22 replies to this topic

[gumgum]

It's about time someone started a Fernwood thread.

A reminder to newcomers: If you have something you want to say about your neighbourhood and there isn't a thread that exists for it, feel free to start one.
Fernwood neighbourhood group has lease terminated by city
Carolyn Heiman, Times Colonist
Published: Tuesday, April 15, 2008

[Rob Randall]

This is bad news because it means the end of the Little Fernwood Theatre, home of Theatre Inconnu. They've been such a great addition to Fernwood and it would be a shame to see them evicted because of this dispute.

[Baro]

Can anyone explain why fernwood has two community orgs? Most of these groups struggle to have active board members and volunteers, how the heck does the neighbourhood support two, and why? Are they like rival gangs?

[gumgum]

Letters:

City's eviction threat a puzzle to organization
Times Colonist
Published: Friday, April 18, 2008

As a volunteer organization, the Fernwood Community Association has leased and maintained the building at 1923 Fernwood Rd. for 25 years. Our members carefully kept up the historic building so it can be used by various community groups.

Last week, the City of Victoria sent us a brief eviction letter. We have asked city officials to meet with us to discuss the reasons for the eviction and seek a resolution.

The eviction notice appears to be a response to our petition in the Supreme Court of British Columbia asking a judge to rule on whether we are allowed to sublet the upstairs offices. Since 1983, the city has allowed us to sublet the upstairs.

In January, the city sent us a letter saying we are not allowed to sublet. We sought a judge's opinion on whether the city is correct because of the clear evidence, gathered from city's own records, that shows the city itself has acknowledged our right to sublet space. Rather than taking the time to meet with us, to discuss the issues and to resolve the concerns expressed in the petition, the city has chosen to give us 60 days to leave the building.

We are holding a public meeting Monday at 7 p.m. at the FCA building to discuss options. We hope to be able to announce at this meeting that a resolution with the city has been reached.

Tony Sprackett

President

Fernwood Community Assn.


© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2008

Crazy region
Times Colonist
Published: Friday, April 18, 2008

So Coun. Geoff Young believes having two community associations in Fernwood is too costly to the city and not helpful to the neighbourhood. "The whole situation is crazy," he says.

Now he knows how a taxpayer in a 13-municipality system feels.

Susan Tam

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2008

[sprackett]

Can anyone explain why fernwood has two community orgs? Most of these groups struggle to have active board members and volunteers, how the heck does the neighbourhood support two, and why? Are they like rival gangs?

I would say it's because their is a significant activist level in Fernwood Baro. The two organizations, the Fernwood Neighbourhood Resource Group (FNRG), and the one I am President of, the Fernwood Community Association (FCA) do quite different work.

The FNRG does property acquisition for housing and child care, as well as providing recreational programs out of the Fernwood Community Ctre. The FCA does land-use liaison work between developers, residents, and the City, as well as providing low-cost facilities for cultural programs, social programs, recovery groups, one-off neighbourhood rentals, etc. We also run a couple of allotment gardens for approximately 60 neighbourhood gardeners.

While the FNRG is naturally a higher budget item for the City, due to the paid staff requirements, the FCA is a volunteer-based operation, and we subsist on a $5,000 annual standard community association communication grant from the City. We derive our operating income from the office rental suites upstairs. This modest revenue (about $35k annually) is now in jeopardy due to City's re-interpretation of our permitted usage. We say it's multiple, they say it's single.

We hope to resolve this situation in a recently agreed-to mediation between City and the FCA. This will allow us to continue to provide the services that 100 people came out to the Apr. 24 City Council meeting to support, many of whom spoke to Mayor and Council.

Hope that helps explain the situation. I know it's a bit confusing, and some folks that sit on Council clearly don't understand it, so it's quite reasonable that you should ask.

cheers,

Tony Sprackett
President
Fernwood Community Assocation

[Caramia]

Thank you for your post Tony, it is great to get the information first hand.

[gumgum]

CFAX:

CITY AND FERNWOOD COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION SEEK MEDIATION

Apr 29, 2008

THE CITY OF VICTORIA SAYS THEY AND THE FERNWOOD COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION WILL USE MEDIATION TO RESOLVE A DISPUTE OVER A CITY OWNED BUILDING.

THE MEDIATED SESSIONS SHOULD BEGIN NEXT WEEK, AND ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DONE BY THE END OF MAY.

IN THE MEANTIME, THE CITY SAYS IT WILL SUSPEND A 60-DAY EVICTION NOTICE SERVED TO THE ASSOCIATION.

AND, THE ASSOCIATION SAYS THEY WILL NOT PURSUE A COURT PETITION THAT SEEKS TO HAVE THEIR USE OF THE FERNWOOD ROAD BUILDING DECLARED LAWFUL -- AND ALSO MAKE THE CITY DO SOME BUILDING UPGRADES.

