In March 2007, the Downtown Board of Management was heartened to see hundreds of Guelph citizens attend an open house hosted by the city. At that time, the public was urged to comment on the proposed design of the public space in front of the new Civic Administration Centre on Carden Street. As municipalities implement Places to Grow in the coming years, public spaces will play an increasingly important role in intensified downtowns. Currently, over 4000 people work in downtown Guelph and it is expected that over the next two decades thousands more will be working and living in our city’s core. Civic spaces will provide respite in an increasingly urban environment.A well planned civic space that leverages the current and future needs of our city will be a catalyst for generating economic wealth. In the short term, a well planned civic space will serve as a casual meeting place for employees, a play space for children and an attraction for tourists. This increased vitality in downtown Guelph will provide a boost to local businesses and ultimately have a positive impact on assessments. In the long term, well planned public spaces will serve as a catalyst for private investment.
This civic space should not be viewed in isolation. With capital investments planned for 2008, including the transit transfer station on Carden Street and an overhaul of lower Wyndham, this project is an excellent opportunity to improve the downtown public realm.
The Downtown Board of Management strongly oppose staff’s recommendation to move forward with the current design with enhancements. We believe that the civic space, as proposed, fails to meet daily needs of downtown residents, employees and visitors. The proposed enhancements add no value to the space.
The open house survey results as they are presented are misleading. A re-working of survey results shows that 74% of respondents favour a space that could be used daily, while only 26% of respondents indicated a need for a large gathering place for concerts and civic ceremonies. The latter could easily accommodated by closing Carden Street and using the hard street surface as a natural stage. As the current design places a priority on large scale events, we would have a scenario where the space would be well utilized approximately 5 times per year, leaving the space ill planned and empty for the remaining 360 days.
While the civic space has been created for large scale events, little consideration has been given to programming and the daily management of the space. And as indicated in the staff report it is “stark and cold”. We cannot miss this opportunity to create a warm and inviting place in our downtown neighbourhood.
As such, we respectfully recommend that council give consideration to halting the existing contract, pursuing contract credits and re-tendering the landscape design of the outdoor space. With the re-tendering of the contract we recommend the following: the new process is pursued in a timely fashion; a cross-disciplinary project management team, housed in the department of Community Design and Development, is established; and that the Downtown Board of Management, as the representative of the end-user of the downtown, is central to this process. We believe that this can be achieved in a timely fashion and on a reasonable budget.
We welcome the opportunity to discuss this in greater detail.
Sincerely,
Mark Rodford, Chair
Downtown Board of Management