59 Carden St.

Wealth of information

Posted by Magda
I just spent a bunch of hours sifting through layer after layer of Guelph history, looking for details on the story of the Trafalgar building on Woolwich Street. I started online looking at photo archives, got help from civic museum staff to go through their photos and old phone books, and scanned through assorted history books and a mega-index of historical resources at the library. I gave up, and about an hour later got a call from a librarian who had kept looking after I left, and found the information I was looking for.

How nice to have all these resources to rely on.

(The building, in case you're wondering, was built around 1910 as Commercial Motor Bodies. Read more Saturday.)

Commercial hub or dud?

Posted by Laura

I drove out today to Watson Parkway North and Starwood Drive, one of four commercial hubs in town. Of course, there's no commercial development there at all, save a convenience store in a nearby strip mall. Loblaws, which bought the property directly south of the Starwood and Watson intersection several years ago, has yet to move forward with 170,000 sq. ft. grocery store.

Scott Hannah, the city's manager of development and parks planning, said he doesn't have any indication that the project is going to move forward anytime soon. He said with the company restructuring at Loblaws, there are a lot of sites in the same situation as the two earmarked for Guelph.

Read more about east end development in tomorrow's Mercury.

 

No longer a selection committee

Posted by Magda
Council changed the name of the Organics Steering Committee to Organics Committee Monday.

That reflects legal advice that implies the process the city was following is faulty.

Denis Chamberland, acting as outside counsel for the city, wrote a letter to city staff saying the process of choosing a technology needs to change. It needs to be confidential, and the public can't influence the opinions of the team evaluating future wet-plant technologies.

So, the public committee -- which was made up of a councillor, a rep from U of G, a Puslinch councillor, a Guelph councillor and others -- will play a "quality assurance" role. The committee will provide feedback to and ask questions of the evaluation team to make sure they've considered the criteria in the request for proposals for technology.

The report also says construction should start late this year or early next.

How much will it cost?

Posted by Magda
There are just two pages about the cost of highways in the five-pound provincial briefing package on the  Hanlon.

The document describes generic costs for highways, taken from recent ministry contracts, and says more detailed cost analysis is being done.

It doesn't actually seem to relate to the Hanlon, since it doesn't provide costs of interchanges, which is what is proposed.

But the numbers are interesting.

• A new four-lane highway costs $2.2 million per kilometre.
• A two-lane ramp costs $960,000 per kilometre.
• Traffic lights cost $150,000 each.

Traffic flow

Posted by Magda
27,000: average vehicles a day on the Hanlon near Maltby, today
49,500: average vehicles a day near College, today

Traffic predictions for Clair to Kortright:
35,600 vehicles a day in 2012
43,000 in 2017
62,700 in 2027

Predictions for Kortright to College
42,300 in 2012
50,700 in 2017
72,800 in 2027

Predictions for College to Wellington
54,300 in 2012
62,300 in 2017
82,000 in 2027

(These numbers come from the province's Community Workshop Briefing Package on the Hanlon.)

Good call

Posted by Magda
In 1990, the city wrote a letter to the province about the potential of closing the Kortright/Hanlon intersection.

"In that the at grade intersection conditino will remain in place at the Hanlon Expressway and Kortright Road for a number of years, it seems likely that development may have to be allowed to proceed without addressing the future access to the area. The problem will not become acute until the ministry proceeds to construct the flyover at the Hanlon/Kortright intersection," writes city engineer R.D. Funnell.

Those words sound prophetic now, with residents upset about impacts on John Gamble Park and the YMCA frustrated about the loss of access seemingly facing it.

How it all came about

Posted by Magda
From that not-so-brief briefing package...
1969: a provincial study identifies the corridor from Clair Road to Woodlawn as a major north-south link connecting the 401 to Highway 7.

1972: the Hanlon is built.

1994: a provincial report looks into building interchanges on the Hanlon from south of the Speed River to Woodlawn.

2000: the interchange at Wellington is built.

2004: the province identifies need to remove at-grade intersections and put in flyovers and interchanges.

2007: province initiates an environmental assessment to look at removing all traffic lights on the Hanlon.

(The Hanlon at Laird photo is taken by Dave Carter.)

It's not exactly brief...

Posted by Magda
I'm just starting to dig into a Ministry of Transportation "community workshop briefing package" on the proposed improvements to the Hanlon. It clocks in at five pounds. I guess they meant the name to be ironic.

A downtown gem

Posted by Magda
I just spent a bunch of the afternoon at the Trafalgar Building, a real gem of a building, packed with studios, office space and quirky corners for a story for Saturday. If you have any tales of adventure at the building or know of its history, please send it my way.

It's how easy?

Posted by Magda
Some councillors suggested yesterday that instead of allowing overnight parking on city streets, the public be educated about the number to call when you want to park overnight on your street.

The number 837-PARK was bantied about. Derek McCaughan, director of operations, eventually corrected councillors -- it's actually 836-PARK.

Seems it's not that easy after all.

(They did, by the way, decide to allow overnight parking this summer as a pilot project. Read all about it tomorrow.)