THE FERNWOOD COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION --ONE OF TWO SUCH NEIGHBOURHOOD GROUPS -- WAS GIVEN EVICTION NOTICE AFTER BEING WARNED ABOUT SUBLETTING OFFICE SPACE.

- RYAN PRICE

[gumgum]

Community association’s eviction is put on hold
By Don Descoteau - Victoria News - April 30, 2008

[sprackett]

Mediation between City staff and the FCA Executive began on Saturday, May 10, with a followup session set for May 20. Both parties agreed to confidentiality for these sessions, as a tool to help come to a positive outcome.

Tony Sprackett
President
Fernwood Community Association

[sprackett]

Both parties in this dispute have agreed to an extension of the Standstill Agreement, through June 30, 2008.

Tony Sprackett
President
Fernwood Community Association

[Rob Randall]

I've mentioned this document a few times but here it is in person. Created in 1965 by the precursor to the CRD it was a comprehensive guide to "renewing" the entire city. Here is the shocking page on Fernwood. Look at the last paragraph:

 

Of course, the Fernwood/Gladstone shopping district escaped the wrecking ball and is now one of the city's most beloved neighbourhoods and has been written up by publications from around the world including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

 

Thanks to Sharon Skillings of the Old Victoria BC Facebook page for finding it for me.

Edited by Rob Randall, 11 September 2020 - 06:56 AM.

[aastra]

Everything back then was about removing supposed "blight". The old city itself was the problem that needed to be addressed: remove blight by knocking down buildings (and chasing out low-income urban folk) to create Centennial Square, remove blight by wiping out the Blanshard-Rose neighbourhood (and chasing out low-income urban folk), remove blight by knocking down a hundred old buildings all over town (and chasing out low-income urban folk), remove blight by re-configuring & widening streets (always!), remove blight by promoting a suburban esthetic generally, etc.

 

Like I say, many people still subscribe to the same philosophy today. I make fun of the parking lot fans all the time, but they actually are parking lot fans. They think a shopping mall parking lot looks tidy and modern and wholesome ("open space"), and they think old buildings of varying shapes & styles clustered tightly together look unkempt and disorderly.

 

 

"The Jubilee Hospital will have reached the size of maximum operational efficiency when its present building programme is completed."

 

Interesting prognostication. So we're saying the construction at the Jubilee Hospital during the 1990s and 2000s has only contributed to operational inefficiency? Methinks those commentators in the 1960s might have been assuming the surface parking was too precious to ever be replaced, or that elevated/underground parking was too fanciful a prospect. Some people still act this way about the surface parking on the Fort Street side.

[Rob Randall]

The strangest thing is that this document came out in 1965, long after the release of Jane Jacobs' 1961 best-selling book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the book that shattered the hegemony of the bulldozer and skycraper advocates in favour of preserving the classic urban village vibe that we see today in Fernwood/Gladstone.

 

It's inconceivable those urban planners were ignorant of the Jacobs revolution. More likely, our planners were taking sides in a war for progress.

[aastra]

I don't know, by the mid-1960s the paint wasn't even dry on the Centennial Square project, the darkest days of the Blanshard-Rose wipeout were still to come, and some of the loopiest visions for traffic reconfiguration were also still a ways off. Read the narration from the "A Townscape Rediscovered" film and tell me it reflects a deep love for the city's old urban soul.

 

I think Victorians had an exceptional hang-up about wanting the city to seem tidy and modern and progressive. I know that contradicts local mythology, but it's evident in so many quotes, so many political platforms, so many actions, even today.

 

We've talked about it before, how so many major buildings were deemed to be ancient, beyond repair, and "not worth saving", even after a mere ~40-50 years! Back in the day I would show people pics of lost buildings on various streetcorners and they would be confused, because there's an "old" building still standing there. In other words, they had a difficult time believing that two or three significant "permanent" buildings had already occupied the same site during Victoria's relatively short history.

 

And I'll make my point yet again about Northern Junk: I suspect the resistance to saving those buildings (today, in 2020!) is merely the residue of that dusty old vision to line the untidy urban waterfront with tidy new park space.

 

These old notions die very hard, is my point.

Edited by aastra, 11 September 2020 - 09:14 AM.

[aastra]

So many things that should have raised the alarm bells (not to mention, so many things that make me reach for the barf bag). And just a ton of urgency & impatience, too.

 

 

Daily Colonist
December 14, 1962

CIVIC SQUARE DRAWS BIG "YES"

Victoria last night surged into its second century of municipal government with a smashing four-to-one endorsement by ratepayers of the Centennial Square civic plaza project.

