PLANNING
Glebe Report November 12, 2021
Civic hospital releases plans to change a park to parking By Sue Stefko Any last hopes for an underground parking garage, as initially promised for the new Civic Hospital, were dashed on October 13 when City Council approved the new campus master site plan. The hospital is now moving forward on site-plan approval for a four-storey parking garage in Queen Juliana Park. Construction is expected to start early next year and be completed in 2024. The first part of the hospital project will include widening the Trillium LRT trench to create a future second track. The Trillium Pathway will be realigned along Carling Avenue, Preston Street and Prince of Wales Drive. It will include a separated bike path and a pedestrian walkway. The parking garage is expected to have space for 2,500 vehicles and 390 bicycles, including 200 spots for public parking for nearby businesses, NCC activities and seasonal festivals. The four-storey structure will be mostly above ground, with one storey of below-ground parking at the southwestern end. The hospital intends to put up retaining walls and plant trees and other vegetation around the perimeter and it will also step back the top of the garage to minimize its visual impact. While it has yet to be determined which trees will survive construction, the hospital promises to save as many as it can. Unfortunately, many trees that survive this project will ultimately be removed when the multi-use Carling Village Towers are built in future phases of the development. Some aspects of the garage have changed from the original plan – most notably, the location of the ramp. While it was to start at the north of the property near Carling and Preston, city staff recommended that it start instead near the Preston and Prince of Wales, so that it is co-located with the staircase. This gives pedestrians different
options to reach the planned rooftop green the site plan in concert with our neighbouring space. There may also be an elevator at this locacommunity associations. Overall, we remain distion, though that is still to be confirmed. appointed that an underground parking garage As the parking garage will be built over Queen is not going to happen as the hospital earlier Juliana Park, it seems fitting or perhaps ironic that the hospital plans to create a fourand-a-half-acre green roof called Queen Juliana Park. It will include tennis courts for the DARA Tennis Club, which will be ousted from its current location in the Experimental Farm during future stages of construction. There will be a number of zones in the park – a naturalized area with trees, a walking loop, lawns and open spaces for outdoor sports, an amphitheatre and a plaza that can host various activities. The site plan indicates that there is still some Bird’s eye view of the proposed Civic hospital parking garage at the corner of Preston and Prince of Wales SOURCE: TOH flexibility, in that the rooftop could possibly include pickleball courts, a children’s playground or a splash promised. We are also concerned about the more pad. The plan references future consultations than 600 surface parking spots elsewhere on with hospital stakeholders and community partthe hospital site. ners to help determine the specifics. More positively, there have been attempts The rooftop will also include a weather-proto minimize the visual impact of the parking tected pathway to connect the hospital to a garage, the hospital promises to save as many future LRT station. Although the site plan refers mature trees as it can and to plant new ones, to a “potential new Dow’s Lake LRT station on and it is committing to wildlife-friendly practhe south side of Carling Avenue,” it appears the tices such as bird-friendly design. While not a station will not actually be moved to the south replacement for Queen Juliana Park for walkside of Carling as many have called for. Instead, ers, joggers and festivals, there are attempts to it seems more likely that the entrance on the welcome and include the public and different south side will connect to or be an extension of types of programming on the rooftop of the new the Carling Station platform. These plans have parking garage. not yet been finalized. At the time of this writing, the Glebe Annex Sue Stefko is president of the Glebe Annex Community Association was still analyzing Community Association.
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