Confederation Basin

FIVE-ANCHOR ECO-RATINGS have finally been awarded to both POH and Confed by the Ontario Marina Operators Association's Clean Marine Program.

The City of Kingston-operated marinas join Collins Bay Marina which received its 5-anchor rating in 2005, one of the first in Ontario to achieve it.

Other local eco-rated marinas include Kingston Marina, Treasure Island Marina, and Loyalist Cove Marina.

Local OMOA-member marinas that have no eco-rating at all include Rideau Marina and Blue Woods Marina.

TOKEN PARK PROPOSAL IS A WATERFRONT DOWNGRADE, says a thoughtful reader commenting on Kingston's Disappearing Waterfront.

Here's the problem:

In prior years, the seawalls of Block D, some 200 linear meters worth, were commonly used for docking, including docking very large boats. The Block D seawall was also used for RC model boat competitions.

The current proposal for Token Park has the seawall finished with stone boulders, just like most of Kingston's waterfront.

Which begs these questions:

1. Why does this shoreline, already well under cover of the Confederation Basin boulder breakwall, need to have a boulder-block finish?

2. Doesn't Kingston have enough inacessible boulder seawalls already?
3. Why is the City of Kingston apparently settling for the minimum-cost-to-Brit-Smith option while rendering 200m of shoreline completely inaccessible and dysfunctional?

AT COUNCIL ON TUESDAY is the recommendation to use Black Bird Holding, LTD of Belleville for replacing B-dock at Confederation Basin.

They beat other bids from Goderich and Peterborough.

CITY OF KINGSTON REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL for partial dock replacement of "B" Dock at Confederation Basin Marina.

Interestingly this item apparently doesn't appear in the marinas section of the 2007-08 Municipal Capital Budget.

A a six-year Confederation Basin refurbishment program began in 2006.

TOKEN PARK CONCEPT PLANS have finally been posted on the City website.

Download the Phase 1 concepts and the Phase 2 concepts.

Observation: You've got to love how this city does business.

• It plans a public meeting with no documents posted online beforehand.
• At the meeting, attendees must queue to have a brief chance to look at diagrams.
• Then attendees must sit-through the orchestrated sales-pitch.

By not posting plans before the meeting, this assures an unprepared and uninformed audience at the meeting, all the better minimize the chance of derailing pre-conceived development plans.

This is really how our waterfront got so ruined: one step at a time. That's how Block-D got stuffed with tall buildings, and that's how the rest of us ended-up with a token-park.

Here we have a "proposed marina building" with no connection whatsoever to the marina. The foot of the nearest dock, on the west-side of the Radisson Hotel, is 245 m away. The foot of the main docks, on Clarence Street, is over 520m away. That's going to be a great marina building, don't you think?

Here is detail of the juncture between Token Park and the stone breakwater that surrounds Confederation Marina. Note the utter lack of vision: there's plenty of usable space on the stone breakwater. Waterfront cities world-wide that "get it" have piers and breakwalls people can walk on. But in Kingston? Nah! Token Park is really a dog park, a place where the condo owner's pets can "go", nevermind that there's acres of great waterfront space out on the stone breakwall.

A SCAN FROM THE PAST: You are looking at a small-sized scan of the navigation chart created for the 1976 Olympic Sailing events (or Yachting as it was then known).

Olympic sailing was hosted in Kingston and it remains, 31 years later, the pinnacle of Kingston's impressive regatta history.

Click to see:

• medium (500 x 447 pixels),

• large (1024 x 915 pixels), and

• original (5969 x 5333 pixels) sizes of this chart.

The chart shows several very interesting things:

• The sailing events were held way out in Lake Ontario, southwest of Simcoe Island. The racing area was a full 5-miles from P.O.H., and Course Charlie, used for Tornado class catamarans, was another 5-miles beyond that.

• The racing area was bounded by 52 orange spar buoys.

• Within the racing area, near its southern edge, there was something called Bedford Tower which isn't there anymore. Whatever it was, there was a 300m exclusion zone around it.

• Note the detailed bathymetry of Portsmouth Olympic Harbour, and the layout of the site for the Olympic event.

• Also see how, prior to the 1984 expansion of Confederation Basin, Kingston Harbour was dotted with many spar buoys leading to the Lasalle Causeway along Carruthers Shoal. Old-time dinghy sailors will remember these well, as they served as ideal boathandling practice marks.

Thanks to David Page, KYC archivist, who supplied the chart used to create these digital versions.

