Living streets

A sampling of potential streetscape additions gleaned from the DR survey.

Learning to improve County’s main streets as attractive public spaces

It is a cliché that one must plan on at least 30 minutes or more to walk 100 metres to retrieve the mail from any Post Office in Prince Edward County. Longer if it is a sunny day. This is surely true on Main Streets in Wellington, Bloomfield, Picton, Consecon, Cherry Valley and Milford. While not uniquely a County phenomenon— neither is the social exercise of sharing stories, gossip and news on Main Street an especially common or comparable experience in urban communities. So what draws us to the County’s downtowns? What compels us to come outdoors and meet on the street corner?

In 2006, a new council conducted a County-wide survey to understand how residents wanted to see their community three years later. One of the resounding messages emerging from that visioning exercise was the value that most attached to the look, feel and experience of the County’s main streets.

It is a quality composed of much more than architecture, history, natural beauty and alluring shops and gardens. Yet it remains an elusive quality to explain and identify.

Early last year, the County, in partnership with the Chamber of Tourism and Commerce and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, launched a two-year downtown revitalization project. It focused on five urban areas in the County: Picton, Wellington, Rossmore, Consecon and Bloomfield.

Wellington Downtown Revitalization (DR) Committee chair Evan Nash (middle) leads a walking tour through Wellington on Friday afternoon. He was joined by landscape architects Janna Joyce (centre left) and Michael Hannay as well as the DR project co-ordinator Tom Coke (right).

The project spent much of the first year gathering data, conducting surveys with residents, businesses and visitors. It is currently working with landscape architects from the firm MBTW / WAI to develop streetscape designs and additions to enhance and reinforce the qualities that draw people to these urban area’s Main Streets.

Over the last few weeks, the architects along with members of the downtown revitalization committee and County staff, have walked the County’s main streets, getting a first-hand sense of the scale, opportunities and challenges in each community.

On Friday, the team visited Wellington. Beginning at the Legion, the troop strolled along Main Street, finishing up at the United Church.

There was considerable discussion of the trees that line Main Street throughout the downtown core, that they areprized for contributing to the distinctive character of thevillage. There was, too, an extensive discussion of the for-mer convenience store at the corner of Wharf and MainStreets as well as the reconstruction of Lane Creek run-ning through the centre of the village.

The County’s Wendy Lane explained that County engineers were developing plans to address the underground need and that this work would help determine whether the existing building might be salvaged and what could be constructed over the creek.

The walking tour also dipped south on West Street to Water Street to showcase the block’s span of public shoreline.

The County and its landscape architects want to know what residents value about Main Street. They have prepared an online survey to collect this feedback. It is on the County’s website pecounty.on.ca. Just follow the links for Downtown Revitalization. The survey can also be viewed here.