Onramp houses on O'Connor

Christopher Ryan had a timely post on Ottawa Start about Connor Court, describing one of the low-rise apartment buildings built in the first half of the 20th Century. As he mentions, O'Connor Street is little more than an onramp to the 417 freeway all the way from the office buildings at the north end through the apartment/commercial district through Centretown.

South of a certain point, O'Connor is mostly mid-rise residential or low-rise commercial, there are a couple of exceptions. I noticed this house for the first time just earlier this month. It's 231 O'Connor, between Cooper and Somerset on the east side:

231 O'Connor is on the 1958 aerials on GeoOttawa, but it isn't on the 1902 (1912 revision) fire insurance maps (unsurprisingly, given the architecture). (Er, on closer look, it appears to also be commercial)

The same day I noticed the house above for the first time, I also took an appreciation for these two houses at numbers 312 and 314, on the west side of O'Connor just north of Frank Street:

Peds on Weds: Part 4: A history of sidewalk design in Ottawa

Today for the fourth and final entry of the sidewalk-design series, I'm going to give a history of sidewalk design, starting at the establishment of the original City of Ottawa, in 1855 (and earlier!). In part 2 of this series, I already gave a "little history" of the Toronto-style sidewalk design, relating specifically to how they became standard back to the establishment of the current amalgamated City of Ottawa in 2001. This followed part 1, in which I described "Toronto-style" sidewalks and the problems they're meant to address, and part 3, in which I discussed some of the issues the Toronto-style sidewalk itself has faced.

Today's entry starts with the West Ward Market, built in 1848 by Nicholas Sparks. This was used as Ottawa's first City Hall, roughly where the NAC is today.

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The first municipally-built sidewalks in Ottawa actually predate the City of Ottawa's 1855 incorporation: by-law number 37 of the Town of Bytown, approved the 23rd of September, 1850, was "To authorize the expenditure of £75 in making a Plank Sidewalk, S. side York Street":

Peds on Weds: Sidewalk parking fit for Queen?

Finding room for all road users in the constrained area of an existing road allowance is tough. Especially on streets in the downtown core, north of Laurier. When Light Rail is built, the station entrances will dump thousands of passengers onto Queen Street's sidewalks, where presently these cohorts are distributed among Albert and Slater. So how do you fit all those people onto Queen Street's "meets the minimum width for City standards so they're fine" sidewalks?

One of the things that struck me as a bit odd in the City's Downtown Moves planning exercise was the prospect of reorganizing the downtown core streets (Queen Street in particular) such that the lanes which are used for parking outside of rush hour become sidewalk during rush hour. Imagine the parking lanes on the reconstructed portion of Somerset, except in the same brick as the sidewalk and with no curb, or at most a token separation of an inch or so.

Aside from skepticism that this will ever happen (no source of funding was identified for implementing DOMO's recommendations, meaning that post-LRT changes to the streetscape beyond road paint and signage are unlikely), I'm also skeptical to the practicality of this particular recommendation.

Exhibit A: O'Connor Street, east side, just south of Albert, next to the Sheraton:

I'd never noticed it before because I don't go that way often, and when I do there are usually cars parked over it. But in the space (which is signed as a "Hotel zone") you have a parking lane built in concrete like a sidewalk at the roadway surface level. Right where I was standing when I took the picture is a pinch point, and if you're walking southbound (toward the camera) there is a building that blocks your view of pedestrians coming in the other direction. I'd be interested to learn from people who walk this sidewalk regularly if this is indeed the case.

It's signed as a hotel zone, so parking is allowed there during rush hour too. This means that it isn't currently used as an 'overflow sidewalk', but the designs in DOMO for the part-time sidewalks looked pretty close to this. However, the curb made for a big difference: even though the space was empty, I instinctively hugged the sidewalk and avoided the step down the curb (though I might have been pushing my bike at the time...). I can imagine the psychological barriers to such a facility being practical, not to mention the fit the traffic engineers would have to put cars and pedestrians in the same place at different times!