"The city is on the move," said a jubilant Mayor R. H. Wilson. "This magnificent endorsement of the scheme is a clear indication that the people of Victoria want immediate action, which city council will provide,"

QUICK ACTION

"This is the first indication of solid progress towards a more beautiful and economically healthy Victoria,"

Ald. Arthur Dowell said... yesterday's vote ensure the Centennial Square project will "proceed with all haste."

Ald. Austin Curtis said the project was "the finest thing that has happened to Victoria for many years" and would mean a lot to the future growth of the city.

City planner Roderick Clack, who conceived the original scheme and worked on plans for Centennial Square with architectural consultants, said last night's victory was "the breakthrough we've been waiting for."

"This shows a real burst of confidence in Victoria's future," Mayor Wilson said. "There's a lot of life in the old girl yet."
 

 

--

 

 

Daily Colonist
November 21, 1963

Solid Effort Praised

Victoria's Centennial Square captured the imagination and praise of downtown leaders...

 

It met with immediate applause from business, planning, and civic leaders.

Here are some of the comments noted the day the project was announced 16 months ago.

"It's an excellent project," said A.F. Walters, president of the Victoria Chamber of Commerce.

"It will hold the town together in an admirable way."

"Improvement has been badly needed for a long time in the downtown area, and this will do it."

A.H. Roberts, director of the Capital Region Planning Board, said:

"I think it's a very well designed scheme and I particularly like the way it's based on the historical foundation of municipal government."

"I'm very pleased they are not scrapping the City Hall building, for if any city is to have roots and stability it must have some continuity of history."

"You can only see this physically in civic buildings." (aastra steps away briefly to vomit)

Open Spaces

"I believe the open square and park is very important, probably as important as the buildings themselves."

"Too many of our buildings are just plunked right on the sidewalks without any OPEN SPACE." (aastra steps away briefly to vomit. Why are Victoria's streetscapes so Victorian? That's obviously all wrong. The government will fix it.)

"I think it will help that section of the city and I hope it will be followed quickly with further downtown development, including the Chinatown and Broad Street malls."

"It's rather interesting that when this precinct is completed and Pandora is re-aligned and linked to Johnson Street Bridge, the municipal halls of Oak Bay, Victoria, and Esquimalt will all be on the same street, although it has different names." (aastra says: what an amazing coincidence that all the authorities would be based along Pandora's avenue, the street of worldly woes and evils)

"It's certainly a much needed face-lifting for the city centre," said Oak Bay Reeve George Murdoch.

"Everything that stimulates the city centre is bound to benefit everyone else in the area."

"Oak Bay is very happy to see this plan presented."

Saanich Reeve Stanley Murphy said the project "is a good example of the forward-looking approach."

 

--

 

 

Daily Colonist
July 7, 1963

Stage Set for Centennial Square Creation

Main east-west thoroughfare will be new role for Pandora Avenue, which will curve through park-like setting in Centennial Square to provide access to Cormorant at Government Street.

 

Replace that grubby old downtown with suburban autopia.

Edited by aastra, 13 September 2020 - 11:59 AM.

[Rob Randall]

Something they did follow through was the southern extension of Shelbourne to meet Fort St. via Chestnut.

 

One recommendation that has remained in effect is that commercial development in the form of an eastward expansion of Downtown across Cook Street into Fernwood has largely been avoided.

 

I suspect those pernicious prognosticators envisaged Fernwood looking like Vancouver's West End: acres of residential high-rises with deep, landscaped setbacks, probably resembling those 60s apartments opposite Beacon Hill Park.

[aastra]

 

"Too many of our buildings are just plunked right on the sidewalks without any OPEN SPACE." (aastra steps away briefly to vomit. Why are Victoria's streetscapes so Victorian? That's obviously all wrong. The government will fix it.)

 

I've been trying to expose this contradiction for a long time. Modern Victorians claim to be preserving and celebrating Victoria's appealing built form... by inverting and subverting Victoria's appealing built form. But I was surprised to see it laid out so plainly in that quote.

 

Suffice it to say, if Cormorant Street had been closed to vehicle traffic and turned into something more like Bastion Square, and if the old buildings had been restored instead of erased, and if the awkward & almost flatiron-ish property had been preserved... it would be a jewel of a space. A tourist attraction unto itself.

 

The Centennial Square project was all about undoing everything that was unique or interesting about Victoria.

[Victoria Watcher]

It's about time someone started a Fernwood thread.

A reminder to newcomers: If you have something you want to say about your neighbourhood and there isn't a thread that exists for it, feel free to start one.
Fernwood neighbourhood group has lease terminated by city
Carolyn Heiman, Times Colonist
Published: Tuesday, April 15, 2008

 

12+ years later it's still only one page long.

[aastra]

What are you suggesting?

[aastra]

This thread is too short?