HCA Annual General Meeting 2006

Wednesday 27 September 2006
HCA Annual General Meeting
Hintonburg Community Centre, 1064 Wellington Street, Ottawa
6:30 pm -- doors and membership table open
7:00 pm -- AGM, reports from the Board of Directors, election of new Board, open forum

President's Message
Another busy year for the Hintonburg Community Association has passed. As you will see by the committee reports, it's been business as usual for the most part. Development applications have been for smaller scale projects than in past years. Diligent work by the Security Committee and our partners has resulted in improved safety in our neighbourhood. Our regular events were successful despite less than cooperative weather.

The Board has been keeping a watchful eye on the planning for the Light Rail Corridor, particularly the proposed stations at Gladstone and at Bayview. The City-owned land at the Tom Brown Arena is of particular concern since there seems to be a desire to redevelop there because of the station. The HCA has indicated that the greenspace surrounding the arena and the arena itself are not for sale!

We are about to embark on ‘Neighbourhood Planning’, a new City initiative for which Hintonburg is one of two pilot communities. The Main Street Community Design Plan and the design of the Wellington Street reconstruction are rolled into the Neighbourhood Planning process. More about this at the Annual General Meeting!

One thing we can guarantee -- 2007 will be an eventful year for Hintonburg and we will be calling on all our members to get involved and make Hintonburg an even better place to be.

Linda Hoad

HCA Annual Report to the Community

Arts
By any measure, this has been a very good year for culture in Hintonburg. The QUAD arts district, established as a grass roots movement just three years ago, is flourishing and earning positive recognition from all quarters including the media. New galleries are opening and artists have embraced the area as a great place to live and work.

This year, HCA Arts sponsored several events offering everything from free family movie evenings to guerrilla galleries in empty storefronts to Shakespeare in the park. December was a little brighter in the 'Burg last year due to the Creative Lights Competition. The Ottawa Camera Club and the Kitchissippi Times sponsored the QUADVIEW photo contest this Spring with dozens of entries focussing on Hintonburg's rich heritage and lively street scene -- you may have voted online or at ArtsPark or seen the winners in the Times.

ArtsPark, the annual one-day festival of music, performance, music, art and photography at Parkdale Park was well sponsored and well promoted but rainy May weather prevented a full program of events. Nevertheless attendance was respectable, the event turned a small profit and artists reported better sales than in the previous two years.

Leading up to the municipal election in November, candidates for Kitchissippi ward will be canvassed for their views on culture. Keep your eye on www.hintonburg.com for their views. The next few years will be critical for the arts in Hintonburg and the city's neighbourhood planning exercise along with Wellington Street infrastructure renewal with the attendant 1% budget set-aside for the arts auger well for our community. Having proven itself at this stage, our visibly active cultural community has high expectations for substantial support from City Hall.

All the evidence points to an even brighter future for the arts in Hintonburg's QUAD. Just this past year, two new galleries have opened near the Parkdale Market and a new studio space for sculptors has blossomed in a former car repair garage on Parkdale Avenue that now also houses the innovative Pukka Gallery. Next year, the new GCTC theatre complex will be opening at the corner of Wellington and Holland and another concern is looking for space to establish a new coffee house and gallery on Wellington Street. Open houses at the Enriched Bread Artists cooperative, the West End Studio Tour and regular events at the Stables on Gladstone Avenue attract visitors from all over of the region and encourage positive word-of-mouth. Commercial art concerns -- graphic design firms, web development studios and the like -- have also been moving into our neighbourhood and enriching the community fabric.

Things are happening in the Hintonburg QUAD and we greatly appreciate the support of our sponsors and volunteers. If you aren't already, you should get involved too!

Gardening
This year has been a busy one for the HCA Gardening Group. This past spring we continued with new plantings, separating perennials and other maintenance chores in front of the Community Centre. We added to this a new Hosta garden on the east side of the Centre along with other perennials along the eastern pathway. Continued thanks to Asaad Saikley for watering this summer. We thank him along with Joe Pinto, Pat Rogers, Paul Denis and Matthew Crepin!

