Crumbling walls threaten to take City down

[The Mississauga Muse]

If the city ends up having to spend money no matter what, just expropriate the properties. Major corridors shouldn't have houses anyways. Just bulldoze them and replace them with something better, more sustainable. Imagine all of Burnhamthorpe (outside of MCC) lined with 3-4 storey retail/office/apartment buildings; it would be nice. Bulldoze the houses along Dixie, Erin Mills and Mavis as well.

Hmmm... Interesting idea.

I had a different one. Municipalities can pass any by-law that they want since there's no accountability mechanisms in place. All they have to be careful of is not to pass a by-law that might crimp into Provincial matters.

So.

Mississauga Council passes an amendment to their sign by-law allowing for signs and advertisements on noise walls. I bet there'd be businesses more than happy to either put money toward a wall that would be permanent advertising for them. Or noise wall space rented.

A property owner could make decent bucks with a spiffy new noise wall AND (say) money coming in from advertising like:

ALWAYS FRESH TIM HORTONS

RBC DIRECT --THERE WITH YOU FIRST AND ALWAYS

PEPSI

You could even rent out space to other municipalities.

IT'S BETTER IN BRAMPTON

or public service announcements.

EVIL EMPIRE 3/4 MILE


I mean if Mississauga brags about itself being run like a business I say go all out.

However, I do like your idea of tearing down all the houses along the major corridors (can't be healthy to live there for human beings).

Signed,
The Mississauga Muse

 

[Observer Walt]

IT'S BETTER IN BRAMPTON

Fewer of these noise barricades in Brampton, at least!

 

[The Mississauga Muse]

Fewer of these noise barricades in Brampton, at least!

Hey there, Observer,

Just wondering and perhaps you know. Listening to the General Committee talk about the walls, especially walls built in the early days, it seemed to me that they were approved by Council as expediency. AKA allowing this developer practice for The Corporation's coffers.

I know there was a comment about one of the developers having built shoddy walls in the first place and went out of business and now the homeowners are stuck.

So. The Corporation allows developers to build shoddy substandard crapola and foist them on duped customers and then The Corporation dings them for fixing that problem.

Am I getting that even somewhat right?

Signed,
The (Perpetually Perplexed) Mississauga Muse

 

[Jarrek]

Sure you're right.

But what it boils down to is poor planning by the city some 20-30 years ago.

The powers-to-be at city hall still don't get it, because the walls they're putting up now, will have the same problems 20 years from now. This will cause a great amount of strain on the city's finances.

If the streets were lined with a mixture of commercial/residential developments, they would be in private hands, and would see an increase in the amount of property tax being collected.

 

[Observer Walt]

Muse, I don't know if there is evidence that the walls were substandard when built, but I know that many of the older ones (faux red brick appearance) began crumbling after a while. The newer ones (white concrete) will hopefully be better. A number of the old ones were replaced with new ones 3 or 4 years ago. See along Cawthra Road, for example.

Jarrek, I think you have put your finger on the true problem, one of poor urban planning back in the 60s and 70s. In residential areas, not much was built facing arterial streets. The properties turned their backs on the arterials, facing the loopy interior crescents, and the long noise attenuation walls made that pretty explicit. There are quite a few of these in Ward 3, where I live, and other 60s areas of the city, I think Clarkson in particular.

I don't know of anything much that can be done about it. You can't bulldoze properties, as Doady suggests (hopefully tongue in cheek), although it's certainly a tempting thought sometimes!

As to who should pay, originally these walls were built on private property and were the responsibility of the property owners, as they knew quite well when they moved in. The City made a good concession when they went to the 50/50 formula. But other residents would rightly ask why any larger share should be assumed by the City. I think 50/50 is fair, and if people refuse to pay, it can be added to their tax bill. The City can't just let these walls crumble; there is potential legal liability.

 

[Edward Skira]

I don't know of anything much that can be done about it. You can't bulldoze properties, as Doady suggests (hopefully tongue in cheek), although it's certainly a tempting thought sometimes!

Why not. Much of downtown Toronto was a one point single family dwellings. NYCC redeveloped many single family dwellings and then there's the NY Towers project at Bayview and Sheppard as another example.

 

[doady]

^ Also, the houses along the south side of Britannia in Streetsville were recently expropriated for road widening and now they are boarded up.

 

[Observer Walt]

I'd love to see something better along several of the arterials in Miss. than we have now: the rear yards of detached houses, blocked from the street by either the noise attenuation barriers or plain old fences.

But how do you do that? Who would buy up property after property, even assuming owners wanted to sell (doubtful in most cases), to redevelop all of those blocks?

The example of the New York Towers project isn't parallel. It comprised several blocks of internal streets. It wasn't about redeveloping an arterial street. NYCC is certainly a better example, but even at that, it required construction of new streets parallel to Yonge, and the redevelopment of Yonge, which was already commercial (not residential) in character. The whole plan wouldn't have worked if it didn't involve quite high densities of new offices and apartments. I don't see such a thing happening in Mississauga, other than along relatively short sections of Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe in the City Centre district, which fortunately are becoming much more urbanized.

The best other possibility in Miss., to really improve an arterial street, is probably Dundas Street. It's more commercial than residential, somewhat like the old Yonge Street in North York.

Once street patterns and land use patterns are in place, especially in residential neighbourhoods, I don't think they are easy to change.

 

[Jarrek]

Even today, the city of Mississauga squanders golden chances to improve the streetlife in the centre portions of the city. They allow the building of out of date strip malls, with parking lots facing the street.

The most recent example being at Burnhamthorpe Road E. and Central Parkway E.

 

[doady]

I don't think Central Parkway and Burnhamthorpe will ever have any streetlife, no matter what that build there.

Actually, if there were more strip malls built along Mississauga's arterials there would be no need for noise walls and the arterials would be easier to redevelop and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

But how do you do that? Who would buy up property after property, even assuming owners wanted to sell (doubtful in most cases), to redevelop all of those blocks?

The city just has the expropriate the properties and sell it off to private developers. The current owners won't be able to do anything about it. That is what Toronto did for the NE corner of Yonge/Dundas, for example.

 

[Tuscani01]

^ Also, the houses along the south side of Britannia in Streetsville were recently expropriated for road widening and now they are boarded up.

I was wondering why all of the houses were boarded up, and was hoping for something better than a road widening

 

[adma]

Even today, the city of Mississauga squanders golden chances to improve the streetlife in the centre portions of the city. They allow the building of out of date strip malls, with parking lots facing the street.

The most recent example being at Burnhamthorpe Road E. and Central Parkway E.

Consolation *might* be if one regards such strips as "taxpayers" en route to future high-density redevelopment...