By Jessica Hellen
After an uproar from the community over the possibility of Preston Street and Little Italy being split in half, consultants for the Ottawa Ward Boundary Review will not recommend any changes to Somerset Ward.
Beate Bowron, consultant for the review, says the boundary change was originally suggested because Highway 417 “seemed to be a physical barrier.”
The team had proposed the area between the Queensway and Carling Avenue be added to Capital ward.
“Little did we know that the whole Corso Italia would be split,” says Bowron.
She says after hearing from the community by e-mail and at the public consultations at city hall, “it was quite clear that that was not a good thing to do.”
Lori Mellor, executive director of the Preston Street Business Improvement Association, says she is thrilled that Little Italy will remain intact.
“We’re delighted with that,” she says.
“We really didn’t want the BIA split in two wards.”
Mellor says it’s extremely important to have contact with the councillor of the ward, and having to deal with two councillors would have been a hassle.
She says she was not “angry and upset” by the initial proposal, but understood it to be “an oversight” by the consultants.
Mellor says Little Italy is “a cultural community” and “a neighbourhood of significance in Ottawa.”
“With a lot of new development in the community it just doesn’t make sense to split us up,” she says.
Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes also says the split would be a bad idea because it would make transportation and residence planning more difficult.
Holmes says it would be a lot of work to make sure two different councillors both agree on issues.
“It’s easier for everyone and makes better planning sense to maintain the ward as it is now,” she says. “It’s easier to plan for the area when it’s all one piece of land.”
Holmes says she was prepared to send a letter to the consultants recommending they keep Somerset Ward as it is.
Maria Papalia, owner of La Roma Restaurant, says she is pleased with the decision, as the proposed split didn’t make any sense to her and would only have created confusion among local business owners.
“We’re trying to unify the street and make it Little Italy,” she says. “We don’t need a change. The neighbourhood is good as it is.”
Sheldon Mulligan, owner of Slan Printing, is also happy there will not be any changes to the area.
“Overall, the street is made up of small businesses and we don’t have a great deal of clout as it is. Splitting it in half, we’d have even less,” he says.
Mulligan says keeping Preston Street as it is “certainly tends to give us more of a voice… and it gives us that little extra clout.”
Both Papalia’s and Mulligan’s businesses are located south of Highway 417, and would have been moved into Capital Ward if the proposal had been accepted.
Bowron says the consultants had also considered making Booth Street a Somerset Ward boundary, but decided against it after studying the area.
“Booth splits a bunch of government buildings, so then we’d have to go to LeBreton Flats,” Bowron says. “In the end, that area had a different residential character than the area east of Bronson Avenue.”