I was talking about the development of Lebreton Flats with some people at work yesterday. One thing that came up was how the Lebreton Flats site compares to the Canadian Tire Centre site. While I suspected that the CTC is larger than the available site in Lebreton Flats, I didn’t have anything firm to base that on so I pulled some features out of OpenStreetMap and worked a little GIS magic to produce this map showing Lebreton Flats as it appears today with the Canadian Tire Centre and its parking lots superimposed on top: (you can click to make it bigger)

Even if you were to pack the parking lots (the red polygons) tightly, it looks like there wouldn’t be enough space (assuming the parcel built on is in the southwest corner bounded by the Parkway, Booth Street, the aqueduct and the extension of Preston). I suppose that you could pave the piece of land east of Booth, south of Fleet and north of the aqueduct, but that means a huge portion of Lebreton Flats would still be parking lot. Even assuming that the number of parking spaces needed would be reduced because of the O-Train station that will be built in Lebreton Flats, the arena would presumably be larger than the current CTC (otherwise, why spend all that money moving) and that could offset any reduction in parking spaces.

In the 1960s the federal government expropriated the land in Lebreton Flats from homeowners, companies and industry so that they could built a government office complex similar to Tunney’s Pasture. Fast forward to today and there’s still no government office complex. Some of the land has been dedicated to the War Museum and another parcel has condos on it. The remaining land should be used for something like a new home for the Canada Museum of Science and Technology, rather than an NHL franchise’s arena. Besides being much more accessible to the general public, financially speaking (i.e. it’s cheaper to go to the museum than to a Sens game), it would fit in with the War Museum and also be a nice reminder of the industrial heritage of the lumber and paper industries that used to be in Lebreton Flats.

There has been much discussion recently about what should be built on the vacant land at Lebreton Flats, with a new home for the Senators (the hockey team, not the Red Chamber) getting a lot of people excited. While I can understand the desire by some people to have a more centrally-located arena built there, I don’t think that would be the best use of the land. (more…)

I have a rule of thumb about TAFs: the longer they are, the crumbier the weather is going to be.

TAF AMD CYOW 031045Z 0310/0406 09005KT 2SM -SN -FZDZ BR OVC004 TEMPO 0310/0314 6SM BR OVC008 PROB30 0310/0314 OVC003
FM031400 24008KT 6SM -RASN SCT008 OVC015 TEMPO 0314/0318 2SM -SN
BKN008 OVC015
FM031800 24012G22KT 2SM -SN OVC015 TEMPO 0318/0322 4SM -SN SCT015
OVC025 PROB30 0318/0322 3/4SM -SHSN VV008
FM032200 24012G22KT 6SM -SHSN BKN020
FM040000 25012G22KT P6SM SCT040
FM040500 24010G20KT 3SM -SHSN BKN025
RMK NXT FCST BY 031200Z=

Ick.