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There’s a lot of exterior work going on.

Today:
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Huge update from the January 16 special meeting of council today:

Councillor Rod Power tabled a motion to build the Chinguacousy Library at Howden Recreation centre.

See the site here >>>

Howden Recreation Centre | 11m | 2s | City of Brampton | Salter Pilon

Howden Recreation Centre: a proposed community centre and sports facility developed by the City of Brampton on the south side of Howden Boulevard, east of Hedgeson Court and west of Heathcliffe Square in Brampton's Chinguacousy neighbourhood. Original timeline as per the project website: As...
urbantoronto.ca urbantoronto.ca

Their reasoning in the meeting was that it's cheaper, don't have to acquire land from region of Peel or Morguard. They also said it's faster to build in 2-3 years over 5-8 for a standalone library on acquired land.

Old Peel police 21div site had flooding issues, cost money to region to acquire.

Rod stated 3 bus route are in the area to counter the distance from the Bramalea bus terminal of the old site.

All councillors supported this motion.

Arguments were made of the synergy of recreation and library together.

Benefits of being on the cycling/MU path network.


My thoughts:

I question the synergy. This isn't a large rec centre like Gore meadows or Embleton . It only has a FIBA court and multi use rooms with outdoor soccer field and basketball court,slated. A 30,000 sqft Library may dwarf the rec centre at 45,000. We could lose the outdoor basketball court in the footprint above with the redesign.

The lot is narrow shared with the school next door. Parking may be difficult on the site for this scale.of library. BCC could scale overflow with their huge parking

Bus terminal is 1km away with a BRT coming, it's not convenient for riders.

There are many of towers coming to BCC, a new community centre with arts spaces and Library like the civic centre made sense long-term. Knightsbridge and seniors home will have to cross under Queen st for 1km north.,

When I visited the old Ching library I would visit the city centre mall at the same time. That was real synergy of spaces over a small recreation centre housing a dry floor sports court nextdoor.

Even hanging out at the civic centre for a pit stop and shelter, waiting for a bus was a useful thing. Zum or direct bus to Bramalea GO was convenient for riders. All that is gone with this plan.

I would rather they just acquire land near the bus terminal and not shortchange the future. Bramalea sacrificed their $50M civic centre without public input to the claimed benefit of the city. The city should pitch in restore the space back to where it was.

This is a downgrade from what we had in the civic centre. Michael Palleschi who constantly expresses resentment over the number of small recreation facilities in Bramalea and delayed Howden for Embleton was involved in this idea.

If others are happy with this then so be it. It doesn't seem right to me.
 
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When I spoke to Rod on Monday, he said something that it required raising up Queen Street due to the mimico Creek flooding adjacent the old PRP 21 division site.

All the other spots were then Morguard purchases.

He was adamant people wouldn't accept more tax hikes. Palleschi has been going off on a billion dollar backlog of recreation.

I told him not to shortchange this project. He really thinks it's better and council are all in.

I think they should have a public consultation.
 
Announcement about the library branch going in at Howden.

It would be an okay location for a local branch, but not a major district branch like Chinguacousy was. There should be another branch to the south of Bramalea City Centre – perhaps Avondale/Victoria Arena – if this was the plan, because Howden is not as accessible.

www.brampton.ca

City of Brampton and Brampton Library to unveil plans for a new library branch

Members of the media are invited to this important announcement.
www.brampton.ca www.brampton.ca
 
ShonTron said:
Announcement about the library branch going in at Howden.

It would be an okay location for a local branch, but not a major district branch like Chinguacousy was. There should be another branch to the south of Bramalea City Centre – perhaps Avondale/Victoria Arena – if this was the plan, because Howden is not as accessible.

www.brampton.ca

City of Brampton and Brampton Library to unveil plans for a new library branch

Members of the media are invited to this important announcement.
www.brampton.ca www.brampton.ca
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I talked to Power, Vicente and Santos expressing this stance to them. The buses that do pass by Howden are useless. 90% of people in the city will need to walk 15 minutes to the terminal in rain or snow potentially or stand at a bus stop at Dixie 10 minutes away. Transit at the front door was proper planning. Good luck to the retirement communities walking under Queen st. It's a real inconvenience as Queen is getting a BRT soon.

I also question the number of parking spots in the final design. Having visited the Springdale branch where it's been difficult to find spots on weekends, It's a very narrow parcel of land shared with the school nextdoor. Now it's being shared with recreation facilities at howden and no place to scale aside from parking on school property. I hope they don't rip out the only basketball court in the area that was proposed at howden as a result.

I created several threads on Reddit and Nextdoor, everyone agrees this is a step down from the Civic Centre, but still seem enthusiastic about the Library coming back with 30,000 square feet in the area, making it work. I think all these councillors care about is to pacify residents with a cheap alternative before the 2026 election, so far it's working from the feedback I received. Not actually think longterm on the consequences and impacts on those who use the Library the most as a City Wide flagship branch that was the busiest in all of Brampton.

Seems like the New Four Corners is set to take on that role as they properly move it across from the Downtown Transit hub within the CFI.
problem is, very few of these folks giving feedback are in highschool or post secondary who find significant value in transit and late night studying sessions and can consider this perspective.

I also told all these councillors that Bramalea has been robbed of arts and performance spaces. South Asians in the north east put on a lot of dramas and performances at school auditoriums (Ching Secondary) because there is a lack of space on the east end despite the fact all the biggest youtubers, poets, juno artists out of this city grew up around Bramalea,Castlemore, Springdale.

