Many good things have happened in our community this past year. Perhaps the most noticeable is the significant level of public investment in our community services that is taking place. With both the community centre and our public library branch undergoing extensive renovations, representing in total about $5 million in investment, we are seeing an unprecedented improvement in our community institutions. In addition, the City has launched the Sunnyside traffic study to look at ways to improve safety on one of the main connector streets in the community.
All of these developments are welcome and will make a significant contribution to improving the quality of life in Old Ottawa South. And I think it is safe to say that none of these things would have happened if it were not for the level of community activism we have shown in demanding improvements to our community infrastructure and actively fund raising towards that goal.
We are also seeing on Bank Street a retail community that is, despite the recession, making significant progress with the opening of a number of new retail operations, including a replacement for the Fresh Fruit store and a number of new speciality shops and eating places. The Mayfair Theatre also seems to be doing well and expanding beyond simply showing films to hosting literary and cultural events.
We have also managed as a community association to maintain a high level of community programming and community events, even though we have been operating in temporary facilities over the last year while our community centre is being renovated. Indeed, we have managed to keep our operating costs sufficiently under control so that, despite a more expensive operating structure necessitated by renting facilities, we have not suffered any of the financial losses that had been forecast. "We have been very fortunate in being able to access such wonderful facilities at Southminister United Church to run our programmes for the year we have been out of the Firehall. The quality of those facilities have played no small part in our ability to run an effective, and financially sustainable, suite of programs for the community during this year. I do want to thank the Church and its staff for being so accommodating and for being such great partners in this important community enterprise."
So we are starting off a new year in good financial shape and with major new facilities in the community opening up. The challenge we will face will be to capitalize on these opportunities to deliver more and better community programming for our residents. Now this is, for once, a good problem to have as rather than "making do" we can really expand our horizons and look at new kinds of programmes and potentially serve new groups in the community, while offering better quality programming to those we already serve. While the new community centre will offer expanded space, one of the big advantages of the newly renovated space will be the ability to run several programmes simultaneously and with better isolation of the programming rooms from one another, less chance that children's programming in one room will disturb adult programming in another. One of the big decisions we will need to make is whether to use the new basement multipurpose room as a dedicated exercise facility with machines that could offer fitness programmes to members. It will be a difficult decision weighing up alternative uses for the large space and assessing whether demand in the community will be sufficient to support the capital investment involved which will be well over $100,000.
I remain optimistic however about the outcome for programming in general at our new centre. All the experience with the renovation of city centre community facilities such as the Glebe Community Centre or the Plant Bath is that demand and interest goes up dramatically for local programming when these facilities are re-opened. So I think there is a very good chance that we will be faced with more demand than we imagined.
This also raises, however, another issue. As we grow as an organization and as the diversity of the roles we play expand, we will need to pay increasing attention to how we manage and govern ourselves as a community organization. I understand that the City will want us to enter into a more formal arrangement with them this coming year in terms of how we manage recreational programming at the community centre and what the respective roles of the City and OSCA will be in delivering those programmes and running the Centre more broadly. This will obviously prompt us as well to re-assess how we manage our internal affairs to ensure greater transparency and clarity in our operations. We have already done some work in defining more specifically what roles OSCA needs to change, what new roles it needs to take on and what things it needs to cease doing. We also need to rethink how we raise money for our non-recreational activities and indeed how we recruit members and volunteers. Nevertheless I am confident with the focus and commitment we have shown as a community in the past we will be up to these new challenges.
But there are clouds on the horizon. As I have outlined many times since last summer in my OSCAR column, the impacts on this community of the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park are likely to be very negative. The potential for consistent traffic congestion and the impact on our local merchants are major concerns. Council will review the project in June when critical studies on traffic and retail impacts will need to be carefully assessed. Unless there are significant changes to the scale and nature of the project I fear that the outcomes for us and the other surrounding communities near Lansdowne Park: the Glebe, Old Ottawa East and Centretown, will be very negative indeed.
The irony we face is that the very substantial progress we have made over the past few years in improving our community could be negated by an ill considered and inappropriate commercial development on one of the City's largest public spaces.
It has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve as your President over the past year, but most importantly I want to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues on the Board for their dedicated service, particularly those who are leaving us this year: Lai-Ling Lee, Mohammad al-Assad, Jenny Heysom, Nerys Parry and Michael Loewen. I also want to thank the OSCA staff, especially our executive director, Deirdre McQuillan, for their dedicated service to the association and the community over the past year. Also a vote of thanks to our partners in the City's Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Branch and in particular our City centre staff, programme director Dinos Dafniotis and centre director Cathie Buchanan, without whom it would not be possible to deliver programming to you. And finally I would like to thank you, the residents of Old Ottawa South, for your support and participation over this very productive year.
