Dundonald Park on Somerset Street West is one of the most underused parks in Ottawa.
A year-long revitalization effort aimed at making Centretown’s Dundonald Park a safer, more vibrant hub for the community is nearing completion.
A report produced by Toronto-based 8-80 Cities, which will examine why Dundonald Park is falling below community expectations and how it can be improved, will be released by the end of February. The report is part of 8-80’s Make a Place for People project, which has been assessing eight Ontario parks identified as falling short of their potential.
"Parks should be overflowing with activity; they should be the best, most vibrant places in our communities," says Emily Munroe, the non-profit’s director of partnerships and programs. Dundonald Park, she says, is underperforming even though it’s one of Centretown’s few green public spaces.
Centretown only has 4.6 square metres of park for every resident, 29.7 sq. m below the city’s average, according to The University of Ottawa’s Neighbourhood Study. Even for a downtown area, this is a low number.
Many residents, however, believe that despite the shortage, Dundonald Park is being underutilized. Munroe says that it’s because of safety.
Last year, police reported that Dundonald Park was one of Ottawa’s least safe public spaces, largely due to groups of men and women who gathered in the summer, many attracted by the Beer Store located across Somerset Street in the park’s northern side.
While there haven’t been any instances of violence, the perceived danger has been enough to scare away many Centretown residents.
Christina Marchant, the Centretown Community Health Centre’s director of community health promotion and early years, says that simply removing people from the park isn’t the answer. "For some people who are homeless, that’s their living room. We have no interest in saying get out of your living room."
Marchant says if more people are in the park, everyone will feel safer. That’s why, more than a year ago, her organization applied to be part of the Make a Place for People project.
In assessing Dundonald Park, 8-80 Cities organized surveys, community meeting and workshops to find out how the park was being used and who was using it. It determined that in the past year women only made up 38 per cent of the 2,000 recorded uses. This, says Munroe, is a problem.
"If you consistently see more men than women in a space, often that points to the fact that the space is considered unsafe,"
Also underrepresented in the park were older adults, although Munroe says that it’s hard to tell if this is a result of safety concerns or a lack of friendly infrastructure. She says public washrooms would make the park more accessible to older residents.
Aside from the washrooms, she suggested additions such as portable chairs, extra bicycle parking, and even a water fountain.
But Marchant says the CCHC will not be recommending any physical changes to the park.
Munroe says that 8-80 Cities does not pay for the changes it recommends. In order to fund infrastructural changes, the CCHC would have to find investors or apply for grants.
This doesn’t mean the CCHC won’t follow any of the report's other recommendations, such as finding more volunteers and using more social media advertising, but the decisions will have to wait until the end of February.