City to spend $900K sprucing up ‘tired’ section of Queen Street

Much of the work would enhance current parkette

KITCHENER — The City of Kitchener plans to spend $900,000 over the next couple of years to make a two-block stretch of Queen Street a more inviting place for people to walk, cycle and linger.

“The intent is to provide spaces for people and generate activity within the historic heart of downtown,” said Brandon Sloan, the city planner heading the project.

The intersection of King and Queen streets is a key crossroads with lots of history and a number of heritage buildings, but it’s also an area that’s undergoing change, with light rail transit along Duke and Charles expected to bring many more pedestrians heading down Queen Street to reach downtown destinations, he said.

Some buildings in the area are seeing a bit of a rebirth as well, he said, noting the recent renovation of the Vidyard building at 8 Queen St. N., plans to put in a grocery store off Goudies Lane, and the recent multimillion renovation to the Walper Hotel.

The redesign would run along Queen from Duke Street to Charles, and include Goudies Lane on both sides of Queen Street, a small cityowned plot at Duke and Charles and Vogelsang Green, the city parkette at Queen and Duke. The area is due for an upgrade and is “getting old and tired,” he said.

Coun. Sarah Marsh believes the project will make downtown more inviting for people to walk, something she believes is key for the core.

“I’m looking forward to an enhanced streetscape,” she said. “And I’m especially looking forward to animating the small green spaces and alleyways alongside the road.”

The aim is to make the area more inviting, to attract more people and to enliven the core, Sloan said. It ties into the growing trend of placemaking, which aims to transform public spaces into community places that draw people in, where cultures mix and people linger and run into friends.

“We want to kind of reimagine the space, to make it a place for people, by incorporating music or art or other things to make cool, funky spaces throughout the year, and throughout the day and evening, too.”

That could happen by opening up places like Vogelsang Green so that more people could gather in the parkette, which sits opposite the Duke Food Block stretch of restaurants.

“It’s one of the rare green spaces in the downtown core, an area that provides some trees and visual relief and a bit of shade,” Sloan said. But “it’s a little hidden. I think we’d like to open it up and make it more accessible.”

It could mean celebrating the area’s history through

signage or public art: the crossroads at King and Queen, for instance, includes the 1860s-era American Block, the oldest surviving building in downtown Kitchener, as well as the stately 1893 Walper and a bank building dating to 1885.

The project is still in its early days, Sloan cautioned. The city hopes to hear from residents, downtown businesses and other key players in May and June, and present a blueprint for the project to council in August. Construction would occur in 2018 or 2019.

City council recently approved a plan to pay Stantec Consulting $39,000 to come up with a master plan to start the process, as well as cost estimates for construction and long-term maintenance of any improvements.

The plan would spell out technical details about things like the width of the street and sidewalks, types of lighting, materials for the sidewalk, suggestions for public art, benches, landscaping and the potential to add bicycle infrastructure such as signed routes, bike racks or storage.

About $900,000 has been earmarked in the city’s capital budget over the next couple of years for the work, including $250,000 for Vogelsang Green.

The city hopes its investment could prompt more investment from the private sector, he said.