The District of Muskoka has plans to replace water, sewer and storm sewer lines beneath a section of Main Street, but the Town of Huntsville intends to ask for a deferral on the project until 2019 to give it time to consider other improvements to the streetscape in the area.
“There may not be another opportunity to address the streetscape during our lifetimes,” Derrick Hammond, the Town’s Director of Development Services, told General Committee on January 24. He and Director of Operations and Protective Services, Steve Hernen, were before committee to outline options and gauge interest for implementing some or all of the improvements to Main Street that were outlined in the 2010 Community Improvement Plan (CIP).
Among the highlights of the CIP are a western gateway feature or public art at the intersection of Lorne and Main Streets, and a plaza at Kent Park that could include a water feature or outdoor café.
“The CIP looks at (Kent Park) as underused,” said Hammond. “It talks about the trees and landscaping visually concealing parts of the space and undermining safety. There is also an opportunity to reconsider parking and access in favour of having adjacent buildings orient themselves to the area and have more fulsome use of it.”
The CIP also recommends the use of moveable bollards or posts along Main Street that could expand sidewalk space during the summer months with a return to its usual configuration at other times.
“The idea is the bollards would be moveable to allow for flexibility in that space, so the widening of the sidewalks would enable more sidewalk cafés or a more pedestrian area and feel to your experience when you are in the downtown area,” said Hammond.
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- Current Main Street configuration (Source: 2010 Community Improvement Plan)
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- Main Street concept with moveable bollards (Source: 2010 Community Improvement Plan)
Hernen added that if committee decides to make changes to Main Street, “now is the time to relook at the intersection design to allow for turning lanes up on Centre and Main – the OPP have been pushing for that for quite some time.”
Councillors appeared to approve of taking advantage of the District’s work to launch other improvements, but there were many questions about what impact those improvements might have beyond the budget. In particular, adding bollards and turning lanes and redesigning Kent Park would remove already scarce parking options from downtown and that didn’t sit well with many councillors.
Councillor Jonathan Wiebe referenced 8th Avenue in downtown Calgary — which is primarily a pedestrian mall that allows for some traffic access at specific times — as an example of a similar working model but one that would take work to implement in Huntsville. “Yes, it’s a much bigger community but the reason it succeeds is that on either side they have one-ways that allow traffic to really flow and they have a lot of parking. Those are the two elements that we still haven’t quite captured and until we have an efficient way to effectively divert traffic around this location and have appropriate parking very nearby, it seems like putting the cart before the horse.”
Deputy Mayor Karin Terziano agreed. “How much bang for our buck are we getting if we do it this way? … There’s a lot of questions to be answered before I’d say let’s go with the CIP or not,” she said. “We need to address parking before we remove parking at the busiest time of the year.”
My hope is this project forces us to finally address the parking situation. These little half measures we do are a joke. As part of this process we need to look seriously at what we need to do to solve the parking problem — that may be a parking structure somewhere in behind the main row of buildings on Main Street… We definitely need to improve turning lanes at Centre Street and Main Street, people have been injured there, that’s a serious safety issue. But it takes away parking. Take away Kent Park and that takes away parking. We are only going to exacerbate the problem.
Mayor Scott Aitchison
In response to a question from Councillor Wiebe about public reaction to closing Main Street for events, Hernen noted that full street closures downtown causes problems for emergency services, “which is why we insist that Centre Street stays open… I recognize the value of it for the community, but even when you see the street closed it won’t go up to Lorne.”
The BIA’s Executive Director, Helena Renwick, added, “There are thousands of people who take part and they aren’t complaining. Ultimately we are a tourist town and this is what we do in the summertime.” She also stressed that the CIP improvements don’t recommend closing Main Street fully. “There are still two lanes of traffic from one end to the other so there is more pedestrian traffic but no parking…we are really just getting rid of the parking and we are talking 24-42 spots on Main Street.”
Councillor Bob Stone felt that discussions with the BIA would be one way to gather input and help with funding the project. “I think the existing CIP is 80 per cent there and I think the BIA has specific wants in changing the sidewalk and lighting, putting music on the street, and perhaps the bollards… How do we change the existing CIP another 20 per cent without blowing the budget? I think engaging with the BIA would be the one place we could do that.”
Councillor Dan Armour added that he’d like to see input from the merchants along Main Street “because ultimately it affects them and their business… Do we have a special meeting to review the whole CIP and invite the public in?”
Meanwhile, Councillors Det Schumacher and Nancy Alcock applauded the pedestrian-oriented vision of the CIP.
“(We) don’t want to start all over,” said Alcock. “Let’s continue on path of making downtown more pedestrian friendly… and review the proposed changes in the CIP and have a discussion maybe with the BIA and the Chamber and other organizations and council to say what can we do, what’s realistic as part of the ongoing work that the district is doing.”
If the Town decides not to proceed, the District will return the roadway and sidewalk to the condition they were in prior to starting construction, noted Hammond. Or the Town could retain a designer to create drawings for the vision contained in the CIP, or alternately it could use the CIP as a starting point and gather stakeholder and public input for an updated vision. The cost for improvements is estimated at $42,000 if the Town only replaces the sidewalk panels not disrupted by the District. To redraft a plan like the CIP would cost between $75,000 and $100,000, with construction costs dependent on what changes are approved, but that cost would drop if the CIP is used as the starting point.
Just days before the meeting, the Town received notification that it would receive $52,828 from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs’ Main Street Revitalization Initiative. “We don’t think there are any restrictions for that money,” said Town CAO Denise Corry, adding that the funds would be earmarked for any improvements that came out of committee’s discussion around the CIP. The Downtown Huntsville BIA will be asked to contribute to the design costs as well.
Committee agreed to request that the District of Muskoka delay construction to 2019 in order to give them time to determine a path forward, and that staff be directed to issue an RFP for engineering design services based on the CIP.
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Kent Park is under used because it is so small it is not useful for much. When the parking is taken out as it is, about all one can do is sit on a bench and watch the trucks and pedestrians duel it out at the stop light and then grind their way up the Brunel hill. Not really something I’d drive from Toronto to do with my time.
Parks are nice, but they need to be where they have a purpose, a use or something. I’ve watched Kent since it was first built and never seen it used for much of anything except when the Ice Cream company had a bit of booth there for a while.
You could remove all the parking from it I suppose and gain some park that way but this will just make a poor parking situation worse and harder for people to get to the area will it not?
Maybe this little park, the one on the other side of the bridge and the vast dessert wasteland down the hill toward Beer Lake could all be worked on together to some advantage.