Cornwall ON – Get used to seeing these around Cornwall for the next ten to twenty years.
There’s going to be a lot of development in our city and area, and now is the time to have some vision about how the city should evolve.
The chief concern should be the old Domtar site. Rarely does a city have such a large section of prime waterfront land be in a position to start from scratch.
How it’s developed will brand Cornwall for the rest of this century so what goes into that site is very important to the future of this city.
What better way to move forward than to create a Green City in Cornwall similar to what Quebec City and Victoria have created.
The Quebec government is footing $28 million of the $300-million bill for Cite verte – 800 environmentally friendly housing units, located close to Quebec City’s downtown.
The homes are designed to use 30 per cent less energy than standard residences.
The community will feature narrow streets to diminish the use of cars and promote self-service bikes. In addition, a basin will capture and recycle stormwater to irrigate green spaces and there will be green roofs, solar panels and LED street lamps.
The starting price for houses in Cite verte is expected to be around $350,000, slightly higher than the market price for standard homes in the area.
“We want green projects to become our trademark,” said Quebec City Mayor Regis Labeaume at the recent launch of the Cite verte – funded mostly by private investors.
And that’s an exciting start. It shows how Green technology can impact our lives and could you imagine a mixed commercial and residential Green development on our prime waterfront?
That would put our city into a whole other dimension here and we’d be a beacon of Eastern Ontario instead of an afterthought after Kingston and sometimes even Brockville.
Situated in the heart of the City of Victoria, the Dockside Green community is owned and being developed by Vancity on fifteen acres of former harbourfront industrial land, with a planned total of 1.3 million square feet of mixed residential, office, retail and commercial space.
The limit is our area’s desire. If we can get all levels of government to work together with private industry we can turn what was once a bleak industrial environmental blight into something people from all over Canada can admire and what better way to attract people to this region than with a project like this?
What do you think Cornwall? I hope some of the candidates running for election pipe into this story and share their vision for Cornwall and options like this for our waterfront development. You can post your comments below.
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What a great way to promote our city and attract new businesses as well as families! Forward thinking people are what is needed if we are to grow as a community. If we keep those ideas coming, we will be the leader in our region.
We can…. However we better start offering green technology courses and entrepreneurship assistance in a big way, if we want to seed ideas and truly crest a green economy.
But first this city needs a long term strategy… I’m talking a 5, 10, 25 year plan. Without a plan or focus it doesn’t matter what we do because it won’t be aligned with any particular goals or vision.
Cornwall really needs to grow up and figure out what it wants. A retirement city or a vibrant city 2.0 with creative new firms creating technology to forge the green revolution. Until the city decides what it wants, it’ll remain the same…
I just thought of something.
Everyone is always looking to attract businesses to the city. What if we created businesses and attached the talent.
Let’s be innovators….
All right a green revolution! I vote for Kermit the Frog for…..
Oh Man, I don’t know about voting for Kermit the Frog. There’s a lot of evidence out there that he’s gay. Rainbow Connection, and all that sort of stuff. Just Google it.
How will ERT teams be able to respond in this situation?
“The community will feature narrow streets to diminish the use of cars and promote self-service bikes.”
If the new buildings will use less energy and be built from recycled products why are they costing more money?
I would assume the technology is proven thus and R/D, engineering costs were covered under the original grants. Now it is just a manufacturing cost for materials and construction.
Has anyone asked where the materials are manufactured? Is the company doing the recycling and manufacturing using the same green mentality we are trying to promote here? Or is it in places we would rather not talk about in order to achieve a clean environmental front?
Green is good and green is much needed but somebody has to watch the people setting rates and values of the green initiative. A Prime example is the compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) which use mercury. Now we have less electrical costs, which is primarily hydro electric and clean in itself, but we now need special facilities to recycle the old lights. Composting, rotting foods create methane naturally, a big contributor the green house gasses.
So who is watching these people?