CAMBRIDGE HERITAGE MASTER PLAN Final Report Prepared for The Corporation of the City of Cambridge Prepared by BRAY Heritage with ERA Architects Inc. Archaeological Services Inc. Maltby & Associates Inc. the Tourism Company June 2008 USER GUIDE 3 CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 PART A: STUDY PURPOSE 15 1. Making a Case for Heritage Master Planning 1.1 What is “Heritage”? 17 1.2 Why Make a Heritage Master Plan? 18 1.3 What are the Plan’s Terms of Reference? 20 2. Producing a Heritage Master Plan 2.1 Study Method 23 2.2 Study Team 25 PART B: HERITAGE RESOURCES AND CONSERVATION OPPORTUNITIES 27 3. The Range of Heritage Resources to be Considered 3.1 Introduction 29 3.2 Context for Conservation 30 3.3 Built Heritage Resources 33 3.4 Cultural Heritage Landscapes 36 3.5 Archaeological Resources 40 4. Valued Aspects of Cambridge’s Past 4.1 Introduction 41 4.2 The First Setting 41 4.3 Rural Beginnings 43 4.4 Historical Development of the Component Communities 54 4.5 Patterns of Urban Development 68 4.6 Industrial Heart 73 4.7 Public Spaces 74 5. Shared Community Values Expressed in Place 5.1 What People Said About Cambridge 79 5.2 Current Values for Place 80 5.3 Common Values 86 5.4 From Values to Themes 88 6. A Toolkit of Ways of Celebrating the Past 6.1 Good Ideas from Elsewhere 93 1 6.2 Conservation and Development Tools 98 6.3 Character Areas 106 6.4 Individual Resources 134 6.5 Personal Histories 136 PART C: OPTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 139 7. Strategies for Improvement 7.1 Introduction 141 7.2 Enhancing the Inventory 141 7.2.1 Summary of Current Situation 141 7.2.2 Strategies from Improvement 142 7.3 Enhancing Planning Tools 150 7.3.1 Summary of Current Situation 150 7.3.2 Strategies from Improvement 151 7.4 Enhancing Community and Economy 166 7.4.1 Summary of Current Situation 166 7.4.2 Strategies for Improvement 168 7.5 Enhancing Heritage Tourism 170 7.5.1 Summary of the Current Situation 170 7.5.2 Strategies for Improvement 175 PART D: HERITAGE MASTER PLAN PRINCIPLES, OBJECTIVES AND ACTION PLAN 187 8. The Role of Heritage in the City’s Future 8.1 Introduction 189 8.2 Four Major Initiatives 190 8.2.1 Introduction 190 8.3 Heritage Master Plan Principles 193 8.3.1 Introduction 193 8.4 Action Plan Objectives 194 8.4.1 Introduction 194 8.4.2 Inventory and Evaluation 195 8.4.3 Heritage Policy and Interpretation 197 8.4.4. Heritage Resource Management 201 8.4.5 Economic Development 208 8.4.6 Community Support 212 8.5 Priority Projects and Time Line 213 APPENDICES 219 2 USER GUIDE 3 4 Frequently Asked Questions What is a Heritage Master Plan? • It guides the City’s plans for finding, assessing, conserving and celebrating heritage resources. • It encourages development that respects the heritage character of Cambridge. • It recommends policies for inclusion in the City’s Official Plan. • It provides priorities and timelines for the City’s actions in heritage conservation. How will it affect my property? • It is an overall plan for the entire city and will not directly affect individual properties. • It makes provision for new development to be compatible with existing settings. • It guides growth in ways that avoid negative impacts on existing neighbourhoods. Who prepared the plan? • It was prepared by a consulting team hired by the City. • The team included heritage planners, architects, tourism and economic development consultants, cultural resource specialists, historians and archaeologists. • The plan was guided by a steering committee composed of the Mayor and representatives of Council and the major interest groups in Cambridge. • Comments from the public (via interviews and surveys) influenced the plan. How was the plan prepared? • It followed terms of reference provided by the City. • It reflects current Provincial, national and international best practices in heritage planning. • It was reviewed at regular intervals by the steering committee. • It culminated in a final report for adoption by Council. 5 What will happen after the City adopts the Plan? • The recommended action plan and time line provide a list of immediate and longer term projects to implement the plan. • The study steering committee becomes the implementation committee responsible for carrying out the plan’s recommendations. • It contains ways to monitor the effectiveness of the recommended projects. • It leads to changes in the way heritage is managed by the City, and to revised policies in the City’s Official Plan. • It encourages partnerships with other agencies and groups to act on its recommendations. Who can I ask for further information? • Contact Valerie Spring, Heritage Planner at (519) 740-4650 x 4580 or [email protected] Overview The following Plan has several distinct but related sections. It is intended to be read as a whole, in sequence. However, for those interested in specific topics, there are key sections