Howden has no plans for arts spaces to replace the music rooms lost at the civic centre. the LBP theatre has become a TMU lecture hall and can't run anything other than a random comedy night or information session after 5pm. The public use of that space has been nerfed, you can't run any productions out of there with no time for staging. Meanwhile the west end of Brampton is getting a new Arts building on top of Cyril clark and The Rose Theatre.

I'm going to keep hammering council on figuring out how to restore these lost spaces. Remember that the civic centre was much more than just a Library. We should have a library space in the southgate area as well if we are now offsetting 30k sqft up to northgate. They opened a temporary library at claireville which is good for folks in The Gore area, for Bramalea residents it's not a great location cut off with industrial and conservation lands.
 
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FullMetalEngineer said:
I talked to Power, Vicente and Santos expressing this stance to them. The buses that do pass by Howden are useless. 90% of people in the city will need to walk 15 minutes to the terminal in rain or snow potentially or stand at a bus stop at Dixie 10 minutes away. Transit at the front door was proper planning. Good luck to the retirement communities walking under Queen st. It's a real inconvenience as Queen is getting a BRT soon.

I also question the number of parking spots in the final design. Having visited the Springdale branch where it's been difficult to find spots on weekends, It's a very narrow parcel of land shared with the school nextdoor. Now it's being shared with recreation facilities at howden and no place to scale aside from parking on school property. I hope they don't rip out the only basketball court in the area that was proposed at howden as a result.

I created several threads on Reddit and Nextdoor, everyone agrees this is a step down from the Civic Centre, but still seem enthusiastic about the Library coming back with 30,000 square feet in the area, making it work. I think all these councillors care about is to pacify residents with a cheap alternative before the 2026 election, so far it's working from the feedback I received. Not actually think longterm on the consequences and impacts on those who use the Library the most as a City Wide flagship branch that was the busiest in all of Brampton.

Seems like the New Four Corners is set to take on that role as they properly move it across from the Downtown Transit hub within the CFI.
problem is, very few of these folks giving feedback are in highschool or post secondary who find significant value in transit and late night studying sessions and can consider this perspective.

I also told all these councillors that Bramalea has been robbed of arts and performance spaces. South Asians in the north east put on a lot of dramas and performances at school auditoriums (Ching Secondary) because there is a lack of space on the east end despite the fact all the biggest youtubers, poets, juno artists out of this city grew up around Bramalea,Castlemore, Springdale.

Howden has no plans for arts spaces to replace the music rooms lost at the civic centre. the LBP theatre has become a TMU lecture hall and can't run anything other than a random comedy night or information session after 5pm. The public use of that space has been nerfed, you can't run any productions out of there with no time for staging. Meanwhile the west end of Brampton is getting a new Arts building on top of Cyril clark and The Rose Theatre.

I'm going to keep hammering council on figuring out how to restore these lost spaces. Remember that the civic centre was much more than just a Library. We should have a library space in the southgate area as well if we are now offsetting 30k sqft up to northgate. They opened a temporary library at claireville which is good for folks in The Gore area, for Bramalea residents it's not a great location cut off with industrial and conservation lands.
Click to expand...

What's the new west end arts centre?

The LBP Theatre, yeah, that's a real loss and it didn't register to me that it will no longer be able to host a lot of those community events and productions anymore.
 
ShonTron said:
What's the new west end arts centre?

The LBP Theatre, yeah, that's a real loss and it didn't register to me that it will no longer be able to host a lot of those community events and productions anymore.
Click to expand...
There isn't much real info yet on the design, they were just doing community feedback sessions on the arts and culture centre.
I got confirmation from a 2 hour face to face chat with Toor and also Santos herself who oversees arts programming in the city that the location will be on the west end.
They are aware of my concerns on the arts desert now created east of the 410.

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Rod Power has made claims that the Ching Park Bandshell torn down 20 years ago is something he's looking to make a return despite the fact a group of Nimbys around ching park have been making noise complaints on summer festivals. Here I thought people complained there's nothing to do in Brampton, now they want to kill any fun happening in a park. Other councillors think he's bluffing and nothing is happening on that claim, but we'll see.
 
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Did a walk-around of the building, but was unable to take any photos due to it being night time. I'll take some more photos and post them here in a few days.

Things to note:

1. The front of the building has mostly been fenced off for quite some time. Just recently, they installed scaffolding around the entire front facade. All of the scaffolding has since been covered by large tarps so I can't even see inside anymore.
2. The existing section that has had the green sheathing exposed is now covered by a black covering, and has what appears to be clips for the exterior trim installed.
3. The rear of the building facing Central Park Drive is essentially just construction storage. There's plenty of locates marked all over the place, trenching was done recently for fibre and other utilities based on the raised dirt and paint everywhere.
4. The signs facing Central Park / Team Canada now say Toronto Metropolitan University, but still follow similarities to signs for city owned properties.

All that being said though - From a construction perspective, unless all those who are enrolling are wearing the appropriate PPE to enter the building, or are in hybrid classes and have to commute downtown... I don't see this building being finished this year. I will formally apologize if they somehow manage to pull it off, but from what I'm seeing and being told re: opening summer/fall of 2025.... It feels like a pipe dream.
 
From a friend, since I'm far too busy nowadays.


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