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
You gotta give it to this Willow Street property owner who took a really big hammer to renovation. Continue reading Willow Street Reno
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 … Continue reading Infill on Bell & Christie Streets
The Booth Street station is location directly under the new elevated Booth Street overpass. The overpass crosses over the station and the aquaduct. The new LRT alignment is a few meters south of the current transitway which is closer to the aquaduct. Most frightening about this drawing is the abundance of car traffic lanes on Booth, the awful manoevering required to get buses from the Booth St bus stop over to the centre lane to turn onto Albert to go uptown, and the generous addition of lanes to Albert Street in both directions. Somehow, a transit project is providing lots … Continue reading DOTT plans affect west side residents (xii): Booth Station
Shown is a interim elevation of the new senior’s residence building proposed for the corner of Booth and Eccles Street, just south of Chinatown’s main drag: Somerset Street. It has 42 residences, common facilities, a brick and well-detailed exterior finish. It complements the Somerset West Community Health Centre across the street. It should give a real boost to the appearance of Booth Street and the Dalhousie neighborhood as a whole. Anthony Leaning is the architect. Construction beings in 2010 for completion in 2011. Continue reading New Residential Building, Booth near Somerset
tailback of cars on Booth going to Gatineau, evening rush hour at 3pm tailback of cars extends back to Gladstone, every single vehicle had only one person in it The intersection of Booth / Albert fails for several hours a day. Mostly this is due to our city policies of catering to single occupancy vehicles. Drive them by the thousands, and we will widen the roads for you! Right now the “tailback” or long queue of vehicles trying to get onto Booth to go to Gatineau extends back to Preston on the west (often blocking that intersection) and back to Empress … Continue reading DOTT plans affect west side residents (iii): Albert Street widening planned
The new LRT LeBreton Station is to be located roughly where the current transitway station is at Booth. The entrance to the tunnel portion of the new LRT service under the downtown core will be immediately east of the station. Its location and design is in accordance with the Escarpment Plan that outlines how the adjacent lands are to be developed. During the tunnel construction period of 2-3 years, tunnel boring machines will eat their way through the limestone bedrock six to ten stories down under the street level of the core. All this chewed up rock has to come … Continue reading DOTT plans affect west side residents (ii): Tunnel entrance
Digging a trench along the old Byron trolleyway park just north of Highland Park for these beasts? That’s just slightly less brutal a planning decision than running steam trains through slums in 19th-century Manchester. – Ottawa Citizen editorial Hmm, let’s see if I can get this right. As part of its LRT program the City is converting the current bus rapid transit (BRT) roads (the “transitway”) to LRT (“the beasts”). A problem arises where the BRT shares road surfaces with the Ottawa River Commuter Expressway. It shares the road alignment … because the original alignment along the Byron transit streetcar … Continue reading A tale of two neighborhoods
Last evening there was a banquet in Chinatown. It had several purposes. It was a birthday celebration for the 60th Anniversary of the current ruling regime in China, and the Chinese ambassador was present. It was a fundraiser for the new archway that will grace Somerset St at Cambridge later this year, and for that welcoming beacon and sign of the Chinese-Asian presence in the Dalhousie neighborhood of Ottawa, significant funds were raised. The final arch design was revealled: it is a royal arch, because Ottawa is a capital city, as is Beijing, which is contributing to the archway here. … Continue reading Baird on the Ottawa Transit Tunnell
A number of earlier posts show damage caused to large trees in the LeBreton Flats area. The Dalhousie neighborhood hosts a surprising number of animals and birds. These two twilights shots show the local vampires, err, beaver out to prey on unsuspecting urbanites. In the photo with a fine stone-arch bridge in the background, the beaver can be jut seen in the right foreground. Click picture to enlarge. The second picture shows him up close … he was about 20 feet away from me and curious about the flash on my camera. After several shots, he dove leaving only a … Continue reading Twilight on the Aquaduct and the … come out to play
The media has had a field day with stories of raw sewage being dumped into the Ottawa River from ancient sewer control points, a number of which date from the late 1800’s. Typically, the focus is on the obvious: raw sewage. Ignored is why those sewage facilities are over a hundred years old. My view is that successive councils have favoured glamorous higher profile spending projects that buy them favour with select voting groups. The go for the glitz, they delay and postpone the core civic expenditures. Hello Walkerton, decades of not-upgraded water works, cosy featherbedding, porkbarrelling, etc. At the corner … Continue reading Recall all those “raw sewage in the River” stories?
Throughout the past months, the issues related to drug dealing, drug using, supervised (safe) injection sites, shelters, transitional or supervised housing units, a proposed parole office, and the impact on the rest of the community, have been visited a number of times on this blog. Recall the supervised injection site focus group. Recall the impact of shelters like Shepards of Good Hope or Union Mission on adjacent neighborhoods. The parole office issue. Recall there is another proposal coming forward for supervised transitional housing units on Booth Street, perhaps with a shelter element, we don’t know yet. Dalhousie is still a … Continue reading Crime, Supervised Injection Site, transition housing, etc.
