Heron Park centre up for redesign

Posted Jan 5, 2012 By Eddie Rwema

EMC News - The renovation and expansion of Heron Park Community Centre continues to feature high on the list of priorities in Capital Ward.

Coun. David Chernushenko and the four community association presidents in the ward have identified the centre as one of the priorities in need of funding to undertake a needs assessment.

While the city did not designate any funding in its 2012 budget for the project, that has not deterred residents to begin a process of discussing what and how their desired community centre would look like.

Since the early fall, Heron Park residents have been working with a group of Carleton University architecture students to do a demographic study of residents in the area and discuss with them their needs and wishes for a renovated centre.

Originally the centre was built to serve as changing rooms for baseball teams, according to the Heron Park Community Association website.

The needs of the surrounding communities have has long since outgrown that simple purpose.

Currently, the centre is shared between the city and residents to run different programs.

Andrew Slade, a student in his final year of graduate studies in architecture at Carleton, has been attending resident meetings for the past 14 weeks trying out different participative and interactive design techniques with various people in the community.

SeeSee"The idea of these discussions is to gather a collective and diverse range of ideas for a new community centre in the Heron Park," said Slade.

He said their main focus has been trying to capture as much information as possible from residents with an aim of understanding what their vision for the future of the centre is, as well as interpreting architectural drawings to the residents.

"The experience has been very valuable," said Slade. "I have definitely learned a lot about how people react and respond to architectural drawings and design./Also, more importantly, I'm learning a lot about what are the types of things that matter to people and how we can learn a lot about space through the way that others imagine it."

From what he has heard from residents, they are looking for a facility that is better able to meet the changing demands of the neighbourhood.

"The ultimate goal is to raise enough awareness, support, and money, eventually, to get the Heron Park community a community centre," said Slade.

Lack of funding is certainly an obstacle, but not one that can be held at bay forever.

"I think we all understand that this will take a fair amount of time and therefore we will have to set many goals in the process to achieving that ultimate one in the end," said Slade.

His biggest goal for now involves creating a display of all the ideas they have come up with so far, for the 2012 Winter Carnival taking place on Feb. 11./

"We are hoping to make this year's event a fundraiser for the new community centre to spread the word to the wider community," said Slade.

"I will be taking all these interactive design ideas and creating a first set of drawings,

diagrams, images, computer renderings/visualizations, models, or whatever seems best to communicate the ideas to the wider public."

He hopes their architectural designs would help motivate and invite more people within the community to come out and give ideas for the new design./