Quote:
Originally Posted by kevinbottawa
I wonder how the building up of Lebreton Flats, the new central library and Zibi will affect Sparks Street as more people will be walking to the library, Lebreton Flats and Zibi from the CBD and Byward Market. I imagine it will be the preferred walking route to those destinations for a lot of people.
A while back was the NCC talking about a staircase from the open field at the end of Sparks Street down to Lebreton Flats?
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There are too many dead zones between Sparks Street (and I mean east of Bank), the proposed library, the proposed arena and Zibi.
Sure a few will walk it, but even a block of nothingness really starts discouraging large scale pedestrian traffic. How many tourists really do the walk from Parliament Hill and the War Museum? That is a long walk really.
It really hurt Sparks Street when they started kicking out the retail teeth one by one between the 1920s and the 1960s between Sussex and Elgin. Now it is a walk of nothingness at least for a shopper. What really hurt was getting rid of the street cars that directly connected the Rideau and Sparks (and even Bank) retail areas.
I can recall years ago walking from Rideau to Sparks to Bank while shopping. Who would do that today?