City looks for input on design of Kitchener

Downtown designs need your input

Kitchener sets up website to hear from locals

TERRY PENDER / the Record
KITCHENER (May 8, 2006)

Starting tomorrow, you can tell City of Kitchener planners what kind of downtown you want to see and enjoy.

The city wants to know what you think about building heights, the width of sidewalks, the location of trees and flower gardens and whether vehicles should have priority over pedestrians.

Should new buildings have a historic, contemporary or eclectic look? Should the city take a hands-off approach?

Visit www.downtownkitchener.ca\urbandesign, and you can fill out either a short survey, which will take three minutes, or a longer survey, which will take about 15 minutes.

The website will be up tomorrow.

You can also post comments about photographs of streets displayed on the site, as well as about the core's built environment.

"It's mostly photographs," said Cory Bluhm, a city planner working on the project, said. "We give them a series of pictures and they pick the one that appeals to them most."

On that same website, you can also post your own photographs of downtown streets and buildings that you like, or don't like, Bluhm said.

"It's a little more innovative. It allows people to express their comments in a different way."

To help stimulate discussion on the subject, the city is printing 2,000 brochures dealing with urban design guidelines. These will be mailed out at random and distributed in the core.

In the 1980s, the city adopted a hands-off approach to new core construction in an effort to attract developers with a promise of less red tape. If a building met the requirements of the Ontario Building Code, it was fine with city hall.

But that approach never produced the desired results.

The city is consulting the public now because it wants urban-design guidelines in place before developers start building in the core.

In recent years, the city has invested in a new farmers' market, the Wilfrid Laurier University graduate school of social work at the old St. Jerome's building on Duke Street, and the University of Waterloo school of pharmacy at King and Victoria streets.

"We also know that once the universities start, there is going to be fairly extensive redevelopment interest," Bluhm said. "And we want to be ready for when new buildings come on from the private sector."

As part of Kitchener's multi-million effort to remake its downtown, the city earmarked $3.3 million to improve street-level esthetics.

Before the city starts spending that money, it wants to know residents' preferences and priorities about the downtown streetscape.

If you don't think guidelines for urban design can make a difference, think again.

Parts of Fairway Road in Kitchener and Hespeler Road in Cambridge are characterized by big-box stores and strip malls surrounded by seas of asphalt for parking and busy four-lane roads with no sidewalks.

Contrast that with what's happening in downtown Waterloo right now. First Gulf tore down half of Waterloo Town Square and is constructing buildings that front on King Street with parking lots tucked behind the stores. This human-scale development is built for pedestrians, not cars.

Bluhm listed several examples of well-designed downtowns in southern Ontario, including Oakville, London, Guelph and Niagara-on-the-Lake.

With high-end shops and pricey restaurants, Oakville caters to empty-nesters and affluent professionals.

"What makes their downtown work is their merchants have done a very good job of having the right kind of a storefront, the right kind of quality and product that appeals to their audience," Bluhm said.

London's Richmond Row is bustling with people at cafés, bars and restaurants.

"Predominantly, they are appealing to the university crowd with a lot of restaurants, cafés, nightclubs and some retailing -- very lively and exciting," Bluhm said.

"Again, it's predominantly the private sector that has done a great job of providing very high-quality storefronts, restaurant spaces or outdoor patios."

Guelph spent lots of money on lighting in the core.

"Guelph has invested, not in esthetics, but in safety," Bluhm said. "They invested in lighting, improving their lighting so it feels safer."

Niagara-on-the-Lake is one of the best examples of a downtown where the public and private sectors came together to create an interesting and vibrant streetscape.

"You have tonnes of flowers, tonnes of planting beds," Bluhm said. "And the store owners have followed through and delivered a high-quality product. Every store seems to be very well designed, and fits with the store beside it."

tpender@therecord.com