“Schedule and route changes to Ottawa’s transit system won the approval of city council’s transit committee on Wednesday, despite reservations from some councillors.”
Westboro resident Ian Thomson said people in his neighbourhood were “shocked and angered” by what they viewed as radical changes to the system after the disastrous winter strike.
Read the full story at the Ottawa Citizen website.
We’d love to hear what you think. Will the proposed changes help or hinder transit in Westboro?
According to this article, the “biggest upward shift in value will be to homes in the downtown Somerset and Kitchissippi wards.”
There was an article in the October 27 Ottawa Citizen about residents of Old Ottawa South winning some concessions from a developer in the form of cosmetic changes to the design of two massive townhouses set to replace a 1,200-square-foot home.
Read the article online here.
This part should be of interest to Westboro residents:
Community design plans “will become an important tool for controlling esthetics, size and height,” Mr. Doucet says. “They are a detailed response to the Official Plan’s requirements for intensification.”
About a dozen community design plans have been completed so far, and Mr. Doucet estimates there could eventually be at least 100. Old Ottawa South begins working on its plan next year.
“The community is going to be exercising much more control over the landscape. We’re hoping it will become the vehicle that will bring quality control to intensification.”
But, says Mr. Doucet, the vision of communities is not always aligned with that of city hall.
“The city doesn’t want this to happen,” he says, noting that city officials have not yet approved Westboro’s community design plan because it “puts teeth in the height limits.”
Would it kill Ottawa developers to build something in Westboro that had a little colour? Kelly Egan asks.
Thank you to everyone who made it out to our village meeting about Westboro Station Phase 2. By all accounts it was a great success.
In case you missed it, there was a good writeup in the Citizen about it.
There are a few great quotes in there:
“When you have eight storeys, no matter how you step it back, that centre plaza in the middle is going to get sun for two or three hours a day,” said Glenn Kachkowski, an architectural lighting designer and area resident.
“The life of the street is going to be lost if it becomes Westboro canyon. This sets a precedent. The next developer comes along and says why can’t I do that? Development yes, overdevelopment, no. We have to think at this point what is the right amount?”
Were you at the meeting? We’d love to hear your impressions.
“Ottawa’s old west end is one of the incubators of the new urban movement. It has become a desirable neighbourhood but that very popularity could result in the area’s demise…”
Read the rest of this editorial at the Ottawa Citizen website.
“This year, Kitchissippi Ward residents have been to the Ontario Municipal Board five times to challenge projects they think are too big…”
“… Phase 1 of the Bourk project is under construction. In 2006, the committee of adjustment approved an increase in the maximum building height on the western part of the Bourk site from six to nine storeys based on a concept that reduced the middle section to two storeys and would retain the six-storey limit in Phase 2…”
(Read the rest of the article on the Ottawa Citizen website.)
“They’re at it again, nibbling at one of the few remaining pieces of inner city green space that has survived decades of municipal greed.
The latest, which has been tasted before, is a field off the Richmond Road in Westboro next to what used to be called the Rochester House, a handsome edifice now being used by a steakhouse chain, opposite the northern entrance to Broadview Avenue.
Rochester Field is one of the few remaining small open spaces, unimpeded by the paraphernalia of swing sets, seesaws and sandboxes which decorate most urban parks, that are left in the city’s west end….”
[read the rest of the article at the Ottawa Citizen website.]
Are you familiar with Rochester Field? Do you use it? Is saving green space in Westboro important to you, or not?
“The city and National Capital Commission have hit a stalemate over the future of a green field in Westboro.
The commission has long opposed the city’s designation of Rochester Field between Richmond Road and the Ottawa River Parkway at Broadview Avenue as open green space…” [Read the rest of the story here.]
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