Waterloo Square Withers

Some photos of Waterloo Square yesterday... that's BEFORE the surrounding streets are shut down for extended periods to build the LRT. Where's the uptown success story now? What's going on? At a guess:

*There is no longer enough convenient parking.
*Dozens of big box stores with loads of convenient parking have recently gone up nearby.
*Rents are too high (I have heard this from store owners).

Waterloo Square has a good and popular grocery store, a great flower shop and a drug store, but it needs another anchor: an LCBO, beer store, department store, Starbucks, City Cafe Bakery... something like that. It needs more convenient parking (currently, the Station Lot at Regina and Erb is considered parking for Waterloo Square in parking studies).

We need activities in the Square that really draw people - people who shop at the stores in the square. During the Winterloo Festival I walked into some stores asking how the festival affected business, and some retailers told me that it decreased sales. Sadly, some of those stores are now shuttered.

Uptown Waterloo became successful through a lot of hard work. Are we becoming complacent and letting it slip away?

More for Uptown, Part 3: Accessibility

I first understood accessibility issues in uptown Waterloo when my mother started using a walker. My mother lives in easy walking distance of the uptown. Her health and emotional well-being were enhanced by a daily walk to uptown, but accessibility problems often prevented her.

When my mother started using a walker, many of her favorite establishments were closed to her: Whole Lotta Gelatto, Wordsworth Books (in its original location), Uptown 21, and many others. The main culprit was a large step up from the sidewalk. An additional problem was buildings with two entry doors and a tiny vestibule - you just can't hold on to a walker and pull open a heavy door in a cramped space. The accessibility of toilets (the thing most people focus on) was the least of her worries.

Getting into stores was not her only problem. Navigating the two blocks from her apartment at Erb and Willow was increasingly difficult. All of her routes presented challenges:
- The sidewalk on Erb St between William and King is broken and bumpy. She managed it for a while, but it made her arms ache and she eventually had to give it up.
- The path that runs along the railway tracks from Willow to King would have been ideal, but it is ungraded, unpaved, and unfinished. She tried it but couldn't manage certain parts, like crossing the tracks.
- The sidewalk on William between Willow and King is a longer route but the sidewalk is smoother. However, the pavement was frequently obstructed with dirt or branches.

Here's a stretch of bumpy sidewalk on Erb near Peppler:

In the winter my mother often became a shut-in because of uncleared snow. The south side of Erb between Peppler and Regina was particularly bad, but she couldn't cross at the Peppler crosswalk because the bump left by the snow plough was never cleared. People have to climb over the snow pile to get from the sidewalk onto the crosswalk. Even when sidewalks were shoveled, they frequently were so poorly cleared that she had to navigate over packed snow and ice.

Her problems didn't stop when she got to the uptown. Many of the pavements on King Street are broken and bumpy. In winter portions tend to not be salted, and can be treacherous with ice. Increasingly, where she was able to go depended on the state of the sidewalks on King.

My mother is not an isolated case. The uptown is heavily populated by seniors: the Adult Recreation Center (ARC) at King and Allen, Water Park condos (mostly senior), Terrace on the Square retirement home, and others. You frequently see seniors with walkers and scooters navigating through the uptown. I once saw an elderly woman with a walker take a bad fall on an icy sidewalk on Park near William; she landed on her back and had passing motorists not seen her, she would have been stuck there for some time.

Beyond seniors, there is a large and vocal community of wheelchair users in Waterloo. They appear at every public forum and make the case very persuasively that the uptown is not accessible. All the politicians and staff listen and agree with them and promise action. This has been going on for years and years and years, and yet the problems persist.

Accessibility is part of the Uptown Streetscape Improvement project, which has been languishing in the planning stage since 2004. A new round of public forums is currently in progress but frankly, I have given up on these public forums: I don't believe that anyone is actually really listening. Once council has agreed on a principle, like improving accessibility, why not make a commitment to make some improvement every year? (And rather than endlessly asking the public what they want but only attracting the same small group of activists every time, why not do proper market research?)

In Kitchener, Belmont Village was made accessible with very little fuss a couple of years ago. Every business with a step got a small ramp, as shown below. It's my understanding that the businesses chipped in to the cost.

Installing ramps in the uptown is made more difficult by planters that make the sidewalk very narrow in places:

When the Ali Baba closed on King near William, the owners of the building did a fantastic job renovating the building. It was a major renovation and it looks great, but why weren't they required to make the entrance accessible? We have a Complete Streets policy whereby whenever we make repairs to a street, we have to add bike lanes. Why can't we have a similar program for accessibility? It's outrageous that this brand new entrance in the heart of uptown has two steps and no ramp. It would have been so easy to make this restaurant accessible to everyone.

More info
Waterloo Region Accessibility Watch Facebook page
Wondeful Waterloo Accessibility page
Access Waterloo Region

More for Uptown, Part 2: Parks at King and William

At the corner of King and William there are two little parks of identical size and shape. This one, on the east side of King, is called Heritage Green. You can see Knox Presbyterian church in the background. Some years ago the park was partly covered in concrete in an attempt to create an impromptu performance space (a nice idea that unfortunately failed completely). Locals call this park "the bunker". The concrete is full of weeds. I have never seen anyone using this park.

