Pride of place top of mind in Elmwood

Elmwood

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This article was published 20/11/2024 (331 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Slowly but surely, things are changing in Elmwood.

Earlier this month, two archways were added to Henderson Highway, just north of the Hespeler Avenue intersection, welcoming visitors to the neighbourhood. Not only do the ornate steel archways help instil pride of place, they’re also part of a larger strategic plan to improve the area long-term.

“It’s like a pin on a map saying, ‘Hey, this is a place that’s worth visiting and living in,’” explained Michel Durand-Wood, chair of ReImagine Elmwood, a non-profit group made up of community stakeholders committed to making Elmwood “a safer, more inviting, more equitable place to live, play, work and do business.”

Following 2018’s five-year neighbourhood plan, ReImagine Elmwood has been behind a number of initiatives, both temporary and permanent, starting with a pop-up “parklet” on Watt Street in the summer of 2021. Last year, eight large fibreglass ‘marbles’ were painted by local community groups and installed on the median along Henderson Highway between Hespeler and Johnson Avenue, acting as both public art and an eye-catching safety feature.

“These marbles, they’re meant to create edge-friction, like the feeling of enclosed space, something to make you slow down and take it in,” said Leilani Esteban Villarba, CNRC’s executive director, when they were installed. “These were absolutely meant to create more safety in the community.”

“Like the marbles, (the arches) are neighbourhood beautification, pride of place, but also traffic calming, to create that edge-friction, to get traffic to slow down,” Durand-Wood said. “One is for safety, the other is noise levels. Most noise is road noise, not engines. If you can reduce speed by 10 km/h, you can reduce noise levels by half. A lot of this is about making this neighbourhood main street a pleasant place to be in, to own a business or to shop, or walk or wait for the bus.”

Made of steel as a nod to the area’s industrial history and inlaid with reclaimed wood from an elm tree from Elmwood, the new arches are already gaining rave reviews from residents.

“They’re already making an impact,” Durand-Wood said. “When you get more people using the space as it should be, it’s neat to see. We’ve been working on individual projects that all add up together, and I think we’re finally at a point where we can feel a bit of a critical mass building.”

The arches are located close to Noble Avenue on the west and Poplar Avenue on the east by design, as that represents the midway point between Hespeler and Johnson Avenues, where pedestrians have an opportunity to cross Henderson.

“Most behavioural research shows most people aren’t willing to walk more than 50 metres to cross the street,” Durand-Wood said. “So you should have crossing every 100 metres. But that location is the 100 metre-mark, between Hespeler and Johnson crossings. We’ve noticed that people cross there anyway, so we added it there to increase safety at that location.”

Earlier this spring, ReImagine Elmwood celebrated the opening of the Community Corner park at 243 Henderson Hwy.

“We’ve had a bunch of different events, from community organizations and local businesses and other groups, to get people used to being in that space again, being back on Henderson, which is our neighbourhood main street,” Durand-Wood said.

In September, the group installed eight benches along Henderson, thanks in part to an Age-Friendly Community Collaboration grant, and they have also proven to be a hit.

“That came out of previous projects we’d done, with feedback telling us we needed more places to sit and rest, or tie a shoelace, or whatever,” Durand-Wood said. “We knew right away we’d hit on something good when, as soon as we dropped them off, we already had people sitting on them. They’re a good addition, so we plan to keep building on that adding more as we go.”

All these incremental improvements are not only adding up, but building off each other, Durand-Wood added, which is again by design.

“You work on these things, and you can get there, one little step at a time,” he said. “You just gotta make things a little better a little at a time, and it all adds up. Because these are physical changes, you can see them as they are happening. People get on board more easily when they can see the impact.”