Lansdowne Live should be put in a medically induced coma
I just sent this letter to Ottawa city council, Larry O’Brien et al at Let’s get it right. You should send one too.
Dear Mayor O’Brien, Members of Council and anyone else who’s got any decision making ability on what to do with Lansdowne Park.
There are probably a billion different ways to breathe new life into Lansdowne Park. It scares me a lot that this council seems so fixated on pushing one plan from a group of developers who just happen to be hot for one set of plans.
Personally, I’d probably benefit from the hideous agglomeration of big-box mall and condos that is being proposed. A grocery store closer to my house would make my life easier.
But I worry about all the people in the area whose lives and livelihoods would be made much worse – if not destroyed – by the glut of retail space contemplated.
I also think it’s daft that this project is predicated on the existence of a CFL franchise. The people who sink their business fortunes into a CFL franchise in Ottawa are well within their rights to do so but I am also within my right to nominate them for the Darwin awards.
And the city would be well within its rights to keep its money for things that actually create jobs, add value to living in the city.
Keeping city child care spaces open strikes me as one such use. No doubt there are others.
Let’s set aside this Lansdowne Live proposal, open up a real consultation and development process, and, if we want, bring it back to consider along with proposals whose goals are consistent with community building, and a human-scale city, not merely those of a group of men looking to make a killing.
