Proposed layout of commercial area of Lansdowne Park, provided by OSEG

The proposal for the commercial areas includes of blocks of multi-story glass residential buildings perched on seven blocks of retail, a cinema, and an office tower. The Aberdeen Pavilion and Horticulture building are furthest from Bank Street, tucked behind the rest of the development.

It’s bland. It looks like an uninspired corner of Carleton University: cement, glass, featureless facades, and lots of right angles. The two dominant thoroughfares are designed for cars, with pedestrians relegated to sidewalks partially-obstructed by cement planters. The plazas are cement blocks. If there’s any theme it would be “cement”. Meanwhile, the new buildings are three to seven stories in height, obstructing views of the Aberdeen Pavilion.

The view of Aberdeen Pavilion from Holmwood Avenue

OSEG's proposal features wide roads with sidewalks partially blocked by planters

I’d like to say that it isn’t all bad – that there are some highlights that redeem the plan. But there aren’t. The two features that caught my eye were the medians on Bank Street, and the “Lord Grey’s” building. The medians proved to be lipstick on a pig: the Bank Street entrance still looks like the asphalt afterthought it is today. Similarly, even though the dramatic overhang of Lord Grey’s looks interesting in the rendering, the detailed image makes it look more like a walled off gas bar.

Does it have to be so boring?

Another vision for Lansdowne?

Another alternative would be to go to the extreme: build an iconic structure that would dominate the commercial portion of the site and would contain all of the retail. Ottawa’s new convention centre is a striking example. Yes, it’s ugly, but it’s like a chihuahua – it’s so ugly that it goes beyond simple everyday ugliness to a weird kind of beauty.

Ugly and attractive at the same time

Props to the new team for using the old Sens colours:

Conservative types are holding this up as an affront to free speech. Last night’s “John Counsel” show on CFRA had the usual suspects: various flavours of little-”c” conservatives complaining that the Man is holding them down.[1] And, on the small scale, they’re right.

But I’m not so sure about the bigger picture. Anyone who wants to find out about Ann Coulter’s ideas can do so. You can find her on TV. You can find her in the library. You can find her on Youtube and on the Fox website. One could say that there’s a Coulter surplus in the mediasphere. Assuming she’s towing the Republican/Conservative party line, there are plenty of blogs and websites pushing the same ideas.

Now I’m going to embark on some speculation. I assume that the pitchfork wielding mob protesters that shut down the talk last night were the people that Ms. Coulter allegedly bashes: Muslims, the educated, homosexuals, people who read, Jews, and political moderates. If I wanted to hear the counterpoint to Ms. Coulter’s tirades, I would have to do a lot more work, as there’s no single socially progressive media outlet on the scale of Fox news, and no think-tank with Fox’s reach.[2]

That doesn’t justify shutting down a talk. That doesn’t justify barring hundreds of people from hearing Ms. Coulter speak. But it’s worth remembering.

Image by Gage Skidmore.
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1. I stopped listening to the show when John Counsel started shouting down a caller that said “I agree, but what Ann Coulter says isn’t true.” Apparently freedom of speech is only important when it echoes your opinion.

2. You could argue that the BBC or CBC would approach the scale of Fox’s reach, but neither conglomerate pushes a single viewpoint in quite the way that Fox News does.

David Chernushenko. The best MP Ottawa-Centre never had.

I’m glad to see that David is getting back into politics. Longtime PiePalace readers will remember that I volunteered with his various election campaigns when he was running for the Green Party in Ottawa-Centre. He reeks of credibility and honesty. He’s one of the few people I’ve met who should be in politics.

Having said that, I don’t want to see parties pushing into City Hall. Party politics acts to homogenize elected representatives. Party members must vote according to the party line, and private members’ bills rarely pass. At best, politicians must work within their parties to push ideas forward. At worst, parties are petty fiefdoms that only represent the views and priorities of a small elite.

I wish David the best of luck. He would be a welcome addition to City Council.

The crunky old catalog has been replaced with a shiny new BiblioCommons website. With a bit of searching, I managed to track down some info on BiblioCommons:

1. They have a terrible website.
2. Their founder, Beth Jefferson, appears to be a mix of volunteer-ist and entrepreneur (imagine that!).
3. Beth talks about BiblioCommons in a podcast I haven’t listened to yet.
4. They seem to snarf information from Amazon. (Their images come directly from Amazon)
5. I am addicted to annotating books.

As far as I can tell, they don’t have an official API. I managed to find a Drupal module that professes to do BiblioCommons stuff, but I don’t know enough about Drupal to tell what it’s up to.

And their login pages confuse cURL. Boo!

