What happens at 436 Lisgar Street is probably not top of mind for most folks unless they live across from it or drive by it on the way to and from home, school, or work.
It’s a stretch of land that basically sits across the street from Renfrew’s dilapidated Public Works garage. In fact, at some point not long ago, this same stretch of land was intended to be used as a public works yard, perhaps the very place where a new garage might be situated, right after the existing one either collapses under its on weight or is taken down by a municipality painfully short on dollars. It appears that municipality spent all the money they didn’t have on a facility right around the corner, the place with the radio station logo on it, the one they named after themselves. So my money is on gravity, and the impending implosion of the building currently held together with elastic bands, duct tape, and best wishes of a council long on ambition but short on cash.
436 Lisgar may have been the answer to a lot of this, notwithstanding the desired lack of money, but those notions of using the property as a municipal work yard were dashed by the opposition of rate-payers living close-by, as in Tupper and Mary Streets. Municipal yards and garages are wonderful things, especially brand new ones, but the idea quickly falls apart in the face of the NIMBY phenomenon, or Not In My Backyard. This is completely understandable given the everyday proclivity of employees of such yards and garages to convert their workplaces into junkyards.
So intense must this opposition have been that the town has sounded the retreat, and is now instead intent upon developing the property in a manner that might offend fewer existing residents and may also bring some much-needed tax revenue into the municipal coffers.
According to Director of All Things Needing Shovels, Eric Withers, the town is looking to place what they call “high-density-residential” units on this land, which is director-speak for apartments, townhouses, semi-detached homes, and plexes..
And perhaps even more importantly, developing the property in a manner that may relieve pressure brought about by the nation’s housing shortage.
I may not have that entirely correct. Sometimes, listening to Director Withers is an exercise in purposeful focus. Also, all the provincial government agency lingo that’s part of a proper discussion on this sort of thing can serve to muddy up the waters and cast a spell of uncertainty and failing confidence in any attempt to correctly understand what’s being said. But after all of that, I still feel roughly confident that the Director is informing us that a plan exists to put apartments of various types into the property known as 456 Lisgar.
The one thing I feel that I recalled exceptionally well was the assertion by Withers that parking for any of the high-density stuff will be on the property’s interior, and as such won’t be what the fine folks living on Tupper Street see first when they open the drapes in the morning. So no beat-up Toyotas, four-wheelers, trailers, and fishing boats that usually serve as eye-sores everywhere people gather in order to call a place home. Those sorts of things will remain the burden of those living in the high-density housing. For those visual eyesores, the folks along Tupper will have to do what they’ve always done, and that’s to simply walk around the corner and see all kinds of that sort of thing already happening along the length of houses that front on Lisgar Street, including the Convoy Warrior and Freedom Fighter in the blue truck who parks along the roadway, complete with a trailer, all of it along a provincial highway.
I don’t know how many units are proposed, nor do I know the make-up of those units or the population that they’ll support once completed. But I do know that visually, such a development is a much better introduction to Renfrew for anyone travelling along Highway 132 and coming towards town. It might be a little easier on the eyes than a public works yard, and in fact, may actually cause people to look to that side of the street rather than taking in the majesty of a crumbling municipal garage like the one currently in existence.
Rather than becoming a property of industrial noise and odours, and a property that does nothing to enhance curb appeal, the new development will instead feature human-derived noises and smells, but with the unseemly visuals tucked behind the external facade that would be visible from the roadway.
Perhaps it’s not the original intent for this land, but at least it will be put to a needed and long-lasting use.
It might even save us from another hyped-up junkyard.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 