If you eliminate the curb, would it be better? I'm not so sure. For walking on, perhaps, but have a look at Exhibit B: I was in Brockville to check out a park named for an ancestor of mine. Brockville's main street has a cobbled parking lane between the road and the sidewalk which swoops up to meet both of them at their respective grades:

This bears some similarity to 'naked streets', which is a philosophy I agree with in theory: you get cars, bikes, and peds all in the same space and everyone slows down and pays attention to what's going on. Eric happened to mention it in his latest.

In practice, however, I found this very unsettling—both as a motorist and as a pedestrian. I'm fine with parallel parking (though many aren't), but you're also doing it on an angle, which throws off some of your reference points, and there's no bump when you hit the curb to back you up if you went too far; you hit some piece of sidewalk furniture and potentially damage both it and your vehicle. (This is actually the point of naked streets, to some extent)

But as a pedestrian, I was surprised at how unsettling it felt to walk along a sidewalk with cars manoeuvering, essentially, in 'my' space. Because the sidewalk was flush with the slopey parking lane, it felt like people were parking their cars on the sidewalk. And it was equally discomforting to know that the motorist has no curb to bump into to let them know they went too far. Not only could the motorist hit a piece of sidewalk furniture (of which Brockville's main street sidewalks were voluminously supplied), but they could hit me!

Sometimes these things just take some getting used to, like how I've learned to relax when people walk in the Laurier segregated bicycle lane (making it a de facto overflow pedestrian lane when the sidewalk is crowded). But curbs are there to keep people from driving on the sidewalk, and if you take them out to let people walk in the 'car space', then it's hard to keep the cars from driving in the 'pedestrian space'.

[Tune in on Wednesdays at noon for a new pedestrian-themed blog post. View the Pedestrians label for previous Peds on Weds posts]

Movie fans visiting World Exchange Theatre tonight

The World Exchange Centre is a shopping centre/office/parking complex that covers the entire block surrounded by Albert, Metcalfe, Queen and O'Connor streets. The complex includes two office towers (TD tower, built in 1991, and 100 Queen, built in 2001), a rooftop clock, a shopping centre (The World Exchange Plaza, also built in 1991, in which is the NCC's infocentre kiosk), a five-storey underground parking garage and a public plaza on the Metcalfe end:

The Plaza also contains Ottawa's last first-run downtown movie theatre, now that the cinemas are closed at the Rideau Centre. With Empire getting out of the cinema business, a new operator is being sought, with uncertain prospects. (More on this further down)

Tonight, people who want to see the theatre stay open are being encouraged to join a Fill The Theatre event to see the 6:30pm screening of the film "The Family" starring Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones and Michelle Pfeiffer. They also have a Facebook group to promote the cause.


Anyhow, back to the building...

Special CCCA Board meeting on Tuesday

After last week's community meeting to discuss the Centretown CDP, the CCCA's Board of Directors will meet tomorrow evening, Tuesday, April 30, at 7pm at City Hall (Billings Room*) to discuss the community response, and as always these meetings are open to the public.

There will also be a public presentation from the City tomorrow (April 30) afternoon at 1:30 at City Hall, where they will reveal their reaciton to the requests made by developers and community association when the CDP was endorsed by the City's Planning Committee on March 26. (This staff presentation was initially to be to some key stakeholders, including the CCCA, but was opened up to the public as consolation for City staff not attending the CCCA's public meeting.)

As discussed last week, the community consultation was to discuss a deal between the CCCA's board and the development community to go to the City seeking changes to the latest draft of the Centretown CDP. The most controversial portion has to do with tall buildings in Mid-Centretown, the area roughly bounded by Cooper, Elgin, Kent and Argyle, whose zoning would increase the height limit to 9 storeys from the current 4 1/2 (Elgin would remain at around 5 storeys). The residents of this area dominated the audience at last week's public meeting.