Venue and catering: The Carleton Golf and Yacht Club hosted our wedding. We were looking for an all-in-one venue that would handle the ceremony, the reception, and the catering. The CGYC clocked in at about $60-$70 per guest. The cost was less than other locations we looked at (notably Strathmere), and the hall was nicer than either the Monterey Inn or Bearbrook Farms. Laurie O’Brien, the clubhouse manager, did a fantastic job at ensuring the reception hall was properly decorated and that everything went smoothly. She (and her staff) were fantastic. Highly recommended.

Transportation: Because our venue was out in the middle of nowhere, we chartered a school bus from Rideau Bus Lines. Their driver knew how to pacify a bunch of drunk wedding goers (turn out the light, natch), was friendly, and knew where he was going. Recommended.

Photographer: We went with Julie Young Photography. She (and her lovely assistant) did a great job at herding the wedding party and composing us into something that I hope is photogenic. We haven’t gotten the final pictures yet, so I’ll hold out on my assessment.

DJ: First Choice Entertainment (613-830-7009) satisfied our music and MC needs. The owner, Greg Fedor, was easily the most energetic vendor we hired. His posse had a good selection of music (even if they didn’t know a good track to foxtrot to), and good equipment. They provided music for the ceremony as well as the reception and dancing. Recommended.

Officiant: Lynne Langille of Exceptional Wedding Ceremonies in Ottawa presided over the ceremony. She did a good job, given the various hiccups we threw at her (collapsing chairs, wrong rings, and a giggling bride and groom). Recommended.

Limousine: We hired Elite Limousine to ferry us from our photo venue to reception/ceremony venue. The driver got lost en route, making us 20 minutes late for our own wedding. Disappointing.

Cake: We ordered cupcakes from the Buttercream Bakery. The cupcakes weren’t bad, but they didn’t have the richness I had hoped for. I can take part of the blame for that – I should have bailed when we did our tasting. Similarly, a cake we ordered for the cutting proved to be pretty bland. What’s worse, a day before the reception, we called them to make sure they had the right address for delivery. They didn’t. Recommended with reservations. If you go with these folks, call at the last minute to make sure they have the right address.

Rings: I tried various jewelery stores, but I didn’t see anything I liked until I went to Magpie. They had a wider selection in styles and materials than we found elsewhere. Their stuff has a bit of a hippy look, but some of us like that kind of thing. Recommended.

Earlier this week, Public Transit in Ottawa ran a post about the proposed downtown tunnel in Ottawa’s new rail-based transit network, which implied that a downtown tunnel is both necessary and that there are no other options.¹

We have many, many options for transit: we could put dedicated transit routes down Carling, under the Canal, or along Wellington, which would solve downtown congestion without having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building and maintaining a tunnel. Similarly, we aren’t tied to the (diesel) rail solution that the city is proposing: we could use buses or electric streetcars. If we wanted to solve downtown congestion without spending hundreds of millions of dollars, we could close downtown (north of Laurier, say) to private vehicles during rush hour and set the traffic lights to a permanent east/west green.²

Simply put: we have options. But that is not how the transit debate is being framed. On the left, we have city councilor Clive Doucet saying that world class cities need rail transit. On the right, we have a mayor saying that Ottawa needs a tunnel. Neither of those things are true. I think it would be awesome if we had a rail network, and I think a downtown tunnel would be nifty, but we don’t need either of those things. We could solve our transit woes more cheaply, and maybe even more efficiently with other options.

I would argue that our quasi-debate is obscuring the larger issue: Ottawa’s burbs are built for cars, and no amount of dedicated transit will be useful to suburbanites. Until we increase suburban density to a point where it’s economical to lay track (or dig tunnels) out to Nepean, Orleans, and Barhaven, public transit will continue to be an expensive and unattractive way to move most of Ottawa’s population.

The four possibilities proposed by city staff in March of 2008 were essentially the same, differing only in where the train would leave off and pick up with buses. Now we’re being told that we can’t do without a downtown tunnel, again, without anything approaching the level of deliberation and consideration necessary before dropping hundreds of millions of dollars.

Happily, the City of Ottawa is revisiting the Comprehensive Five Year Plan that decides how our city should grow during the next half decade (and will be having public consultations at Ben Franklin place later this month). It remains to be seen whether city councilors and staff will use this opportunity to address the root cause of our problems, or will continue addressing the symptoms.

1. Peter, of Public Transit in Ottawa, posted a comment apologizing for his editorializing. Props to Peter.
2. Please note that these solutions are just a few possibilities. They aren’t necessarily great, and I don’t endorse one over another. I’m just pointing out that there are other possibilities that haven’t been publicly floated.