer and, as a result, nine of the original 10 vendors packed up and left. The new-look market, if the BIA can find replacement businesses, will sell locally grown fruit, vegetables and flowers.

All this, because some established restaurants along the strip complained the hot food vendors were biting into their profits.

The knee-jerk reaction assumes the restaurants are right: that a majority of the people who frequented the quick-service stalls would have otherwise considered a sit-down establishment. It also assumes office workers are willing to dedicate their lunch hours to vegetable shopping, hauling bags of lettuce back to their cubicles.

We find those assumptions hard to digest.

There are many factors preventing Sparks from becoming the next ByWard Market or Elgin Street, but a couple stand out. The first is a relative dearth of people living in the area, a problem solved by focusing business efforts on the weekday lunch crowd and the weekend tourist/family crowd. The second is a lack of imagination, a problem solved by asking: what do those people want and/or need when they’re here? Weekday lunches are more about fuel than fine dining, and the ever-quickening pace of life is as credible a reason for a drop in sit-down restaurant traffic as the addition of a handful of street vendors.

Would it not make more sense to run a ByWard-style market on the weekend, drawing in locals and taking advantage of the Parliament Hill tourist traffic? For those who park for free at the World Exchange Plaza, it would be a nice alternative to trekking through Major’s Hill Park and past the U.S. Embassy. It might even draw more customers the Sparks Street restaurants when they actually have time to sit down and enjoy a meal.

As for weekdays, give the people what they want: a quick bite during a brief escape.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...t-food-for-all