Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Letter to Katherine Hobbs

February 1, 2011

Councillor Katherine Hobbs
Ward 15- Kitchissippi
City of Ottawa
110 Laurier Avenue West
Ottawa, Ontario
K1P 1J1

Dear Councillor Hobbs:

I would like to thank you and Geoffrey, on behalf of the Civic Hospital Neighbourhood Association (CHNA), for meeting with CHNA representatives on January 26th. We appreciated the opportunity to introduce ourselves and outline some of the concerns facing residents in our community. We also appreciated your willingness to meet with us in the evening plus your time and input.

I am also writing to reiterate our overall concerns and follow-up on number of specific issues and questions that were raised at our meeting.

Overall concerns

Civic Hospital Campus and Heart Institute: The Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital (CC-TOH) is a highly valued part of our community, as is the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI), which is located on the Civic campus. Of course, we are affected by the presence and evolution of the hospital and heart institute, such as plans for UOHI expansion and a new parking structure. We are also affected by the hundreds of thousands of inpatients, outpatients and visitors who travel to and from the hospital each year, most of them by car.

We hope to keep you up to date on issues relating to the CC-TOH and UOHI and work with you with a view to maintaining a healthy community, hospital and heart institute.

Traffic: Traffic has been a concern for many years, in part, because many of our streets are used as north-south arterials because Ottawa does not have one. In fact, there are few issues that concern residents in our area more than traffic. People regularly contact the CHNA about traffic issues and there are more than a dozen residents who have signed up to work with our association’s traffic committee.

As we indicated at our meeting, we have a number of traffic priorities and hope to work with you to manage traffic and maintain the livability of our streets.

New developments: While we have been open to development in our area, we do have concerns. We are concerned that development is occurring without proper planning (the Community Design Plan for the land near the Carling O-Train stop has not even started) without critical investments in infrastructure and without recognition of the impact that the various developments will have on our neighbourhood, especially with regard to traffic.

All told, the new developments underway near the Carling O-Train stop will add 1260 additional vehicles to our streets and about 1000 additional people.

As far as we know, no other area in the city is undergoing the kind of intensive development that our area is. We believe that it is critical that the City work with the CHNA to strike the right balance between sustaining our neighbourhood, supporting intensive development and dealing with the spike in traffic that goes with it. The additional traffic is an especially serious matter as many of our streets were built during the 1930s and 40s and were not exactly designed to accommodate the volume of traffic we see today.

Specific questions and concerns

As I indicated at the meeting, the CHNA has a number of specific questions and concerns.

855 Carling (Arnon): It is our understanding that Arnon can potentially request an increase in the height of its buildings at 855 Carling now that Mastercraft Starwood has been allowed to build a 16 and a 20 story building. The CHNA does not support a further increase and would like to know your position on this issue

Humane Society site: This site is right next to Ev Tremblay Park and at the edge of a low-rise residential area. Any development on this site should be fairly low-rise as the Humane society site is the transition point between what will be high-rise buildings and a very low-rise neighbourhood. This site is not appropriate for anything other than a two or three story building. Anything more will cast a shadow on the swimming pool which is just a few feet away. As our ward councillor, we would like to know what you think is appropriate and inappropriate on this site – well before we get a zoning proposal.

Hickory between Champagne and Loretta: We have reason to believe that developers may be interested in this strip of land. Our position on the Hickory Street land between Champagne and Loretta is similar to our position on the Humane Society site. Anything that is developed should be fairly low-rise as this area is the transition point between what will be high rise buildings and a very low-rise neighbourhood. This site is not appropriate for anything other than a two or three story building. We would like to know your position on this stretch of land as well.

125 Hickory (Mastercraft Starwood): The former ward Councillor for Kitchissippi removed site plan approval authority from staff because of the number of concerns expressed by residents and CHNA. We would like to know if this is still the case.

As you know, the CHNA is meeting with the planning department on possible improvements to local roadways as part of the 125 Hickory Street site plan process. We will take a close look at the various options once they are provided by the City and contact you if we have questions and concerns.

Parkdale: We have heard that Parkdale, which is a very narrow residential road, may have been converted from a major collector to an arterial. We would appreciate your help in determining if this is true.

Clarification

The document we provided at our meeting (called Civic Hospital Neighbourhood Association: Community Overview and Current Issues) indicated that “Using a focused prioritization exercise, our top objectives are: Traffic calming and diversion measures to divert cut through traffic off neighbourhood streets and to ease pressure on Parkdale ramp by better utilizing Carling Avenue.”

The document should have said “Using a focused prioritization exercise, our top objectives are: Traffic calming and diversion measures to encourage use of Carling Avenue and to lessen impact of through traffic on residential streets.”

In closing, we would like to reiterate our thanks for the meeting. We think it was a very good start to a dialogue aimed at dealing with traffic, development, infrastructure and other issues in the CHNA catchment area. We look forward to working with you on immediate steps such as a signed and enforced 40 kilometres/hour speed limit throughout the area, signage encouraging the use of the Westgate Queensway ramp and no entry during rush hour signs for the area near the Carling O-Train stop.

Yours truly,

Katherine Steinhoff

Vice President

Civic Hospital Neighbourhood Association

1 comment:

  1. Could you please post a list of the intersections that the CHNA is requesting to have no entry during rush hour signs posted at.

    Regarding the 40kph, is the current 50kph speed limit enforced? If not, why not start we a request to have the existing limit enforced rather than dropping the limit.

    Thank you

    ReplyDelete