Development of an Urban Neighbourhood Plan for Brookville-Torryburn
Dr. Elizabeth McGahan, UNB Saint John
Location of Brookville-Torryburn: situated at the eastern end of Saint John it encompasses the area on either side of Rothesay Road extending from just east of the CNR underpass to the city line at the Renforth border. Similar to development along other access roads leading to and from the city, Brookville-Torryburn’s built environment reflects the characteristic pattern of “ribbon development” associated with rural areas. Within the city Brookville-Torryburn is known as an “outlying” area, a term used to describe many of the areas acquired in 1967 when amalgamation resulted in these lands becoming part of a new and enlarged greater Saint John.
Historical background (c. 1824-1990s): Brookville-Torryburn was located in the Parish of Simonds until 1967. Land grant maps identify an area owned by Charles Clarke in 1824. The earliest extant residence was constructed in 1845 in Torryburn and served as a military barracks in the mid 1860s. At mid-century and shortly thereafter four substantial carpenter gothic homes were constructed essentially at the edge of the Great Marsh. To these historic homes were added two architecturally significant stone homes in 1914 and 1926, respectively. In the 1890s the current Kelbaugh home, a distinctive mansard roofed home was constructed. None of these homes was a part of an organized residential development. They were simply constructed along the Rothesay Road. Over time an array of smaller homes were added between 1907 and 1947, again absent a planned or organized development other than the organizing principle of building along the road.
In the 1950s and 1960s there was some residential turnover as older residents either died or moved away and newer post-war families moved into the Brookville-Torryburn area. However, the area still retained it rural character and as recently as 1967 some of the residents in the area kept chickens on their premises.
The modernization of Saint John touched the area with amalgamation in 1967 but its full impact may not have been felt until the construction of the thruway in the 1970s. The Rothesay Avenue exit from the thruway at the CNR underpass onto Rothesay Avenue visually severed Rothesay Avenue from Rothesay Road. Prior to this development, with its ancillary roads leading onto and off the Thruway, residents from Brookville could walk from their homes onto Rothesay Avenue and experience a visual connection between the two parts of Rothesay Avenue/Rothesay Road. This sense of connectedness ended with the creation of the Thruway and the routing of additional exit traffic onto both Rothesay Avenue and the residential areas of Rothesay Road. The Thruway also forced Brookville Limestone Manufacturing (the quarry) to route all of its trucks through the residential area of Brookville rather than onto the Thruway. The opening of the Regional Hospital in the early 1980s and the exponential growth of UNBSJ from the mid-1990s to the present further exacerbated the traffic load onto Rothesay Road as employees and clients of these institutions commuted to the Kennebecasis Valley.
For the most part until commercial development in the McAllister and Parkway Malls intensified in the early 1990s, Brookville-Torryburn residents limited their public concerns to the environmental effects of the blasting at the quarry. But additional traffic generated by all the newer commercial and institutional development degraded the pedestrian safety and quality of life for residents living along the Rothesay Road in Brookville-Torryburn. The continued absence of sidewalks encouraged vehicular traffic to “see” Rothesay Road as a “highway” and not as a street of residences. Moreover, the adverse impact of the increasingly dense built commercial environment on the Great Marsh combined with an absence of sewers along Rothesay Road resulted in greater amounts of stagnant water in the ditches that line Rothesay Road.
Current background (c.1990s-2005): Throughout the 1990s the residents gradually became aware that City Hall had no collective image of Brookville-Torryburn other than as an access road with scattered houses and a quarry. This impression was confirmed for many when the city granted a permit to a trailer sales company to sell and store large trailers at a site in the neighbourhood. Discouraged after years of trying to gain the city’s attention through a series of largely unsuccessful attempts to assert some agency over neighbourhood developments (particularly with respect to the quarry), the Brookville-Torryburn residents in the late summer and early fall of 2004 organized a formal objection against what they considered the latest affront to their residences. Outraged, they challenged the legitimacy of the permitted use of trailer sales at a public meeting of the Common Council and won. Instead of only using the environmental arguments which had been the centre of the previous appeals to the Common Council, their case against the trailer sales operation centred on the inappropriateness of placing such a development in the midst of so many heritage homes. Contending that they appreciated the city’s need to focus on the development of Trinity Royal in the city centre, they reminded the Common Council that it needed to recognize “pockets of heritage” throughout the city and that Brookville-Torryburn was one such “pocket.” The residents argued that a strong city is made up of strong neigbhourhoods and that the city could not afford to ignore “outlying” neighbourhoods.
In short, the Brookville-Torryburn Residents Association, desired to be recognized as agents in the development of their residential area, which also contains mixed land-uses. They advised Council that they were not against all commercial development but that they were against the visually distasteful commercial development that had permitted the establishment of a trailer sales operation in the area of Brookville. The Brookville-Torryburn residents were aided in their appeal by Council’s recognition of the residential development at Drury Cove, which will change the socio-economic character of this area as it unfolds over the next decade.
Following the successful removal of the trailers from the neighbourhood, the Brookville-Torryburn Association embarked on the creation of an Urban Neighbourhood Plan by focussing initially on the core of its September 2004 presentation to the Council: the area hosts one of the city’s “pockets of heritage.”
Meetings were held with members of the city’s planning department: Mr. J. Baird, Mr. C. Campbell, Mr. R. Pollack and Mr. J. Bezanson to determine the feasibility of undertaking the development of an urban neighbourhood plan. The city’s planning department provided the Brookville-Torryburn Association with copies of previously completed neighbourhood plans from other sections of the city, stressing that these plans served as guidelines and were not necessarily commitments to action on behalf of the city.
Participation of CURA:
In the winter of 2005 the Brookville-Torryburn project became affiliated with the UNBSJ CURA group of research projects. Ms. Jacquelyn Clydesdale, a student, was hired for approximately 55 hours to research those homes identified by the Brookville-Torryburn Association as heritage homes. (In Canada according to Messrs. Campbell and Bezanson any home 60 or more years old meets the age criteria for heritage designation. Other criteria are also applied.)
Ms. Clydesdale’s contract was extended for approximately another 55 hours. In total she worked approximately three weeks throughout the Winter Term on the project. Her specific task was to research the ownership histories of the buildings. Ms. Clydesdale’s work produced fairly thorough records for most of the properties but not all of them. Rather than use all of her time researching a few of the more challenging property histories, I instructed her to move onto other properties so that some information could be gleaned for all of the properties during her term of employment. The research gaps will be completed either by me or a student researcher.
Ms. Clydesdale’s work was undertaken at the offices of Service New Brunswick. CURA had the cooperation of Mr. Philip Roper, supervisor of records. Further, I had the cooperation of Mr. Yves Leger of the city’s GIS digital geographic data office who forwarded aerial maps for the use of the project.
A brief synopsis of the work done by Ms.Clydesdale and myself was presented in August at the CURA mini-conference.
Additional analysis to be completed:
1. Completion of the property histories to permit a more comprehensive comment on the rate of residential succession in the neighbourhood of Brookville – Torryburn since 1950
2. Assessment of success of local advocacy group in achieving goals for its neighbourhood
3. Completion of the final draft of the Urban Neighbourhood Plan.