The latest draft of the City's plan, responding to concerns from the development industry, introduced a provision for "Landmark Buildings". These could be much, much taller than 9 storeys (potentially 30 to 50 storeys), if they met a sizeable list of strict requirements. Such requirements incldue 40% of the area devoted to greenspace or a public amenity, and that each such property must border on three streets, one of which must be Kent, Metcalfe or O'Connor.

The CCCA-Developer agreement proposes an alternative called "Small Moments" which would essentially loosen the criteria for buildings that exceed 9 storeys, but would limit the amount to which they could grow. So there would no longer be a requirement for a site to front on more than one street, and such properties could also be on Bank Street or Elgin Street. In exchange, the development must include a "small moment" of a public amenity, such as a parkette.

There are other elements to the CCCA-Developer proposal, and many other aspects of the community design plan which have been part of the three years of consultation. It has generally been agreed that taller buildings (up to 27 storeys) should remain at the north (north of Cooper) and south (along Catherine) edges of Centretown. However, many people at the meeting were not familiar with the prior stages of consultation, and they expressed frustration that the discussion had such a narrow focus, not mentioning affordable housing, for example.

Nevertheless, the audience was asked for their opinion. The video below shows their response to the four options (the cards are color-coded by area of residence: pink for west of Kent, green for Kent to Elgin, and orange for east of Elgin, although some developers voted also). The options were:
(1) Support the CCCA-Developer agreement (i.e. Small Moments)
(2) Support the latest draft of the City plan (i.e. Landmark Buildings)
(3) Support neither of the above
(4) I don't know

The biggest response was the third option, support for neither. Smaller responses were received for the CCCA-Developer agreement (which included votes by the non-resident developers) and the latest draft of the City plans.

On Tuesday, the CCCA's Board will take the input from this meeting, as well as what it learns about the Staff recommendation earlier that afternoon, and decide whether or not to re-approve the deal with the developers.

Then, a week and a half later, on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, City Council will consider the CDP, and any recommendations from Staff (i.e. the recommendations which staff will present tomorrow afternoon). Council will likely approve the CDP, though it remains to be seen how it will be amended.

As I wrote in last week's blog entry, I do not like the agreement and I voted against it at the CCCA's Board meeting in March. I also do not like the Landmark Buildings provision, but I feel that the Small Moments just makes it worse, with meagre tokens that do little to provide useful amenities to Centretown. The CDP originated because the existing zoning limits were unclear, contradictory and confusing. Nine storeys in mid-Centretown would fix this; however Landmark Buildings and Small Moments would re-introduce the ambiguity that the CDP was supposed to fix. The Landmark Buildings, because they are much more restricted geographically, are the lesser of the two evils. (Disclosure: I work in the office of Councllor Diane Holmes, however this blog post and the opinions therein are my own)

The CCCA's agreement with the development community, as well as a bunch of other CDP-related resources, are available on the CCCA's website.

I hope you can make it to one or both of the meetings tomorrow, as this is such an important issue that will affect Centretown for decades to come.
(*The Billings room can barely handle the amount of people who come out to a regular board meeting, and I suspect a larger one will be needed to accommodate the potential turnout for this one.)

Around 150 Slater

I haven't written much about the Export Development Canada building at 150 Slater since the three-part series on the demolition and excavation. I doubt there's much interest in construction photos, but here are a few shots of the building itself.

Here is the building at nighttime, from Slater and O'Connor. Notice the spotlights on the underside of the podium canopy:

The finishes make for some interesting surfaces. You can see the exposed concrete pillar inside the building, next to the shell that surrounds the podium.

Within the podium enclosure is a two-storey marble projection above the ground floor. The counterpart is a set back ground floor with retail (the Slater Street frontage seen below is still vacant in 2013).

Along O'Connor, a Bridgehead and a Marcello's have opened up. Like the other small downtown locations, this Bridgehead closes at 6pm. If I recall correctly, the Albert and Bank location is the only one north of Somerset to open late, and even then it still closes earlier than the ones in residential areas.

In contrast to the Slater and O'Connor frontages, the Laurier Avenue frontage on the south side of the lot (separated from the corner by a smaller office building) is very unflattering and hostile to the streetfront. Not one, but two sets of garage doors and a bleak surrounding.