that should be noted: • For an overview of what the plan is and what it hopes to achieve, see the Executive Summary. • For questions about the study purpose and process, see Sections 1 and 2. • For an explanation of the range of heritage resources considered, see Section 3. • For a thematic history of the community, see Section 4. • For a summary of comments received in interviews, surveys and meetings, see Section 5. • For good ideas from elsewhere, see Section 6. • For strategies for improving the City’s heritage inventory, planning policies, and economic development opportunities, see Section 7. • For the recommendations and action plan, see Section 8. • For background on the current state of heritage planning in Cambridge, see Appendix A. • For meeting minutes, references and a list of persons interviewed, see the remaining Appendices B-D. 6 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 8 Scope and Purpose What is a Heritage Master Plan? It is a new approach to current issues surrounding the management of heritage places. In this it is both a vision document and a policy document, both a product and a process. At the highest level, the Plan expresses the shared values of the community, as manifest in buildings and landscapes and in the cultural uses of such places. The Plan explores these values, puts them in an historic context, and shows how they can have relevance now and in the future. Policies (and actions) in the Plan are intended to make that vision a reality. The Plan is a document to reference as well as a process to forge new ways of doing things. The Heritage Master Plan is an essential first step in moving forward and focusing on the key issues around preparing heritage conservation policies and strategies. However, the Plan is no panacea: it depends upon acceptance by both the City administration and the public at large and, thus, will be proven if it results in new projects and improved management practices. In terms of expectations for its effectiveness, the Plan can: • Provide strategies for improving the delivery of heritage services, such as an upgraded inventory and evaluation process, and better management practices both within the City administration and in the voluntary sector; • Pull together the best advice from previous studies, public comment, the steering committee and City staff review into a single, comprehensive document; • Recommend revised or updated policies for inclusion in the Official Plan; • Provide strategies for implementation, via a set of objectives and prioritized action steps; and • Make it easier for the general public to become engaged in heritage activity. At the same time, the Plan cannot be expected to: • Resolve current controversies surrounding threats to heritage properties; or 9 • Show quick results in terms of economic benefits and improved community support for heritage conservation. Origins Even so, the Plan has a good chance of becoming a catalyst for success because it is the culmination of efforts by many local citizens, over many years. The Plan is based on several initiatives aimed at increasing public awareness of the city’s history. Driving and walking tours of the city prepared by Heritage Cambridge in the 1970s and 1980s provided an initial sense of the heritage resources available locally. Augmenting these were early attempts to forge consensus on overall heritage policy. The first was “Our Common Future”, prepared in 1994 by the Economic Development Advisory Committee of Council. It laid out a set of broad policy objectives and action plan steps for the city, including initiatives involving heritage conservation. From this initial recognition of the cultural and economic importance of heritage arose the Legacy Cambridge project, prepared in 2003 and focused specifically on policies for conservation of natural and cultural heritage resources. The first priority in the final report of Legacy Cambridge was the preparation of a Heritage Master Plan. As a result of these efforts, this Plan is not starting from scratch, and is thus an efficient use of public time and money. The Heritage Master Plan updates and modifies recommendations made in previous studies to suit current conditions and revised Provincial planning and heritage legislation. In doing so, it ensures that the relevant ideas from earlier efforts are retained and given the opportunity to be implemented. Constraints and Proactive Responses The conflicts over heritage issues, and the missed opportunities to realize community and economic benefits from heritage conservation, have been addressed in the preparation of this plan. The current document offers a way to move beyond conflicts over heritage into new partnerships, providing there is the public will to do so. Recent events in Cambridge show an impasse between Council and heritage advocates in several instances, but the causes of this situation go deeper.