Infill Housing #7

                                                                      WANTED
                                                         A family, to buy this house
                                                            and actually live in it!
                                                                       PLEASE!

Isn't it pretty? Don't you love the roof angles and the cute doorway? Can't you picture yourself living there?

Now we're not looking for a pretend family; some folks buying on behalf of a developer who will tear down this house. No, we'd like a real family who will buy the house and then actually move in and enjoy living here on our street in Wellington West. It's a pretty novel concept in 2018 but back in the olden days, about fifteen years ago, that's how folks did it. A family would list their house and another family would buy it. The new owner might renovate it or put on an addition, but for the most part, they just moved in and enjoyed their new place.

I'm not selling 77 Kenora St.. I live across the street. It's been a bad year for infill on our block and I just can't bear the thought that yet anther house might be destroyed. In my blog post of June 17th  I wrote,
"Simon and Garfunkel famously sang, "Silence like a cancer grows." We could change that to, "Infill like a cancer grows. " It really seems that once one house on a block is knocked down, others soon follow. On this one side of this one block, we have just heard that a fourth house will soon go up for sale. Surely they won't all be destroyed."

Now we're near the end of November and there has been no let up. The cancer of infill is growing on our block. This adorable house went up for sale yesterday. The open house is set for Sunday. 

It's been a heck of a week. Last Wednesday I woke up at my Mom's place in the Champlain Park neighbourhood to the sound of  machinery. It sounded like a garbage truck but the noise stayed in the same spot. There was also this mysterious ripping sound. When I looked out her front window I realized that the house across the street was being demolished. That ripping sound was caused by the walls being torn apart.

I drove home an hour later to find eight pickup trucks and a van parked all around our house, all belonging to the people working on the infill house directly across from us. In my post of August 22nd you can see photos and comments on the disruption that we've experienced here for the past six months.

My last post talks about the gas line hook up for that new house. The rough sidewalk patch that Enbridge did after the gas hookup has now been torn apart by a sidewalk snow plow, resulting in an unsafe area for unsuspecting pedestrians. I spent a while on the phone earlier this week, with both the city and Enbridge, trying to get someone to put a proper patch there. Yesterday I was told by a city official that with this early winter weather, we'll probably have to wait until next spring. 

While I was on the phone with the city I spoke to someone in the by law/zoning office and asked if there was a demolition permit issued yet for 79 Kenora, also on that side of the street. I was assured on Monday afternoon that there was no permit. I had been told last month that a linked double was not an allowable use for our zone. We've been dreading the demolition of number 79. It was a really sweet place.

79 Kenora

A little history: In 1986 it sold for $120 000. In 1987 it sold for $160 000. In September of this year, it went for $700 000. If you google 79 Kenora St. you'll see that the new owner is going to build  a linked double. The side he is trying to sell now is going for 1.4 million! Among other things it will have five bathrooms! Who needs five bathrooms? Why are these new houses so big? Why are there no yards anymore?

Anyhow yesterday morning I was lying in bed listening to the radio. At  about 7:15  I heard and felt a low rumbling noise. The house seemed to be slightly shaking and I suspected an earthquake. However, when I looked out the window I saw a massive truck/trailer which had just deposited this excavator at 79 Kenora.

 It turns out that the city granted the building and demolition permits on Tuesday so they were off to the races. I don't know exactly when the house was built or how long it took to build it. All I know is that after standing elegantly on our street for a very long time, this very well maintained home was demolished in about twenty-five minutes.

All gone

I went off for the day in a pretty grim mood. When I returned in mid afternoon, my husband asked if I had looked across the street. I said yes, I realized they had dug all day and carted the house away in trucks. He told me to look again. That's when I saw the For Sale sign on the house beside the hole!

Thirty years ago we bought our house because it was in a traditional neighbourhood. The interesting houses, mostly built in the 30s and 40s, were all different.  There were front yards, backyards and side yards. The neighbourhood kids were always playing out there. The street had a friendly feel to it. We didn't buy here because we wanted to live across from a row of enormous, flat, glass and stone boxes. If we wanted to look at modern houses we would have bought in the suburbs. Why is the city allowing our traditional neighbourhoods to be totally transformed ? Whoever asked us what we wanted?

So have a heart,  Ottawa. There must be a family out there who would like to buy this lovely place and live here on Kenora.

Infill Housing #6

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Two of my grandmother's expressions are running through my head:

1. The way to hell is paved with good intentions.
There have been so many times over the past six weeks that I intended to post something here.

2. Give every devil their due.
Now I'm not saying that this particular developer is a devil. No, it's the whole infill housing situation that I find evil: the destruction of homes, the transformation of established neighbourhoods and the incredible waste of material.

However, I'll start off with a couple of positive observations. (I was going to make this a completely positive post, until they tore up our front lawn this morning.)

The Good - Our contractor has kept the worksite fairly tidy. On several occasions I have witnessed him cleaning up the site and sweeping the adjacent neighbour's driveway. We certainly appreciate these efforts to keep the mess to a minimum. Also, we're very happy with the materials used to cover the house. Considering some of the unattractive infill houses around, we are feeling lucky.

We are not faced with red or orange or corrugated steel. We are not looking at a completely dark hulk. So many of the new homes are dark brown or black, which seems very intimidating and unfriendly.
Instead we are looking at this!

The light coloured stucco and stonework is a relief.

So, after years of wondering what we would be presented with, we are pleasantly surprised.

The Bad - Just when you think that all the noise is over, that all the work left to do is on the inside, you wake up to the noise of trucks and machinery. I guess it's not a big deal but it would have been polite and considerate, if we had received some kind of notice that a portion of our front lawn would be dug up today. Just a note in the mailbox, explaining the procedure would have been nice. I feel badly for the workers who are hired to hook up gas. They appear unannounced and are often berated by neighbours when they go about their jobs. That's what they told me when I went out front today to ask them what was going on, how long would it take, would the street be dug up and would the sidewalk section be replaced? 

A section of the sidewalk being removed.

At one point the entire house was shaking as they worked at removing a section of the sidewalk. However, they didn't need to dig up the street again so that was good news.

The work was completed by mid-afternoon.

The Ugly - We are left with a temporary sidewalk patch. Another company is hired to come around and replace this with a permanent sidewalk. If we're lucky, it will be done this fall but we won't count on that.

I know, in the grand scheme of things, with all the troubles in the world, this is nothing to complain about.  However, I think that neighbours of new infill houses don't like to feel like they have no say in what is going on around them, even in their own front yards.