The massing of this side is similar to the Laurier Computer building that was torn down for 150 Slater (I assume this is merely a coincidence). Although that building used to be larger, as covered in a history of the Rideau Winter Club and other curling rinks in the city over at URBSite.

3D Thursday: OBE building, 330 Gilmour

For the second 3D Thursday post, I should return to Centretown.

The old Ottawa Board of Education building at 330 Gilmour is a nice building, but I haven't posted any of my own photos of it, since the URBSite post on the building and its two blue spruce trees is very extensive.

Now, however, I can add my 3D photo of the building. If you download the full-size image (right click and select "Save Target As...") and zoom in, you can even see the branches of the two main spruce trees popping out from each other.

As always with my 3D photos posts, I'm inlcluding the link to the source images from which I made the composite red-blue 3D image. If you think you can do a better job, have at it!

Left image

Right image

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images]

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Dominion-Chalmers in 3D

There's no Peds on Weds post today, as my list of pedestrian topics is full with complaints and problems, and I'd like to identify some more positive ones to balance it out.

Instead, I'd like to share another 3D image. I've refined my skills from the previous 3D image, showing a scene from the Bronson Avenue reconstruction, by taking better source photos and being more careful when processing them into something that looks good with red-blue glasses. This one's of the Dominion-Chalmers United Church on O'Connor Street between Cooper and Lisgar:

As with the previous 3D image I'm sharing the source images too. If you don't have 3D glasses you can theoretically "wiggle" quickly between these two images to approximate a 3D effect, though they would need some cropping before that would work well.

Unlike the previous one, I've made it full colour by retaining the green channel in this image (the two views were taken too far apart in the previous view, and when I tried to add the green channel it makes your eyes hurt to try to see the 3D). Since most of the 3D images I've seen growing up were red-and-blue line drawings, I didn't even know you could do this until I saw the instructions I followed. The way this still works, I suspect, is that one eye sees the blue and green channels, which are bold enough to tell your brain that this is what the object looks like, and the other eye sees the red channel, which the brain uses to add dimension to what it sees in the other eye. The three colours mix together as they would if they were all identical, creating the full colour. Photos with lots of bright primary colours don't do well with this because there isn't enough information for the two eyes to compare what they see.


Since I'm taking photos with a single camera, it's a bit harder for me to get the second shot to match the first (with two identical cameras you can simply take the photos from two different angles at the same time to capture live images). What I've found works reasonably well is to pay attention to the nearest object in the image (for the church photo, this would be the nearest corner of the garden curb) and where it is in the frame. Then pay attention to reference points on the four edges of the frame (For example making sure the door on the right isn't cut off and that the camera sees the far corner of the curb along the roadside at Cooper). There aren't many up/down cues to work with, which is evident from the discrepancy between the two shots, but it's not really a problem because I can just crop out the parts that don't overlap.

Another trick I learned is to look through the glasses the 'wrong' way when creating the 3D photo. My eyes don't see 3D images too well, so sometimes I'm unsure if I've successfully created the 3D image. If you accidentally filter out the colours in the reverse order, your brain can't simply compensate, but when you flip the glasses the image pops right out and the cursor floats above it. Unfortunately, in the GIMP, once you filter out the colour channels, you can't add them back in, so you have to start over if you make this mistake.

I've got other 3D photos in production for future blog posts, and I'm also looking into where you can get some cheap red-blue 3D glasses locally. I also have a second camera, which I might start carrying with me...

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Peds on Weds: Don't crack me up

I get very irate by people parking on the sidewalks (and I have many photos of such transgressions, which I tag with "vanscaping"). A majority of the time, they are blocking off the entire sidewalk (or enough that a stroller or wheelchair couldn't get through), when if they had parked entirely on the road there would have still been plenty of space for cars to get past. A case in point is this van on Gilmour at O'Connor.

