Lansdowne Park Revitalization | N/A | N/A | Proposed

[Deez]

http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/publi.../index_en.html

Let the ideas flow.

[clynnog]

Originally Posted by Deez

http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/publi.../index_en.html

Let the ideas flow.

Isn't the fact that the NCC is now a 'partner' the kiss of death on this project.

[Deez]

Fortunately, the partnership is "limited". The NCC has only agreed to consider integrating the land that it owns adjacent to the canal into the plan...not to have a decisive say in the plan's outcome.

[clynnog]

Originally Posted by Deez

Fortunately, the partnership is "limited". The NCC has only agreed to consider integrating the land that it owns adjacent to the canal into the plan...not to have a decisive say in the plan's outcome.

Oh, you are so naive if you think that is where the NCC's seat at the table will start and end.

[Deez]

Meh. Cynicism hasn't led me very far in the past. May as well start anew with naivety.

[Ottawade]

It's such a fantastic spot in the city with so much potential. I'm somewhat unaware of what types of ideas have been forwarded. I dislike the casino idea. I also am unsure of conference center idea. I think cleaning up city center would be better for that kind of project. More room for a high-rise hotel and other services plus good access to transit.

I guess I would really hope that this could be turned into a public space that people could use on a very frequent basis.

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

I guess I would really hope that this could be turned into a public space that people could use on a very frequent basis.

Read as "more grass and trees".

[Mille Sabords]

Originally Posted by Jamaican-Phoenix

Read as "more grass and trees".

I'm afraid Jamaican Phoenix is right. We have to cram the consultation website with comments from the public demanding more than grass - the canal-side has to be BUILT-UP - it has to be developed (yes, DEVELOPED) so as to bring people close to the water, and people doing more than just jogging. An extra inlet of water through the site wouldn't be all bad, though, if it's given a hard edge and lots of activity onto it.

[AuxTown]

I know I've said it already, but I really liked the proposal put forward late last year in that Ottawa Citizen article (the one Scary Larry was all over). It really made the most of the site with many different land uses and I'm sure it would also make the grass/trees/flowers/jogging/annoying people happy as well. The only thing that I would change is to have the parking garage on the East side of the stadium and putting the 2 condo towers in its place. It would be awful to have a parking structure adjacent to the canal. I think this plan illustrates another important point that this development has to integrate seamlessly into the Glebe neighbourhood to the North using medium-density residential. Thems are powerful NIMBYs in that neighbourhood and we best make them happy.

[adam-machiavelli]

That plan seems okay except that the high-rise residential area in the southeast part seems to be too disconnected to the rest of the project. People living in that area will find it an inconvenience to walk to Bank Street or a bus stop.

[Deez]

Over the past week or so I've been chipping away at a draft plan of what I would like the park to look like...and here it is:



Guiding Principles

• Seamless integration with surrounding area: I wanted the plan to make Lansdowne feel as if it was part of the Glebe, rather than some fenced off area that hosts football games. To accomplish this, I imagined street-friendly row housing with Vancouver-style rear laneways fronting Holmwood. To further achieve continuity, I extended Adelaide and O'Connor right into the park and angled the modified grid pattern of the roads to match patterns in the Glebe.
  
• More than just a once-a-week destination: More than anything else, Lansdowne's huge surface lot shows that the park is a place where a bunch of people come all at once for a short time and then leave immediately afterwards. I wanted to maximize the use of the land by introducing a variety of uses. Firstly, the supermarket (which I imagined as a Rideau St. Loblaws kind of facility) would help attract people from all over central Ottawa to show off what the park has to offer. As an added bonus, the parking required for this building could be used to accomodate cars for football and hockey games. Next, a mix of employment, residential and commercial buildings will help keep the streets vibrant at all times of day...rather than just after a game. Finally, the addition of the public soccer field adds some sorely needed amateur sport infrastructure to the City's core and pays homage to Lansdowne's sports past.
  
• Attractiveness to pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users: I think one of the strengths of my plan is the multi-use pathway crossing the canal (and the Rideau River). This crossing would not only help to establish the Park as a walkable/cycleable neighbourhood, but it would also link the pathways along the canal with the pathways along the Rideau River. Also, the Riverside Hospital transitway station is less than a kilometer away following Avenue Road. This makes getting to games by transit much more viable than relying on a clogged up Bank St. Speaking of which, the north side of the Civic Centre could be set up as a pick-up/drop-off point for local buses (with the roundabout making it that much easier for access/egress).
  
  I'd love to hear any and all comments.
  
  
  PS: The southwest corner was intentionally left untouched to allow for redesigned south-side stands. I'd be up for suggestions for that area too.
  