This fall will bring cleanup and this coming spring we will need a large number of volunteers to continue this work. If you are considering dividing up your perennials, why not donate them to the HCC? Call us and we will work out the pickup and planting. Future plans include the continued expansion of flower beds at the back and eastern side of the HCC. So remember, if you would like to lend your green thumb, your aching back or donate your divided perennials, please give us a call. Thanks again to all who have participated in the past. Your efforts are growing!!

Heritage
The Heritage Committee has not been active this past year, but 2007 is the centennial of the annexation of the Village of Hintonburg to the City of Ottawa in 1907. We may want to apply for a grant from the City of Ottawa in order to hold some events to celebrate this anniversary. Heritage Ottawa invited us to give the Village of Hintonburg Walking Tour again this year.

Membership
If you are one of the 558 households that have a membership with the Hintonburg Community Association we welcome you again to our Annual General Meeting on Wednesday September 27. The Membership committee we will be there at 6pm. so you can renew your membership. We have a record of whether you had signed up previously for 1 year or 5 years. We will ask you to fill out another application to keep our records up-to-date if you have a change of email address or telephone number. This information is not distributed to anyone outside the Association. Your membership helps fund our activities and gives us credibility when we lobby the city, province and federal government about Hintonburg concerns.

Your presence and participation is appreciated, whether you bake a cake, sign a petition or put up a poster for an HCA event or just come to a meeting or event. For more membership information or to volunteer with any of our committees call our phone line at 613-798-7987 or contact us at info@hintonburg.com. If you have an interest or skill in a particular area or just want to be part of a vibrant volunteer group in a great community, we welcome your assistance.

Security
The Hintonburg Safety Partnership has provided the foundation for continued progress in addressing security issues in the community. By establishing the contacts and relationships with various city staff and police, both small and large issues have been resolved more quickly and efficiently. Innovative ways of solving problems have been effective. We have worked with some landlords over the last year to provide help, expertise and mentorship. A few landlords still are chronic problem landlords and rent to people who disrupt the lives of those around them. This will continue to be a focus of our efforts for the next year.

The commitment of the police to continued frequent prostitution sweeps and continued work on problem properties has resulted in the most peaceful summer in 15 years. The sweeps have also been successful in preventing other crimes as some "johns" have been caught with drugs and weapons.

Over the last year we have supported, and lobbied politicians for support for the establishment of the new Drug Court which opened early in the New Year. We participated in the Integrated Drug Strategy dialogue, the first Crime Prevention forum, provincial hearing on changes to the Liquor Licence Act. In October we were a party to the proceedings in a Liquor Licence hearing for Peanuts Restaurant; this hearing resulted in a 45-day liquor suspension and conditions on the licence. The building has now been sold.

We have joined together with other neighbourhoods in Ottawa to pressure the provincial government to look at enacting the Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act that is in place in three other provinces in Canada. It provides a provincial authority to deal with drug houses. We have met with MPPs Richard Patten and Madeleine Meilleur, Minister of Community Safety Monte Kwinter and an assistant to Premier Dalton McGuinty and will continue to press for this legislation.

In April we went to Police Services Board with a huge thank you to the police for their hard work over the last two years. We thanked each one of the officers who work in this area and presented a plaque of thanks to Cst. Tim Senack (Wellington Police Centre) who is the community's primary community contact.

Since June we have been working with the seniors at 1041 Wellington and Ottawa Community Housing to resolve some long-standing security issues in the building. A recent eviction of a tenant who was terrorizing the other tenants is a major step forward.

Traffic
The Traffic Committee gets involved when roads are being reconstructed in Hintonburg. We also respond to issues raised by residents that concern traffic flow and control, pedestrian safety and accessibility, cycling and public transportation. Our principle concern is to ensure that infrastructure design and planning is undertaken by the City with a clear focus on making Hintonburg an even more pleasant place for people to walk, visit each other, enjoy parks and gardens, shop at local stores and generally make their home. We are always interested in hearing from HCA members about issues they think the Traffic Committee should be aware of.