But another reason is that sidewalks are only reinforced where there is a curb depression--i.e. where it is expected that cars will drive over them (with some exceptions like sidewalks over a bridge). Otherwise, for the post part, they are straight-up poured concrete.

Back in the winter, Eric posted at West Side Action about cracked sidewalks on Preston, likely from trucks having driven and/or parked on the sidewalk. In the photo above, a contractor's van is parked on the sidewalk, and the van's right tires correspond rather conveniently with the cracks down the middle of the sidewalk.

Individually, people who park on the sidewalk think that they are doing no harm. But collectively, as many people vehicles are parked on the sidewalk over time, the sidewalk breaks down and needs expensive and time-consuming repair. In the meantime, they are harder to keep clear of snow, and water that seeps into the cracks worsens the problem during the annual freeze-thaw cycles.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

The right and wrong way to fix potholes on Lewis

Last February, I was pretty frustrated by the string of potholes that runs right down the middle of Lewis Street, between O'Connor and Bank Streets. They looked a lot like these ones, which are just before Bank (read some history of the businesses at that intersection in this post). This photo was taken almost exactly a year ago:

It's clear that the top layer of asphalt along Lewis had been paved one half of the street at a time, and because the roadway drains toward the centre line (or at least doesn't sufficiently drain away from it) water seeps into the seam. When the water freezes, it separates the top layer, creating the potholes.

Buried natural gas pipeline

[I ran out of time to prepare a more topical post, either Museum of Nature Opening Day part 2 or CCCA updates for Tuesday's meeting (some are listed at www.centretowncitizens.ca), so here's one of my backup posts. Enjoy!]

I'm still going through my old unsorted photos, many of which are outside Centretown. These are harder to file because outside Centretown I generally restrict my photos to more obscure things, which are inherently harder to categorize.

Take, for example, this natural gas marker at Patterson Creek (O'Connor and Linden Terrace), where I've photographed before. The Ottawa Gas marker looks to be at least a couple decades old.

I took the photo last winter, but never got around to filing it. I feared that if I did, it would get forgotten and I'd never post it (so many of my photos suffer this fate!). So before I forget, here it is!

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Happy Holidays

I've got a lot of good series that I'll be working on over the holidays. Look for them to come out in the new year. In the meantime, I'll be enjoying a break from a hectic month of community association meetings.

Here's a photo of workers adding the crowning star to the Christmas tree at 150 Slater, which is nearing completion. See the live webcam for the site here

I previously posted a series on the demolition of the former buildings there and the excavation of the site. You can see those and other posts on the site at the 150 Slater label.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Movie theatre with a view

Looking up from the ground floor of the World Exchange Centre's atrium, looking through the skylight to the tower along O'Connor:

Don't get too dizzy!

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Lorne Building, past, present and future

Sitting quietly at 90 Elgin Street, between Albert and Slater, is the Lorne building. Built half a century ago to house the National Gallery of Canada on a "temporary" basis, the federal government wants to replace it with a new, larger building.

The building's history starts in 1880, when the Marquis of Lorne, Governor General John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, initiated the National Gallery of Canada movement (source). The Gallery opened to the public on 27 May 1882 (source). It was not on this site, but shared a building with the Supreme Court on Bank North of Wellington (that's the West Block tower in the background - see the same angle in Google Street View).

The evolution of bike cutouts

In the Previous Post, I documented the construction of the traffic island on MacLaren at O'Connor, which reinforces the "no going straight" sign while allowing cyclists to continue through. I also mentioned many design elements that the island incorporates. I'd like to explore the progression of previous generations of this type of facility in Ottawa.

One of the earliest versions of this type of traffic-shaping bulbout still around is on Lisgar at Kent, next to Hudson Park Phase I, shown here in August 2009. There are two "no through traffic; bicycles excepted" signs (one partially obscured by a "trucks turn right" sign), and there are two triangular concrete intrusions into the roadway on each side of the intersection, which together make it impossible to drive a car straight through the intersection without going over one of them. There's a bit of a dip on the left side of the near triangle, which appears to be an attempt to allow cyclists to go over it.

