Your Idlewood Greenway, your watershed

May 1, 2024

5 to 8 p.m.

Franklin Public School (371 Franklin Street North, Kitchener)

Please register

We are adding underground stormwater storage to Idlewood Greenway to improve water quality and reduce flood risks. We’re also upgrading the trails in the project area.

About the open house:

• Learn more about stormwater improvements and trail upgrades coming to Idlewood Greenway.
• Drop in anytime! Staff and consultants will be available to receive your feedback and answer questions.
• During this event, join Reep Green Solutions for a fun interactive Nurturing Nature in Your Neighbourhood workshop at 7 pm! Event details are available on Eventbrite.
• We will have children’s activities and child-minding
• A light meal will be provided

If you can’t attend this in-person event, you can participate virtually. We will post materials on this webpage for you to review and comment on closer to the event.

This project was approved by the Ministry of the Environment in 2016 as part of the Integrated Stormwater Management Master Plan (ISWM-MP). If community consultations lead to required project modifications, we will seek to amend the relevant planning tools -- in this case, the Class Environmental Assessment, under which the ISWM-MP was completed.

It has been a while since we updated you on this project. Thank you for your patience while we slowed down our design process to get this project right. In January 2023, we invited you to complete a survey to help us understand park use and what the park means to the community. Thank you to all who participated and shared their input.

Here is a summary of the results of what we heard. For a more detailed report on what we heard from you, please read the summary: Winter 2023 What We Heard Report

We received 65 surveys. Thank you for sharing your input! Here are some responses you shared:

You described the park as:

• “A beautiful and clean space”
• “A lovely place to exercise and connect with nature”
• “Has clear visibility and open space”

You feel comfortable and safe in these parks:

• “We use the park all year-round”
• “Located in a safe neighbourhood”
• “Park has lots of children and friendly families”

You have ideas for changes to the parks, including:

• “Drainage could be improved”
• “Trails are uneven and too close to homes”
• “Include more plants and seating”
• “Barren and empty. Lack of recreational facilities and playgrounds.”

What’s Next for Idlewood Greenway?

Your input from the survey is being used to inform concept designs.

Thank you for all of your questions. You can find an updated FAQ page with common questions and answers. We look forward to hosting a project open house this year and will share more details soon.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe for updates. Add your email to the Stay Informed box on this page, then click ‘Subscribe’. If you have any questions, please contact us at idlewoodgreenway@kitchener.ca.

Thank you for all your feedback about this project so far.

We heard there is a lot of confusion about the location of the proposed underground stormwater facility. We also heard that many people in the neighbourhood do not know this green space as "Idlewood Greenway". In fact some people told us they did not know this area had a name at all.

In response to your comments and questions, we made some changes to this page to help clarify.

Last week, we made these updates:

• Removed the words “park”, “pond” and “amenities” from the survey
• Changed other wording to refer to this location as a greenway, green space, or open space – not a park

This week we also:

• Added an interactive map
• Extended the survey deadline by two weeks – now open until February 13, 2023

We are also going to find some more ways to make sure we inform community members and they have a chance to answer the survey. Please subscribe for email updates by using the Subscribe button

If you have any questions , please reach out to Bart Mazan, Project Manager, at bart.mazan@kitchener.ca or 519-503-1641.

Thanks to helpful resident feedback, we have made a few corrections to the Idlewood Greenway survey. We removed the words park, pond, and amenities from the survey and the newsfeed update below. The survey questions remain the same, so if you have already responded, you don't need to complete a new survey.

We have several stormwater projects on Engage and used another project's wording in the Idlewood Greenway survey. We're sorry for the confusion this caused.

If you have questions, please get in touch with Bart Mazan, Project Manager, at bart.mazan@kitchener.ca or 519-503-1641.

Answer the survey

Our first survey is now open. Help us understand how you use Idlewood Greenway and its amenities so we can best integrate the new stormwater ponds into the park space. With your input, we will create preliminary concepts that are relevant to the community. You will get to consider these design drafts and share your feedback when they are ready later in 2023. The survey is open until Jan. 30, 2023.

Answer the survey

Thank you for your continued interest in this project. We are nearing the end of the field assessment and monitoring phase. During the next engagement phase, we will open a survey to learn more about how the community uses Idlewood Greenway. Stay tuned for updates in 2023.

Geotechnical Investigation:

You may see heavy equipment such as an earth auger within the park in the next week or two. This is to see the conditions of the soil which is necessary to begin the design. If you have any questions, please post them to the Questions tab or reach out to the project team.