Greeting Crystal Beach – Lakeview,
We are back! The CBLCA executive held it’s first meeting after the summer break and is gearing up for a busy fall. Even in its summer slumber the CBLCA is still is on call and dealt with a few issues on your behalf, here are some highlights:
As mentioned in the mid summer newsletter, we had the doors of the Maki ice rink Bunker painted by a local Ottawa artist. Many City hoops were successfully jumped through to make this happen!
A few members of the Executive meet with the City and the new developer about the Villa Lucia development. The original, Montreal based developer, passed it onto a new organization. We don’t know the exact reason, but the end result is the new developer is planning a 6 storey building, more inline with the community’s wishes. While we did see some drawings, we were asked to hold off sharing them with the community until they are updated. We have not received anything as of yet, but this could be related to the City Election and perhaps the New Official Plan not being yet approved.
Another issue that came up during the summer was access to the Ottawa river via Grandview road, in Crystal Bay. We became aware of this by a resident who reached out to the CBLCA. Apparently this was a hot topic on FaceBook, which yielded the predictable calm reasoned arguments… (As a side note, the CBLCA doesn’t monitor the Community Facebook page, we may or may not see posts), so if there is an issue like this we can act faster if resident(s) contact us directly. The CBLCA soon was in contact with the Crystal Bay Association (CBCA) and our Councillor (Theresa Kavanagh). We met with the CBCA and had a productive discussion with them. In a nut shell, the City placed the logs in the wrong spot and blocked off most of the legal street parking at the end of Grandview. There has been some tensions between the immediate neighbours on that street and people parking there to access the river. Of course there is a whole city out there looking for river access and parking, so this was not an action specifically aimed at our residents. The end result is that after a productive discussion, where the CBCA was clear they had no issues with the general public accessing the river and as always wanted a good relationship with us all. Our Councillor assisted in having the logs moved that week, so that 5 cars could easily park at the end of Grandview.
We are coming up to the annual CBLCA Annual General Meeting (AGM), to be held in Early November, after the City elections. The format will of course depend on the current COVID situation, but if things go well, we are hopping for an event at the sailing club with a beer in hand! A live stream via some online platform will also be included.
I will now jump on my soap box: The CBLCA is your community voice, we meet with the City, developers and provincial officials and represent you. We meet with other community associations and interest groups to keep you informed and to make our collective voices heard. We organize community events and, when requested, can support resident initiated events. We manage Maki House, allowing community oriented activities to operate rent free. We are not paid, we do this because we live here and want Crystal Beach Lakeview to be a great community for all! I have asked the Executive members to get back to me on if they intend to run again in the Executive. Of course all positions are open to anyone who lives in our community and I encourage anyone who is interested to reach out to us. I myself will not be running as president, and will become the Past President, where I can help the new president navigate the role (as much or as little as is needed). If you like the work we have done, come out and support us, if you don’t like what we have been doing I encourage you to join the Executive and improve it. If you have any questions please reach out! (cblcapresident@gmail.com)
God save the King!
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