Help shape the future of Millwood Park and Carlyle Park

See you at the open house

We are looking forward to seeing you today at the Help shape the future of Millwood Park and Carlyle Park open house!

Join us from 5 to 8 p.m. at Pioneer Park Public School (55 Upper Canada Drive, Kitchener). Learn about the project, see the designs your feedback has shaped, and share your ideas for the next design stage.

Short presentations are at 5:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Please drop in any time. We will provide dinner and children’s activities.

We want to hear from you

Whether you can attend or not, we want your feedback! Check out the poster boards and tell us what you think. You can find the poster boards here. They include:

• Project details, including project background and what we heard from the spring survey
• Three design options for Millwood Park
• Play options for Carlyle Park

Please fill in our survey so we can hear what you think about the design options. Answer the survey here.

November 21, 2023

5 to 8 p.m.

Pioneer Park Public School in the gym (55 Upper Canada Drive, Kitchener)

Please register

We are looking for ways to improve water quality and reduce flood risks through stormwater measures at Millwood Park. After consultation with the community this spring, we have prepared concept designs for the stormwater measures.

We are also looking to update and expand the playground at Carlyle Park. We would love to hear feedback on how you use Carlyle Park.

About the open house:

• Learn more about the stormwater project at Millwood Park and review design options. We will share several designs for stormwater measures based on your feedback.
• Provide input into playground features and updates at Carlyle Park.
• Drop in anytime! Staff and consultants will be available to receive your feedback and answer questions. There will be short presentations at 5:30 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.
• Reep Green Solutions will be on hand to share information about changes you can make in your yard to make Pioneer Park a Rain Smart Neighbourhood.
• We will have children’s activities and child-minding.
• Free vegetarian chili bar provided by Aandanjige Café.

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 provided a project update. We slowed down our design process to better listen to your feedback. Thank you for your patience as we find a design solution to reduce flood risk, improve water quality, and meet the community's needs.

Your input from the survey is being used to inform initial conceptual designs. These designs will be shared at our first project open house on November 21 from 5 to 8 p.m. at Pioneer Park Public School. We would love for you to join us!

Learn more and register for the open house

In January 2023, we invited you to complete a survey to help us better understand how you use Millwood Park and Carlyle Park. Thank you to all who participated and gave their input.

For a detailed report on what we heard from community members at the park and online, please read the summary: Winter 2023 What We Heard Report.

We received 55 survey responses. Thanks for sharing your input! Here are some common themes in you shared:

You described the parks as:

• “A place to play sports and spend time with the whole family”
• “A lovely space of calm, nature and fun”
• “Trail system is essential”

You feel comfortable and safe in these parks:

• “We are constantly in the park, year-round”
• “The parks are full of families”
• “Clean and calm, has good visibility”

You have ideas for changes to the parks, including:

• “Pretty lame playground”
• “Millwood Park needs an upgraded walking path”
• “Lack of seating and shade. More trees could be planted”
• “In spring, the green area is wet and spongy”

Your input from the survey is being used to inform initial conceptual designs. These designs will be shared at our first project open house on November 21 from 5-8 p.m. at Pioneer Park Public School. Learn more and register

We are upgrading the park amenities and adding stormwater measures to Millwood and Carlyle Park. We want to hear from you to understand better how to balance the addition of stormwater measures with other park improvements.

Answer our survey and tell us:

• How you are using Millwood Park and Carlyle Park now
• How you might like to use the park in future
• What features are most important to you.

We are still determining what will be improved within Millwood Park and Carlyle Park in addition to the new stormwater facility. We are looking for what general direction to head in, so our preliminary concept designs are relevant to you. You will get to consider those drafts and share your feedback when they are ready later in 2023.

Answer the survey

Moving forward, this project will be called "Help shape the future of Millwood Park and Carlyle Park".

We have expanded the Millwood Park project to include upgrades to Carlyle Park as well. As a result, we've updated this webpage to reflect this new direction and added some additional information. If you bookmarked the webpage, please update your bookmarks to reflect the new web address.

Would you like us to send you a copy of the old project description for comparison? Please reach out to Bart Mazan, Design and Construction Project Manager (Sanitary and Stormwater Utilities) at bart.mazan@kitchener.ca or 519-503-1641

There will be an opportunity for you to contribute to the design of these parks later in 2023. In the meantime, we are continuing our field monitoring and assessments.

Please reach out directly if you have any questions, or post your question to the Ask a Question section of the project webpage.

Thank you for your questions and feedback. We are continuing to do an initial assessment of soil conditions and the water table. Subscribe to this page for information about the next phases of this project.

Preliminary concept from the 2016 Stormwater Master Plan

We added a preliminary concept to the document library. This shows early ideas for the stormwater management pond in Millwood Park. This concept is from the Stormwater Master Plan, approved by Council in 2016.

Do you need an accessible version of this document? Please get in touch with Chris Nechacov Chris.Nechacov@kitchener.ca, 519-741-2200 x 7148

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.

Why are we adding stormwater features to Millwood Park?

Climate change will bring more intense storms and more frequent freeze-thaw cycles. Creating more spaces for stormwater to collect in neighbourhoods reduces flooding during storms.

There is a large stormwater pipe currently running through Millwood Park. It carries untreated runoff from storm sewers through the neighbourhood to Lower Schneider Creek. By adding stormwater storage to the neighbourhood, we would:

• Intercept runoff before it rushes into Lower Schneider creek
• Filter the stormwaters before they re-enter the creek
• Slowly release these filtered waters into the creek to prevent erosion
• Reduce the risk of flooding in nearby streets and downstream neighbourhoods

Stormwater master plan

In 2016, the City of Kitchener Council approved a stormwater master plan. This plan created a strategy to manage stormwater for the next 15 years. Through this plan, we learned that only 25 percent of runoff in the city is managed through stormwater facilities. This means that 75 percent of runoff from heavy rainfall and snow melt flows into storm sewers, contaminating local creeks.

The master plan identified initial concepts for the installation of projects across Kitchener. As we look at each project, we will examine the technical feasibility of adjusting the designs to meet community needs.

The Government of Canada awarded us nearly $50 million through the Disaster Mitigation Adaptation Fund. Access to this funding means we can install needed stormwater measures at a reduced cost to the community. And we can do this much sooner than what would have been possible without the funding. We need to comply with their funding requirements, which places an extra constraint on these projects.

We consulted city-wide on the stormwater master plan. That consultation met the needs of the master plan. But as we look closer at specific projects, we know we need to have more consultation with the community.

Consultation for the Class Environmental Assessment

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.