Even if you didn’t get a chance to listen to CBC radio’s interview with me about BikeWest, you can listen to it by clicking on the link below: http://ericdarwin.ca/CBC_Interview_BikeWest.mp3 Continue reading CBC morning interview
Life in Dalhousie is never dull. As seen on Somerset Street, just west of Preston, another tractor trailer load of California grapes is unloaded by Silvano Musca, owner of Musca Wine Supplies. The grapes are crushed into juice on the premises, and sold directly to customers to ferment into artisanal wines. Some grapes are kept in huge drive-in refridgerated rooms for use later. Wine making is especially popular with the many Italian families that have traditional ties to Dalhousie and the Little Italy neighborhood, most obviously along Preston Street. Continue reading The Grapes are Coming
Starting Sunday or Monday I will deviate a bit from my catch-all blogging and post a multipart series on a project to improve the cycling experience from the downtown to Westboro. At the end of the series (next Friday?), the entire post will be available, with photos, as a single document, for anyone upon request to my email or to via comments on the blog (be sure to include your email address explicitly stated, it won’t show up even to me when you submit comments to the blog). Continue reading Coming soon: BikeWest
Looking east on Albert as it goes over the OTrain Boulevard trees, west side of Bayview seen from Scott Curious curb jogs, seen from Somerset looking north Field of Trees, between TomBrown Arena and Albert Sometimes the City makes me very happy. Like when I see the amount of generous landscaping going in along Bayview Avenue between Somerset and Albert/Scott. For several years the City waterworks people have been burying high pressure water mains in the area. Approx.where the sidewalk is shown in picture 4 & 5 is the route of the pipeline. There was a bare grassy lawn running from Tom … Continue reading Bayview re-landscaped
The Dalhousie Community Association has a new information blog. It can be found at http://www.dalhousiecommunityassociation.blogspot.com/. The DCA represents the area from Bay Street on the east, to Bayview/O-Train on the west;from the Ottawa River/LeBreton Flats south to Carling Avenue. Dalhousie is one of the least known neighborhoods in the City, and its name is seldom recognized. With the new blog, they aim to improve communication and reach more residents. Be sure to subscribe to the blog to get updated news. Continue reading New Dalhousie Community Association Blog
Shown is the old Desjardins IGA/Loeb Booth Street, located just a few metres south of where Booth crosses Somerset. – The building has been vacant for several years. Attempts to find a new grocer have failed. A government funded study on installing a food coop floundered. The building has a typical industrial facade, but behind the facade I hear there are several old houses joined together. The result is uneven and shifting floors bridging stone foundations. – Thirty years ago Desjardins had the current Loblaws marketing plan in place. There were grocieries, and furniture, a hardware aisle, and upstairs a … Continue reading New plans on Booth Street
A number of MSM (Main Stream Media) read this blog. Several stories I have written about appear at day or two later in the local dead trees, twice as front pagers. Coincidence no doubt. A few days ago I wrote about police foot patrols in my Dalhousie neighborhood on the west side of the downtown. CBC radio did a followup interview today. Broadcast is estimated for Friday, 7.15am, 91.5 on your dial. Continue reading Blog Radio
Baloons, viewed look southeast from LeBreton Flats. The church tower of St Jean Baptiste and the Dominican Monastry on Empress are clearly visible. They dominate many skyline views from the Dalhousie neighborhood. Continue reading Look W-a-a-a-y Up
There’s a lot of hoopla in the mainstream media these days with everybody and their brother popping up with new plans for Lansdowne Park. The alternative plans tend to share some elements in common: The Glebe will get a big grassy and treed park. Someone else’s money will restore some older, architecturally significant buildings into marvellous wonders for the local neighborhood. Locals will wander in on bicycles and by foot to buy directly from the friendly farmer locally-grown no-downside produce. After that they can linger by Venetian canals sipping coffee from organically grown (in the shade) responsibility harvested 100 mile … Continue reading Why Not Ask First? We May Have Other Plans!
Some of the Toronto and Ottawa papers have had stories about a proposed safe injection site. I was part of a focus group for that study. I was “representing” neighborhood citizens from the Dalhousie catchment area. Most people who watch the news or read about current affairs will be familair with the distressful situation in Vancouver’s downtown east side (DTE). There, hundreds if not thousands of drug addicts congreate and shoot up in public, buying the drugs openly. It is a miserable scenario. As part of government actions concerning this (I say concerning, because helping and other words are value … Continue reading Safe Injection Site (revised*)
new wall, 18″ highexisting wall, 6-8′ ft, depending on location and which side of the wall wall removed, south side of park, along St Frances St.St Francois school in back right There is a large green park behind St Frances church, the Hintonburg community centre, and St Francois school. Formerly religious grounds, the property is enclosed on the east and south by stone walls. About 25 years ago, when the City acquired the lands, window slots were cut into the walls and a few sections lowered to permit oversight into the park from Fairmont and St Frances avenues. A year … Continue reading St Francis Park
Every festival has impacts external to the site it operates on. These get managed in different ways. Winterlude and the Tulip Festival have numerous events along the canal, abutting neighborhoods like the Golden Triangle and The Glebe. For both these festivals, shuttle buses run along the canal to get crowds to and from the event sites. This distributes parking impacts over a larger area. It also means the City Hall garage and Lansdowne Park parking lots get used. For Bluesfest, there are no shuttle services, leaving adjacent neighborhoods to suffer from a huge influx of parkers. This is most noticeable … Continue reading Festival Externalities
