Today we went to the Ontario City Hall in order to submit changes made to the siteplan, primarily the city wanted to see the adjacent parcel uses through a satellite overlay, using it to analyze whether or not the proposed uses for the site. Elaboration was needed on the water cistern so we added that as well. Karen Thompson was very receptive to the changes, but she said that it was problematic to propose a shipping container as a habitable building due to the fact that the planning code as well as the building code of Ontario prohibits such use. We decided to go forward and submit a proposal and attempt to convince the city to allow the use for shipping containers as well as exposed tires.

 

The files we submitted today can be found here:

Folder

With overlay:

JPEG

PDF

Without overlay:

JPEG

PDF

Today, Hana, Necils and I went to the weekly community meeting. Few people actually showed up for this one, largely because Maria was not there. The regulars attended however, but when we arrived everyone was just working their plots. We talked with Arturo, watered the worm bins and Necils turned over the compost in order to aerate it.

 

After working on the garden for a little bit we showed Arturo our progress on the renderings and design for the built structures in the center of the garden, namely the: the library, pavilion/stage, shaded structure, kitchen and mechanical.

Arturo was excited and suggested that the pavilion should be more multipurpose and that we should research the toxicity of the recycled materials we plan to use such as tires and the shipping containers. We also discussed meeting with the City the next day in order to submit revisions to the siteplan.

We arrived fairly late, about 40 minutes late, to the community meeting. Tom and Saul came earlier. Hana and I were stuck at home putting on some finishing touches and printing the siteplan.

 

When we arrived at the community meeting, the meeting hadn’t yet started so thankfully we had time to present our drawing. We were thanked for our efforts and the meeting continued as usual, outlining events in the area that are of interest to the community in order to build a stronger connection across social movements. Several of these events were presented, all of which required the attendance of members of the community.

 

 

One of the agenda items was to address the compost. The community garden gets donations from a produce company of rotten vegetables, these are funneled into the compost, a truckload a week from what we’ve seen so far. Today’s load was 12 pallets, approximately. These were mangos, squash, cucumbers, melons. Everything had been rotting in the truck for several days, and the load was half liquid. The truck itself was covered in mold and flies. A group of around 25 people tackled around 6 or 7 pallets, and the work for us personally was exhausting.

 

 

Before we left, we consulted Arturo and Maria and the community about the changes we were to make. Several small things were mentioned and the date was set for Wednesday to submit the drawings to the city for review.

Our favorite — Tortas Sinaloa after a long day.

 

 

Today, the previous days, as well as the following days were spent on creating the site plan. We drew precisely what the community requested, and this is in preparation for the following Monday community meeting.

 

 

This is our first attempt at submitting drawings to the city, so we are fairly nervous about making everything as legible and code-compliant as possible.