(PHOTO: Warner-Colpitts Lane is named after Sterling Warner and Ian Colpitts, two Stittsville volunteers who were instrumental in building the Johnny Leroux Arena.)
Councillor Shad Qadri provided an update on the process to rename five Stittsville streets, and has confirmed that “street names acknowledging meritorious members of the community” won’t make the shortlist. Instead, they’ll be reserved for use in future neighbourhoods.
Five Stittsville streets need new names because the City says they sound too close to other streets in Ottawa. They include Bell Street, Goulbourn Street, Elm Crescent, Long Meadow Way, Meadowland Drive.
Back in January, the City asked residents on the streets for suggestions. They ended up receiving 236 suggestions, along with a lot of opposition to the changes. The city narrowed down those suggestions to a shortlist and then asked residents on each street to vote on their favourite.
The names on the shortlist weren’t very popular, and a public outcry led to the city re-open the suggestion box.
In his weekly newsletter sent out today, Qadri wrote that staff are currently vetting the suggestions to see if they meet city’s street naming criteria. Residents on each street will be able to vote on the final shortlist of names.
Here’s the full update from Qadri:
As many of you know, some Stittsville streets required new names due to similar sounding names existing within the City since the amalgamation in 2004. The public was invited to give new options to rename Bell, Elm, Goulbourn, Meadowlands and Long Meadow Way and the deadline is now complete.
After the amazing response from the affected residents and extended members of the community, City staff is presently vetting all of the street name submissions for compliance with the street naming guidelines.
Once the vetting is complete a new letter will be sent to the property owners on the affected streets asking them to vote on one of the compliant street name submissions. One vote will be accepted per property.
The street names presented to the property owners will be:
- listed alphabetically;
- identify the intended meaning for the name; and
- identify whether it was submitted by a resident of the street or not.
Any street name intended to recognize an individual must have been successfully approved for commemoration. Throughout the submission process we have received a number of street names acknowledging meritorious members of the community. These names will not be included as part of the vote as the approved commemorative street names will instead be applied to new streets within new development areas in Stittsville.
A new name will be selected based on the street name with the highest number of votes. A subsequent letter will be sent to the affected residents notifying them of their new street name and implementation date and of course, I will be announcing all updates in my weekly column.