The next generation is a stand-alone island on the near side, on Cooper at O'Connor, next to Dominion-Chalmers United Church. People in the photo below are lining up for a Chamber Music Festival show in August 2008. The gap in the island allows cyclists to go through, while it's clear to motorists that they must turn right. Unfortunately, the "no parking" signs allow cars to block cyclists' access: in this case, the car had a disabled parking permit on the dashboard, allowing them to park in a "no parking" zone for up to three hours. The construction of this one was also pretty shoddy. It was originally just a perimeter of short concrete barriers filled in with asphalt, and the barriers would get knocked out of place, blocking the through channel. It looks like it's been repaired with a more permanent construction.

There is an even more sinister version of this on Kirkwood. As a traffic-calming experiment, they put in large bulbouts on alternating sides of the street, to slow motorists down with a zig-zag. (They tried a similar thing one year on Kent, but once the snow fell and you couldn't see the pavement markings, people just went straight, so they abandoned that idea and put bulbouts on only one side. This is why it's so hard to a safe distance up Kent when crossing westbound.)

So on Kirkwood, the roadway is designed for motorists to zig-zag and for cyclists to go straight along the edge of the road. There are a few big problems with this. As shown in the photo, cars can park in the way, blocking this route. Some park a lot closer, completely blocking the cutout. It also gets filled up very easily with gravel, leaves, sticks and other debris, which sweeper trucks obviously can't reach. Lastly, motorists on cross-streets don't expect to see anybody coming from that far away from the centre of the road. But once they built Kirkwood this way, they didn't have money to fix it, so it remains a treacherous facility for cyclists. Most cyclists I know stick to the left of the solid white line.

Another problem with the Cooper/O'Connor generation of traffic islands is that the gap for cyclists is too narrow. Too narrow to allow some wide cargo bikes, but more importantly, too narrow to allow snowplows to pass through. So instead the cycling facility becomes a snow dump, as shown here in January 2007:

The most recent island at MacLaren and O'Connor (the subject of the previous post) was built wide enough for sidewalk plows to pass through, as shown in this photo from Friday:

However, that doesn't mean they always do clear it, as shown in this shot from last November (just before the transit strike), which was prevoiusly posted in Centretown, Darkly, Under Snow:

Of course, the downside of having a wide-enough cutout is when an idiot taxi driver comes along thinking his car will fit. This driver's tires got stuffed and the tire sidewalls rubbed against the curbs as he struggled to drive through.

There's one more in Centretown, on McLeod at Bank Street. While it's dug up now as part of the Bank street reconstruction, here's what it looked like last December. You can see it's a long triangle with no cutout for cyclists.

While the signage allows cyclists to go straight or left, doing so was always tricky, because there wasn't much clearance in the opening, and you had to jog around. Right-turning motorists behind you had to be patient while you waited for both directions of traffic on Bank to be clear, while they would only need the nearest lane to be clear for their forced right turn.

In preparation for Bank Street being closed for reconstruction this summer, they removed the triangle in April to allow for through traffic. For reference, the Metropolitan Bible Church is to the right of the shot out of frame, and the Tommy & Lefebvre site is across the street on the left.

Back in November, it looked like there weren't going to be any cutouts along Bank, so I fired off some e-mails pointing out that one would be ideal at this location. In April, I was sent the following drawing showing how a bike cutout will be installed at this location. It matches well with the angle at which McLeod crosses Bank.

In general, curb bulbouts reduce the distance between sidewalks, thus reducing pedestrians' exposure to motor traffic while crossing, and they also calm traffic by reducing the lane width at intersections. These ones shown in this post have the added function of discouraging unwanted behaviour, in this case, going straight through an intersection. But there can be side effects, some of which aren't apparent until they're installed and in use. Bulbouts must leave enough room for a shared motorist/cyclist lane (minimum 4.25 metres), and if cyclists are allowed through them, there must be a track that is clear of debris and easily navigable. With each iteration, new things are tried and past failures are worked out of the design, but these are painful lessons, as the failed designs can stick around for years until the entire road is rebuilt.

