Annual Centretown meeting on Wednesday

This Wednesday, November 21, 2012, the Centretown Citizens Community Association is holding its Annual General Meeting at McNabb Community Centre. In addition to the regular business of the association's members, such as electing directors to the Board, there will be presentations about issues affecting Centretown.

Back in May, the CCCA held a meeting, also at McNabb, to bring attention to the Centretown Community Design Plan. The meeting was very well attended by Centretown residents, many of whom hadn't heard of the CDP before the meeting.

The plan was already a year overdue in May and is still. After the City recently released a "final draft" of the plan a few years into the process, the development industry produced a lenghty document with line-by-line edits they want made to the plan. An update will be provided at the AGM on this recent development (pardon the pun) which will yet again postpone the plan going to Planning Committee for approval by City Council.

There will also be two presentations at Wednesday's meeting: "Achieving Results for Communities at City Hall," by Christopher Collmorgan, President of our neighbour association, Action Sandy Hill; and "Development — Yes! Lifeless Streetscapes — No!" by Paul Kariouk, Centretown resident and Associate Professor of Architecture at Carleton University.

The agenda and reports are available on the CCCA website (permalink), and the flyer contains bios of the two keynote presenters.

You can become a CCCA member (so long as you're from the area bounded by Bronson, the 417, the Ottawa River and the 417) at the meeting for only $5 per year, or if you can't make it you can also join and/or donate online. Your participation of time or money is what keeps the CCCA going as a voice for residents at City Hall on decisions affecting Centretown, and will also help us finance what promises to be an expensive OMB appeal of City Council's decision to rezone 96 Nepean Street for a 27 storey tower (I discussed that project and its context in this lengthy post.

At the meeting on Wednesday, you can also put your name forward for one of the eight positions (6 for two years, 2 for one year) on the Board of Directors for the election. As it happens, I am chairing the Nominations Committee, whose report is at the end of the longform agenda (a briefer one will be in hard copy at the meeting), so you can contact me (centretown dot ottawa at gmail dot com) if you would like to put your name forward or if you want more information. As you can read in the report, there is a shortage of candidates in the area west of Elgin and north of Somerset, and there are so far only 7 candidates. The Board members elected at the AGM will join those of us in the second year of our terms and from this group will be selected the Executive members: Vice-President, Corporate Secretary, Membership Secretary and Treasurer.

See you on Wednesday!

PS: Bronson Avenue should partially re-open to traffic tonight or tomorrow, one lane in each direction from Gladstone south. Ongoing work in the intersection at Somerset means a the section from Gladstone to Somerset won't reopen to through traffic for some months yet. Somerset to Laurier will fully close for construction some time next year.