THE LACK OF SHORELINE FISHING SPOTS is the subject of an interesting front-page story in today's Whig. It highlights a big problem with the waterfront in the City of Kingston: accessibility.

We've got:

• town docks we can't walk,
• birds-only breakwalls,
• several ramps with little or no parking for trailers,
• apparently numbskulls are in charge at Fort Henry and,
• according to the article, angler-hostile desk-flying bureaucrats at all levels.

THE KINGSTON DISCOVER BOATING EVENT returns to Confederation Basin Marina, Saturday and Sunday July 28th and 29th between 10am and 5pm.

Free boat rides for all who wish to give boating a try.

This event is courtesy of many volunteer boat owners and several of our local marinas: Collins Bay Marina, Ed Huck Marine (of Rockport), Kingston Marina, Treasure Island Marina, River Rat Marine (in Landsdowne, ON) with space and dockage provided by the City of Kingston's Confederation Basin Marina.

AT NEXT TUESDAY'S COUNCIL MEETING, City staff seeks to declare the property at 5 Brock Street as surplus, paving the way for its sale to the Hotel that surrounds it.

This is primo commonwealth property on the waterfront, adjacent to our downtown docks, and across the street from City Hall, Confederation Park, Confederation Basin, and historic Market Square.

Or is it, potentially, Starbucks'?

DAY DOCK CHARGES in effect during July and August at Confederation Basin. It's $3 for the first two hours and $1 per hour after that, for a maximum of $8 per day.

No mention of this yet on the City's Marinas or Flora MacDonald Confederation Basin web pages.

There are WATERFRONT ITEMS IN THE 2007-08 MUNICIPAL CAPITAL BUDGET which should be approved tonight.

• Under Culture and Rec
  • $30,000 for a Beaches Study
  • $30,000 for Beaches Imprementation
  • $50,000 for Cycling and Pathways Implementation
  • $30,000 for the Lake Ontario Park Master Plan
• Under Marinas
  • $80,000 for Confederation Basin-Power upgrade on E and F docks. E-F docks are on your immediate right, jutting towards the Ramada, as you walk onto the main dock.
  • $50,000 for POH Break Wall floating extenston
  • $40,000 for POH Accessibility Upgrades
  • $30,000 for POH, for the facings of D and E docks. D and E docks are the two closest to the grassy playground area.
  • $10,000 POH launch ramp upgrades
  • $40,000 for Confederation Basin-Marinas Business Case Study (?!)
• Under Planning and Development
  • $75,000 for a Waterfront Strategy
• Under Properties
  • $105,000 for various at the Marine Museum (roof, chimney)

MORE MARINA SHENANEGANS IN THE CITY:

Here's a scanned copy of the 11-page City of Kingston Request For Information (RFI) No. CS-AM-2006-02 on the future of Confederation Basin and Portsmouth Olympic Harbour that describes itself as

"Partnering opportunity with the municipality in the provision of capital investment in marina infrastructure and delivery of marinas operations and marketing services"

Read the whole thing.

[Updated]: Click here to view the July 25th 2006 City of Kingston website announcement of the matter. Click here to see the interesting and detailed documents submitted to Council to approve this move in late March, 2006.

Various questions arise from all this:

• Why hasn't this document been widely circulated? It was advertised once in Kingston This Week. Pick-up only from the Midland St office. It was never publicly posted online by the City. Was a notice of this forwarded to, say, the Ontario Marina Operators Association? Were players from the wider marina industry approached? Why such a short leash?

• What is the linkage between this RFI and the Request For Proposals, which apparently would soon follow? Why the rush? The RFI packs onerous production requirements into a short time, and reserves all rights to plans and intellectual property conveyed by respondents. The period for questions, for example, has already expired, just three weeks into this.

• What's in place to protect taxpayers, protect access for boating residents and events, and for equitable treatment for other local waterfront-related interests, both commercial and public?

• Why does all this appear to not pass a basic stink-test? Last April, for example, the The Kingston Brewing Company was precipitously given the task of running #6 Clarence Street, which is now the marina office, in what was the restaurant nearest to Confederation Basin.

This 112-foot Westport luxury yacht recently spent a few hours at Collins Bay Marina. Next stop: Confederation Basin

The City of Kingston has issued a Request for Information for potential partners to "provide capital investment in marina infrastructure" and to "deliver marinas operations and marketing services" for Confederation Basin and Portsmouth Olympic Harbour.