Other examples of road design evolution through experimentation include concrete crosswalks and roughened crosswalks, both of which help to delineate pedestrian zones. The first kind does it visually, and the second kind audibly (car tires going quickly over it make a buzzing noise). The Mid Mod has already shown the latest iteration of the zebra crossing in front of City Hall; I might do a post sometime down the line on crosswalks at intersections.

MacLaren & O'Connor traffic-calming bulbouts

The orphan plot in the island at MacLaren and O'Connor will be the subject of a Guerrilla Gardening event this Saturday, 10am to noon. Here's the invitation from Councillor Holmes(emphasis in original; links added):

Guerilla Gardening Project

WHERE: Mclaren and O'Connor, NE Corner

WHEN: Saturday September 19TH (10am-12pm)

Dear friends,

As summer draws to a close I thought it would be a good time for us to get together for a small guerilla gardening project.

As some of you may have noticed the island plot at Maclaren and O'Connor is being cared for by a friendly, green thumbed, neighbour. Recently much of this person's hard work was cut down by overzealous staff who had confused these new plantings with weeds. Sadly many of the plants were lost before staff could be advised of their error. However, thanks to this persistent neighbour, plant life has again returned to this little plot. Although it has been populated with poppies, day lilies, golden rod and a host of other species there is still room for more.

Can you please bring one or two hardy perennials from your home gardens for this project. If we have too many we will simply find a nearby location to transform. And do you have any other areas that are in need of a little greening so that we can plan our next project.

I hope that the DCA and the CCCA, along with all Centretown gardeners, can work together with my office over the winter months to find new locations for guerrilla gardening, and to develop an action plan to transform Somerset Ward's numerous bulb-outs, boulevards and hard surfaces into vibrant, soft green spaces.

Sincerely,
Diane

I mentioned about this island in June, in the post Urban Tree Conservation. Its purpose as a traffic-calming measure is to reinforce the signs that prohibit motor traffic from going straight through the intersection, while still allowing cyclists to do so. This discourages commuters from cutting through neighbourhood streets. I posted the following photo with what would be one of many City-provided trees planted in that island that have been subsequently removed by a different City crew:

Here's what used to be there, looking East. You can see there used to be a bit of a bulbout with a stop sign planted in it. The construction pylons outline the location of the new island to be built:

Across the street (actually a few days earlier than the above photo), you can see the initial outlines and pavement cuts for the bulbout on the West side of the intersection:

Looking down O'Connor from Somerset in late October 2007, workers are pouring the cement for the West side bulbout:

And here it is the same night, freshly poured (looking East). Only the West side has been done so far.

Four days later, the freshly-poured island on the East side is installed (looking West). You can see the space on the right for the cyclist through access.

Looking down the left-turn lane, you can see how the two bulbouts make it clear that you're expected to turn left: to continue along MacLaren, you'd have to turn into the one-way traffic on O'Connor! There are many signs to reinforce this. However, the outermost part of the bulbout is nearly flush with the asphalt as an acknowledgement that many people will still attempt this manoeuvre. Interestingly, the exception for bicycles is duct-taped out on the sign on the left, probably a temporary measure until the cyclist access was paved and finished.

Just a couple days later, the asphalt around the island was laid. You can see that the part of the concrete island that is in the crosswalk is flush with the crosswalk. The parking meter nearest the island has been put out of service, and was later removed.

Here's the new intersection in action: a pickup truck is turning right from O'Connor to MacLaren, and a car coming from MacLaren is preparing to turn left onto O'Connor. A couple of pedestrians are standing on the bulbout and taking advantage of the shorter distance to cross it as a result.

Here's a shot from late July 2009, taken with a tripod. You can see the signage has been cleared up, the parking spaces have been removed, and the moon shines in the sky behind. I really like that funky tree on the right. There are also some plants in the island--I believe these are the ones referenced in Councillor Holmes' letter, which some City workers thought were weeds.

