By Corcoran Conn-Grant
Some Centretown community members are fighting the city’s proposed redevelopment of Jack Purcell and St. Luke’s Parks with a petition despite general support at two public meetings for the redevelopment plans.
“It’s not that we are completely opposed to redevelopment,” says Philip Hughes, who helped to organize and circulate the petition.
“The idea is really to save this greenspace. The petition doesn’t take anything away from anybody; it’s not trying to get rid of anything that’s in the park; it’s about keeping what’s in the park.”
The organizers of the petition say that their major concern is the protection of scarce downtown greenspace.
The city’s proposed plan for St. Luke’s Park calls for the replacement of a small grassy area with a concrete basketball court.
The petition asks the city to “save the greenspace” by saying no to paving the east side of St. Luke’s park. It collected more than 200 signatures and was submitted to Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes almost two weeks ago.
Hughes says neither of the city’s proposed redevelopment plans retain the greenspace and describes the collection of hundreds of community members’ signatures over Thanksgiving weekend as “a cakewalk.”
Other locals who attended the meetings say they are bewildered by the petition.
“I’m not too sure what the point of the petition was,” says Albert Galpin, chair of the Ottawa Centretown Citizens’ Community Association.
“We had two meetings, hosted by the city, about the redevelopment, and there was ample opportunity at both meetings for people to raise their concerns.”
Galpin says he feels a park re-design is necessary in order to fix rising contention over the two parks, where dog owners, basketball players, and children have frequently conflicted.
“Either of the plans is better than what we’ve got now, where kids are in danger of being run over by [basketball] players.”
However, Hughes says one reason for the low level of dissent at the public meetings was poor advertising.
“The signs which were up [to notify the community of the meetings] were not exactly large,” says Hughes. “They were just little sheets of paper, and if you didn’t bring your glasses that day, you would never know.”
Based on residents’ conflicting opinions, it is clear that the community is not satisfied with the options presented to them so far.
“I’m optimistic that we can find a solution,” says Holmes. “We will keep having meetings until we reach a consensus in the community that everyone can live with.”
Paul Landry, the senior project manager overseeing redevelopment of the parks, says at least three public meetings were planned from the beginning, with the third to be held next month, and that “we will be back in November with new ideas.”
Holmes says she acknowledges that a consensus at a public meeting of fewer than 100 people does not necessarily indicate a consensus among the community.
Hughes says residents taking care of their kids kept many at home.
“It’s tough for parents to make it to meetings, so we didn’t show up en masse,” he says.
However, most of the community seems happy their park is getting attention from the city.
“It’s really exciting that they came to us and said they were going to look at redeveloping the park after it’s been untouched for 20 years,” says local resident Chris Savage.
“I think a lot of people could live with [the park] the way it is, but that’s not an option, and there are lots of things to improve: we can improve the washrooms, upgrade the facilities, improve the swing set, resurface the court if it starts to degrade, we can make the fieldhouse accessible.”