The other park, on the west side of King, is called Brewmeister Green. You can see the Terrace on the Square retirement home in the background. The main features of the park are a Glockenspiel (in the gazebo; it has been broken for many years) and a fountain.

Brewmeister Green used to be called Kuntz Brewery Park. The current fountain (built in 1950, but lost in the greenery for many years) is small and plain. Historically it was a larger fountain and was a popular place to cool off. Here are some photos of Kuntz Brewery Park from 1900-1925:

I think Brewmeister Green is used a little bit more than Heritage Green, and I imagine it's a nice resource for the people in the retirement home, even if it's only to look out the window. Both parks have some mature trees and lovely flower plantings.

A few years ago, a local group raised funds to erect a giant obelisk in Heritage Green. The obelisk was going to portray our history in carvings from the bottom to the top. I saw details of the plans and I (along with many others) thought the finished piece would be a terrible mistake. (Luckily City Council killed the idea.) The concrete in Heritage Green and the Glockenspiel/gazebo in Brewmeister Green seem like similar well-intentioned but dubious ideas.

These two identically sized parks, positioned at a major intersection in the uptown, provide a fantastic opportunity both aesthetically and to provide greenspace for uptown residents, workers and visitors. They also provide an opportunity to regain our heritage.

My suggestion for the parks is to decide on goals, which I propose as:

• Make the parks address the wants and needs of local residents and workers.
  
• Preserve existing trees.
  
• Regain heritage features and uses.
  
• Create an attractive harmonized look for the two parks.

I would proceed as follows:

• Watch the parks at various times of day to see how they're being used now (if they are).
  
• Survey local residents and workers to find out how they'd use the park. Would workers eat lunch there? Would residents use it? And so on.
  
• Do research to find more about the history of the parks.
  
• Ask all residents of Waterloo for opinions and designs.
  
• Hire a professional park architect to design the spaces.

Just for fun, here's a fragment of a 1908 map of uptown Waterloo, showing the two parks (called "Public Squares" here). King Street is unmarked in the middle.

Demand more for uptown

Development in Waterloo is booming. Four large high-rises are going up: 144 Park, 155 Caroline, a condo building in the Barrelyards (Erb and Father David Bauer Drive), and a rental building in the Barrelyards. Many projects are recent or almost finished, like 186/8 King South (The Red). Other large high-rises are in the planning stages, like 31 Alexandra Ave.

I have a nagging worry that the pace of development is so fast that there will be negative repercussions, but I am by nature a worrywart and I can't provide any foundation for those concerns.

My major concern is that the city is not being proactive enough to provide amenities to balance all these new residents.

All of the development to date is based on the cachet of the uptown. The small, pricey condos are aimed at well-off people without kids. Many of them are retirees who want to be able to walk to a coffee shop or a restaurant. Many of them are tech workers (like myself) who are seeking a vibrant urban environment.

The sad truth is that the uptown could be a lot more vibrant and a lot more interesting to live in. We have the Public Square, which is great, but let's face it, it's a small expanse of white concrete with a smattering of under-attended programming. Downtown Kitchener, for all its many problems, has always been more vibrant and interesting than uptown Waterloo, and has always had more interesting events.

Waterloo simply needs to up its game. There are so many things we could do:

• Revitalize King north of Erb with a new streetscape and better parking.
  
• Do something spectacular with the Post Office land at King and Bridgeport.
  
• Finish the two little parks on the east and west of King, on the south side of William.
  
• Revitalize the park east of City Hall (it had flower plantings until a few years ago, and now is just an abandoned area with a cenotaph).
  
• Finish the path that follows the railway tracks across Waterloo Square - and in general, connect the trails through the uptown.
  
• Beautify the exposed parts of Laurel Creek behind City Hall.
  
• Do something spectacular with the Pumping Station on William Street across from Regina.
  
• Fix and use the fountain in front of the Parkade at King and Willis Way
  
• Make better use of the east-side train station.
  
• Add amenities to the Public Square.
  
• Engage the public in programming the Public Square. For example, start a citizen's advisory committee to handle part of the programming.
  
• Get serious about making the uptown accessible to people with wheelchairs, walkers, and baby push-carts.
  
• Get serious - in a pragmatic, not ideological way - about traffic in the uptown.
  
• Develop an arts strategy that cuts loose the money-pit that is the Clay and Glass Gallery, and creates some serious artistic attractions in the uptown

To get these things done, City Council has to force developers to pitch in more. The developers don't need any incentive to build in the uptown, and they're getting rich by building here. The recent controversy over moving the Iron Horse Trail left a bad taste in everyone's mouth because it seemed that the developer pulled a fast one on Council, and because Council caved without demanding more in return. What many people don't know is that Council is giving in to developers on lots of other issues: increasing density, reducing surface parking, changing agreed-on setbacks, and so on, which is going to have a profound effect on the livability of the uptown, particularly as density increases.

Despite all the new development Waterloo is strapped, largely because of RIM Park debt and the unplanned costs of the LRT, so we need to be creative in funding. But we can't stop moving forward. The current attractiveness of the uptown is based on vision that was formulated in the 90s. The uptown badly needs visionary leadership that is rooted in the needs and wants of: uptown residents, uptown businesses and workers, and the residents of Waterloo for whom the uptown should be a central resource.

Over the next few posts I'll explore some of these ideas in more detail.