There are a lot of details to incorporate into the design of this type of intersection modification. I've mentioned many of them in the example above. But there have been many attempts where--to put it politely--we learned some of the lessons applied at MacLaren/O'Connor. I'll illustrate these in an upcoming post-the evolution of bike cutouts.

150 Slater progress: Piles of fun III

In the previous post on 150 Slater's progress, I documented the construction of retaining walls around the former Rideau Winter Club building.

I also briefly mentioned a negative space becoming a positive one. Such a transition is even more pronounced on another part of the 150 Slater site, which will be the topic of today's post.

The Premier building, whose history and final days I documented in Down, Down, Down, Update 1, was separated from the building at 235 Laurier by a small alley. Looking at the building, you barely noticed it. Being a negative space, it was defined by the absence of anything between two very definable structures.

Let's get our bearings for a moment. In the image below, we see O'Connor Street in the foreground, with 235 Laurier squarely framed. You can see how some of the original siding was not replaced when the blue and glass cladding was added earlier this decade. In the foreground are some patches in the asphalt where holes had been dug to cut off services to the now-demolished buildings on the 150 Slater site.

Here's a closeup of the former siding. It's made from that ugly reinforced institutional glass with a grid of metal wires inside. The glass is filthy with years of dirt and grime. If this part of the wall is too far out of sight to re-clad, evidently it isn't worth cleaning, either. But having them here gives insight on how the new cladding relates to the old exterior: The new cladding essentially enshrouds these concrete fins, as it comes out further and has a lip below them. though I'm sure there was much work behind the glass as well.

At the back of the building, right below the old wall, are a pair of emergency exits, a gas connection and some ventilation panels. Since the building is still in use, the emergency exits must remain usable during the construction at 150 Slater. So a little structure was built to protect the accessway during the demolition of the Premier.

When the Premier's remains were extracted in mid-May and its site became an empty hole, the former alley became an enclosed passageway. In effect, negative and positive switched places.

By mid-June, the Premier's foundation walls had been demolished and the hole was filled in. Evidently, the demolition was very thorough, as a makeshift wooden walkway needed to be built to preserve access from the fire exit.

Under the boardwalk is revealed a gaping hole leftover from the foundation wall's demolition.

And in early July, piles had been driven and a retaining wall was built (as documented in the previous two posts on 150 Slater).

The gap under the walkway is still there, but the walkway is better supported now on the piles. You can also see a yellow hose--the gas line that comes from under the street to the back of the building. A worker is measuring the distance for the final segment of four-by-eights.

The machine used to install the tiebacks set me on a bent to learn more about construction of retaining walls. It's a very curious looking machine, which looks to me like the Predator alien from various films I haven't seen. It's rather photogenic, too, since its 'head' is suspended in the air at an angle.

Zooming in on the photo, I see the brand name Interoc, which suggests it may be an Interoc AN 140 Multi-purpose hydraulic drill rig. I believe this is the manufacturer's writeup. It's used to intall tiebacks, which is one fo the three primary ways of supporting retaining walls in construction sites, as illustrated in this diagram.

This particular rig, which is identified as unit number 05-28 in large black lettering on the back, is now being used at the construction site for 120 University, just over the Rideau Canal. A photo I have of the rig there has www.mse.ca clearly written in the back, identifying the owner as Forages M.S.E. Drilling, Inc. of Ste-Martine, Quebec.

The previously-linked California PDF manual on foundations (28MB) has a good writeup on tiebacks beginning on page 11-1 (page 193 of the PDF), and a useful cross-section diagram on the following page.

In short, a cavity is drilled at the end of an angled hole behind the wall, and a steel wire is anchored into the cavity with concrete (the weight and firmness of the soil keeps it in place). A stretch of wire between the anchor and the wall, surrounded loosely by a shroud, can be tensioned to put pressure on the wall, holding it in place. Once tightened, a cap is placed on the wire to hold its position, and your wall is retained.

And that's it for the progress updates on 150 Slater. Let me show you the exit:

For all photos of 150 Slater's development, see previous posts marked with the "150 Slater" label.