Plan Sparks talk of a revival
Would allowing motor traffic to flow on Sparks Street help to revitalize it?
In the beginning, it was good. The Sparks Street Mall, Canada’s first pedestrian-only street, was chocka-block with department stores and other retail shops. For a time, it bustled.
The decline began with the rise of suburban malls and gained momentum with the construction of the Rideau Centre. One by one, Sparks Street’s department stores closed. Properties were left empty, sometimes for years. Scaffolding went up and stayed up. The massive government buildings on the street’s north side were perpetually being renovated, or so it seemed.
Today, the street is a shadow of its former self: deserted after the public servants go home for the day, desolate in winter. Aside from a handful of popular pubs and the odd festival celebrating poutine or grilled ribs, there is little to attract anyone there.
Les Gagné, who was dismissed from his job as executive director of the Sparks Street Business Improvement Area last November, calls it “a sorry excuse for a pedestrian promenade.”
All of which raised the question: Would reopening Sparks to motor vehicles help revitalize the moribund pedestrian mall?
A National Capital Commission’s advisory committee appears to think it could. The advisory committee on planning, design and realty — composed of experts in real estate development, planning, urban design, architecture and landscape architecture — provided feedback last year on a Public Works and Government Services Canada demonstration plan for properties along the south side of Wellington and the north side of Sparks streets between Elgin and Bank streets.
The demonstration plan is part of an urban design master plan developed by Public Works that provides a vision, guiding principles and design guidelines for the redevelopment of the three blocks over the next 50 years.
According to draft minutes of its meeting in February 2014 released to the Citizen under access to information, the advisory committee made several suggestions following a presentation on the demonstration plan. The most striking was to examine the reintroduction of vehicular traffic “in order to animate” Sparks Street.
It’s hardly the first time someone has raised the idea since the street was permanently closed to vehicular traffic in 1967.
“My understanding is pretty much ever since they closed the street, they’ve been thinking about reopening it in some form or another,” says Kevin McHale, event and programming co-ordinator for the Sparks Street BIA.
The last time the BIA and the Sparks Street Mall Authority actively pursued the idea was about five years ago, McHale says. “There were presentations to the NCC and Public Works and the City of Ottawa. But that’s pretty much where it ended.”
The idea of putting cars back on Sparks Street keeps coming up, McHale says, “because a lot of the pedestrian areas in North America have opted to have an off-season, where they do put vehicular traffic on the street again.”
Indeed. The NCC advisory committee pointed out there were “many examples” around the world of pedestrian malls that have welcomed back motor vehicles. It specifically cited Chicago, where the city government axed a nine-block pedestrian mall on State Street in 1996 after a 17-year failed experiment. The street has thrived ever since.
But there’s no sign that Ottawa’s signature pedestrian mall will follow suit any time soon.
“No consideration has been given to reopening the street to motor vehicle traffic,” says Vivi Chi, the city’s manager of transportation planning. The city doesn’t even have an official record of a request to do so, Chi says.
Coun. Catherine McKenney, whose Somerset ward includes the Sparks Street Mall, has “absolutely no desire” to open the street to vehicular traffic. “To me, that’s creating a car mall, and we’ve got lots of those.”
McKenney would welcome a cycle lane on the mall, however, “so people will at least get on their bikes and move through.”
One person who likes the idea of opening up Sparks Street to vehicles is Gagné. “If it’s managed properly, having some vehicular traffic on that street would be a real complement to the businesses and the whole dynamic of Sparks Street,” he says. “At the end of the day, the pedestrian takes priority. But in the off-season, when there’s very little traffic, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to have some kind of vehicular traffic down there. I think it makes sense.”
Gagné points to the Stephen Avenue Walk in Calgary — an outdoor pedestrian walkway between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. that converts to a one-way, single-lane roadway with parking from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. — as an example of the type of hybrid approach Sparks Street could consider.
The city has jurisdiction over the roadway, but would consult with “stakeholders in the area” prior to making any planning decisions about Sparks Street, said Rick O’Connor, the city solicitor and clerk.
Those stakeholders include the NCC and Public Works, whose mandate includes the management of the buildings along the north side of Sparks between Elgin and Bank streets. The department has no jurisdiction beyond the buildings.
If the city decided to proceed with a traffic initiative on Sparks Street, Public Works “would examine potential implications at that time,” the department said in an email.
Sparks Street’s appeal as a pedestrian mall has been degraded over the years by the departure of retail anchors and bad planning, such as the decision to build the CBC Ottawa broadcast centre — which Gagné describes as “200 feet of dead space” — on the mall. “That killed block three between O’Connor and Bank,” he says.
“It’s no longer the mall that somebody envisioned. That’s why the introduction of a lot more animation, a lot more events, maybe even vehicular traffic, are the kinds of things you now have to look at. Because what you designed originally is nothing like what we have today. The whole makeup of the street has to change.”
McKenney agrees that Sparks Street has challenges, and has for years. “Right now, it doesn’t really serve the community,” she says. Though the street has some life during the day, when office workers spill out onto it, “as soon as they go home, it empties out.
“I’ve always said that it won’t become a real, livable, active street until people live there,” McKenney says.
The NCC’s advisory committee agrees. It says Public Works should encourage residential use in its plan for the three blocks between Elgin and Bank streets “or the downtown core will not change and become more vibrant.”