[Mille Sabords]

..dp

[ajldub]

Is there a stipulation that says Frank Clair stadium has to stay there in some shape or form? I say move it somewhere else. It's so massive that it will still dominate any new development that goes next to it, and nobody in the glebe likes CFL anyways. Send it to Orleans maybe, then we'd have a football team that could sell tickets. And as interesting as a plan to incorporate the canal into the new design sounds, I bet there is some UNESCO rule saying that current world heritage sites can't be expanded or redesigned without heavy consultation from the policy wonks in Geneva or wherever they are.

[Mille Sabords]

Originally Posted by ajldub

Is there a stipulation that says Frank Clair stadium has to stay there in some shape or form? I say move it somewhere else. It's so massive that it will still dominate any new development that goes next to it, and nobody in the glebe likes CFL anyways. Send it to Orleans maybe, then we'd have a football team that could sell tickets. And as interesting as a plan to incorporate the canal into the new design sounds, I bet there is some UNESCO rule saying that current world heritage sites can't be expanded or redesigned without heavy consultation from the policy wonks in Geneva or wherever they are.

That approach dooms us to having no stadium. It's one thing to repair an old stadium, it's quite another to tear it down and build a new one.

The stadium has to stay. It's in an urban location, which makes it a rare gem. I disagree about your statement about people in the Glebe - there were (and still are) LOTS of CFL fans in that area, they just weren't busy whining to the papers and their councillors about the noise and crowds.

If the stadium were to be removed, never again will we be able to have a downtown sports facility like Frank Clair. Finding space would be almost impossible and, supposing you did, NIMBY's would kill it. Better stick with what we have, which is a stadium that has been there for way longer than all the Glebe whiners, who therefore have no valid argument. They moved knowing the stadium was there. Don't like stadiums? Then, the Glebe ain't for you!

Besides, there's the Civic Centre underneath the stadium. It would be rather bizarre to remove the stadium and leave this half-building just sitting there by itself.

Orleans? Are you in the 1970's still? Since when is a suburban relocation the right answer? If anything we should be looking for ways to move the NHL to downtown Ottawa.

[ajldub]

Well there weren't enough ticket-buying Glebites to keep the renegades around. Or the roughies for that matter. Now the sens, that's another story. Unfortunately hockey is now a premium event and it costs $100 or more to go to a game; that's an entirely different market. The sens would do quite well in the glebe or closer to downtown. But then again they're doing just fine where they are, financially speaking. Too bad they didn't build the rink on Lebreton Flats back in the 90's; the whole place would have been built up by now.

Did anybody ever catch a sens game at the civic centre? Man those were the days, short-lived as they were...

[lrt's friend]

That approach dooms us to having no stadium. It's one thing to repair an old stadium, it's quite another to tear it down and build a new one.

The stadium has to stay. It's in an urban location, which makes it a rare gem. I disagree about your statement about people in the Glebe - there were (and still are) LOTS of CFL fans in that area, they just weren't busy whining to the papers and their councillors about the noise and crowds.

If the stadium were to be removed, never again will we be able to have a downtown sports facility like Frank Clair. Finding space would be almost impossible and, supposing you did, NIMBY's would kill it. Better stick with what we have, which is a stadium that has been there for way longer than all the Glebe whiners, who therefore have no valid argument. They moved knowing the stadium was there. Don't like stadiums? Then, the Glebe ain't for you!

Besides, there's the Civic Centre underneath the stadium. It would be rather bizarre to remove the stadium and leave this half-building just sitting there by itself.

Orleans? Are you in the 1970's still? Since when is a suburban relocation the right answer? If anything we should be looking for ways to move the NHL to downtown Ottawa.

Bravo! Well said. I was a season ticket holder for years. Lansdowne's central location with lots of choices of places to eat on the way there, and free parking in the surrounding community was a selling point. Scotiabank Place way out past Kanata was a big mistake. An island in nothingness. You might as well have built a moat around it. Anyway, Scotiabank Place is a pain in the rear to get there and back and we are eventually going to pay a fortune to get rapid transit there. We could have avoided all of this if we had built it at Bayview or Lebreton Flats.

[ajldub]

I appreciate the fact that a stadium should be central, but what about the fact that two CFL teams there have shown to be not economically viable?

[Mille Sabords]

Originally Posted by ajldub

I appreciate the fact that a stadium should be central, but what about the fact that two CFL teams there have shown to be not economically viable?

Whether or not the stadium hosts a CFL team should not dictate our decision to have a stadium in the first place. A centrally-located stadium, in addition, makes us a premium city. The aim should be to preserve the city's ability to host major-league sports or world-class sporting events in a central location.

