Glen Stewart Park renovation plans back before council

By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express

The updated plans to reno Glen Stewart Park are back before councillors, and the ugly truth limiting the development plans once again reared its contaminated head.

At the most recent meeting of the Community Services Committee councillors were given a presentation on four options for the reworking of Glen Stewart Park, a small community lub located on Cabot Street and bound by Cartier Avenue to the north, Cabot Street to the west, Durham Street to the east and existing residential lands to the south.

Announced in 2016, the city brought forward plans to update the playground equipment, install a splash pad, along with fixing the crumbling parking lot and eroding creek bed.

Initially, plans also included the removal of two small baseball diamonds on the site and the installation of a new, larger hardball diamond.

However, the plans hit a snag when it was announced last summer that the baseball diamond plans had been scrapped due to “unforeseen existing site conditions”.

“The discovery of a more extensive landfill waste area within the existing park space and the subsequent recommendation provided by our consultant, GHD, to not disturb or excavate into the waste has changed the scope of the project and timing for project completion,” a previous city report reads.

It was a surprise to members of the public, but city staff should have been somewhat aware of what they were getting themselves into ahead of holding public consultations to get the view of residents about what they thought of the park. In fact, many in attendance at the April 2016 open house were very much in favour of the new baseball diamond. However, the original reports that city staff based their plans on were dated and did not reflect the reality of the situation.

Inspections were completed on the site first in 1977 and then again in 2000 by Golder and Associates, both of which cited landfill waste in the southeast corner of the park. A further report done by Golder in 2009, which included three boreholes to nine feet below grade at the north, west and south limits of the site, found landfill waste to the north.

Using these reports, city staff designed the park away from the affected areas, however, during the detailed design stage, staff dug their own “verification test pits” and found the situation was not what they expected.

Now, following restrictions put in place by the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority (CLOCA), there is very limited options when it comes to redeveloping the baseball diamonds and the plans have taken a step back.

“The scale is just that much smaller,” staff told councillors on April 19.

The new options for the site now centre around the western portion of the site, and vary in terms of where to place additional parking.

The preferred option by staff included the installation of a parking lot off of Cabot Street, adjacent to the existing clubhouse. It was the only option that allowed for the creation of accessible parking spaces.

However, it did come with the caveat of smaller play areas and splash pad.

Moving forward, a public consultation is slated to be held to gather further feedback on the preferred option. The date for that meeting have yet to be set.