For the most part our attention was focused on Gladstone Avenue reconstruction in 2005-06. The City is undertaking this project in two phases -- Melrose to Bayswater this year and Bayswater to Booth in 2007. The project includes replacement of water and sewer works and the reconstruction of the roadway and sidewalks. Residents will have noticed that the first phase of the project is proceeding well. City officials expect it to be completed on time by the end of November this year.

The HCA participated in the city's consultations on the project -- two Public Advisory Committee meetings and a Public Open House on January 19, 2006. The Association also hosted a community meeting of its own on March 15 at the Hintonburg Community Centre where city staff delivered a presentation and took questions from residents.

City planners have adopted many of the comments made by members of the HCA. For example, wider sidewalks have been incorporated into the plan where space permits within the road right of way. Sidewalks will be increased to 1.8 metres from Melrose to Breezehill and to 2.0 metres from Breezehill to Preston. This should increase pedestrian safety and accessibility. Further, landscaping has been included in the plan, again where space permits. The plan includes tree planting from Loretta to Preston, which should improve the attractiveness of that stretch of Gladstone. In addition, the geometry of a number of intersections will be altered slightly to improve pedestrian and driver safety. This is particularly the case at the corner of Irving and Gladstone, which will be reconstructed in a way that reduces the Gladstone crossing distance for pedestrians and better defines the roadway. Some landscaping will also be done on the additional curb space that will be created by this redesign.

Requests by the HCA to include public art in the plan have not been adopted. This is a significant shortcoming given Hintonburg's character as an arts district, and the presence of important artistes studios and facilities along Gladstone from the O-Train to Loretta. We will continue to lobby city staff and councilors to add public art elements to the project if budgetary resources allow.

The HCA will also lobby very hard for the inclusion of public art in the proposed reconstruction of Wellington Street which is in the early stages of planning. We will be very interested in hearing your views about what should be one of the most important redevelopment projects for Hintonburg.

Of course, design plans do not always come out the way we might like them to when constructed. If you have any questions or concerns about the Gladstone Avenue reconstruction project or wish to raise other issues for the Traffic Committee, please contact the Committee Chair, Stefan Matiation. In addition, Luke Foley, the Gladstone project manager with the city's Infrastructure Services Branch, can be reached directly at 613-580-2400 ext. 29741 or luke.foley@ottawa.ca.

Zoning
The Zoning Committee has been working on a number of projects this year as well as commenting on the usual routine development applications in our community. We have continued to be involved in the City's development of the new comprehensive zoning bylaw, to insure that our community is protected from over development while appropriate new development that improves or neighbourhood is encouraged. This will continue well into the new year.

With the HCA Heritage Committee, we successfully requested heritage designation to protect the old Sacré Coeur School building on Melrose Avenue. An application to adapt the building for residential use has just been received and we will be working with the new owner. We are also actively involved in a number of important planning studies that are being carried out by the City, one covering the eastern portion of Hintonburg along the O-Train Light Rail corridor and the other along the Somerset/Wellington "main street".

The next few years are going to be crucial, as the City completes the planning studies and new zoning bylaw. Coupled with the large amount of development that has been going on (we have added several hundred new units over the past few years), there are going to be significant new opportunities for our neighbourhood but also some threats that we will need to address. We welcome anyone with an interest in this area to join the Zoning Committee! As well, anyone with questions or concerns should feel free to contact us at the HCA phone line or email.

Hintonburg free movie nights
This year we hosted three free movie nights during the summer for Hintonburg families. The documentary “People and Places”, which was a part of each movie event, was the product of the Hintonburg Youth Video Project under the tutelage of video artist Jake Hanna, a local Hintonburger. If you have any suggestions for future movie nights or want to help out we are always looking for fresh faces and ideas.

This year our free Movie Nights were made possible through donations from the following businesses: BA International, B&N Transmission, Bytown Lock & Safe, Collected Works and the Carleton Tavern.

See also: AGM 2005

This is the official site of the Hintonburg Community Association. Contact us by email or leave a message at (613) 798-7987 or write to us at 1064 Wellington, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1Y 2Y3
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