Let me just speak of my own experience. I was a Riders fan, and a season-ticket holder for a couple of seasons when you could get $99 season tickets in the south stand upper deck, and I went to several Renegades games. This, despite 20-plus LOSING seasons. And throughout that time of team futility, they drew 20,000 a game (more early in the season, when hopes were still high, and less as time went on) - but on average we drew about the same as Montreal draws at their tiny Molson Stadium, and more than the Ti-Cats draw at Ivor Wynne most years (and some seasons, about the same as the Argos did in their cavernous stadium).

The fact that the two teams failed financially has nothing to do with the fans, who were out there supporting a LOSING and EMBARRASSING team for two-plus decades, with their money and their cheers. We the fans love football and will never cheer for any other city than ours at that sport.

The teams failed because of inept and indifferent ownership. Period. The CFL brass were idiots to let the Gliebermans back in as team owners, after having killed two teams. The fans here have been insulted and mistreated for so long, they are understandably jaded. The CFL, I've said it before, has to get on its knees and blow us an apology before they put a team back in this city, and they have to find an owner who is committed to winning. Otherwise, forget it. I love football, I like CFL ball, I'd love Ottawa to have a team back, but I'm sick of having doormat teams and having the name of our city associated with "losingness".

That's for the CFL. But, there are also events like the FIFA U-20 World Cup. I attended every game except one here at Lansdowne. It was an incredible tournament. I would not want my city to lose the ability to host events like this, which put Ottawa in front of 650 million TV viewers worldwide and kept us on the map as a major city, capable of hosting big sporting meets.

Personally, I would like Ottawa to get an MLS team (Major League Soccer) especially now that Toronto plays in that league. For that, again, we need a stadium.

And for all those things, the stadium needs to be central. I am NOT going to the sticks for a CFL game, I just won't, I'm sorry - it's Lansdowne or nothing. I'm fed up to the back teeth of the Senators parking jihad and I just won't put myself through that for summer sports, I want to be able to bike or walk to the game.

Plus - I played wintertime touch ball at the bubble there, I can tell you the place gets used every hour of every day and would be sorely missed as a community facility if it disappeared. Again, I am NOT going outside downtown to a facility like this, I want it close to me where it is and where it belongs.

So to recap: the stadium is for much more than the CFL and it's already there, so keep it there, renovate it, and keep the city in the running for sports events and teams. If someone gets a CFL team and makes it work, great. Otherwise, the place gets used already, it just needs refurbishment.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by Deez

Over the past week or so I've been chipping away at a draft plan of what I would like the park to look like...and here it is:



Guiding Principles

• Seamless integration with surrounding area: I wanted the plan to make Lansdowne feel as if it was part of the Glebe, rather than some fenced off area that hosts football games. To accomplish this, I imagined street-friendly row housing with Vancouver-style rear laneways fronting Holmwood. To further achieve continuity, I extended Adelaide and O'Connor right into the park and angled the modified grid pattern of the roads to match patterns in the Glebe.
  
• More than just a once-a-week destination: More than anything else, Lansdowne's huge surface lot shows that the park is a place where a bunch of people come all at once for a short time and then leave immediately afterwards. I wanted to maximize the use of the land by introducing a variety of uses. Firstly, the supermarket (which I imagined as a Rideau St. Loblaws kind of facility) would help attract people from all over central Ottawa to show off what the park has to offer. As an added bonus, the parking required for this building could be used to accomodate cars for football and hockey games. Next, a mix of employment, residential and commercial buildings will help keep the streets vibrant at all times of day...rather than just after a game. Finally, the addition of the public soccer field adds some sorely needed amateur sport infrastructure to the City's core and pays homage to Lansdowne's sports past.
  
• Attractiveness to pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users: I think one of the strengths of my plan is the multi-use pathway crossing the canal (and the Rideau River). This crossing would not only help to establish the Park as a walkable/cycleable neighbourhood, but it would also link the pathways along the canal with the pathways along the Rideau River. Also, the Riverside Hospital transitway station is less than a kilometer away following Avenue Road. This makes getting to games by transit much more viable than relying on a clogged up Bank St. Speaking of which, the north side of the Civic Centre could be set up as a pick-up/drop-off point for local buses (with the roundabout making it that much easier for access/egress).
  
  I'd love to hear any and all comments.
  
  
  PS: The southwest corner was intentionally left untouched to allow for redesigned south-side stands. I'd be up for suggestions for that area too.
  

I like it... the grocery store is a nice touch.

The only thing that I'm not a big fan of is having residential along the canal. The canal could really use a strip of retail and residential fronting right onto the canal and Lansdowne would be a perfect place for this.

What about re-aligning Queen Elizabeth further away from Lansdowne, and putting some mixed-use buildings with retail/restaurants on ground level that front onto both Queen Elizabeth an the canal? There could be a boardwalk on the canal side to carry the pathway. Have 3-4 stories of residential above.

I really think the canal should be the focus for any re-development.

[ajldub]

'Sens parking jihad' is one of the best expressions I've ever heard...