By Sean Meyer/London Community News

If all goes according to plan the downtown’s Market Lane is going to be a destination point for visitors from across the city by later this year.

The city announced the winner of the Market Lane Design Competition, Hapa Collaborative, during the Planning and Environment Committee meeting Monday (Jan. 16). Hapa is a landscape architecture and environmental design practice located in Vancouver, B.C.

The winning submission, entitled Figure Ground, will feature a variety of design features, including honeylocust trees, a riverbank garden with perennials and other shrubs, a suspended canopy lighting system, a meandering concrete bench and luminescent ottomans that cast light at night and heat in the winter.

Steve Ries, chair of the Urban Design Jury that selected Hapa’s design from among the five finalists (there were 18 preliminary submissions), said the winning entry satisfied every requirement asked for by the city.

“This captures the spirit of London. It provides an opportunity for interaction with the lighting functions. It is extremely pedestrian focused. Urban design is all about enhancing the pedestrian realm,” Ries said. “It offers both a day and night experience, and also, an all-season experience. We believe it responds innovatively to the community’s aspirations.”

Design fees for the project have been estimated at $75,000. The construction budget for the Market Lane project is approximately $575,000 with $500,000 in funding approved as part of the budget for the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships. Another $150,000 is identified in the 2012 base budget for the planning department.

Ward 13 Councillor Judy Bryant said she was delighted by the design and that the new Market Lane will go a long way to providing the downtown with something not currently seen in London.

“This is something I have really been hoping would happen. Public space, civic space generally, is very impoverished in modern cities,” Bryant said. “Many modern cities are turning that around very fast and I think this will help us do that. A little space like this, that is used a lot, is a great connector and a great opportunity to form a proper civic park in an area not being used at the moment.”

The new design will be built this summer on the pedestrian laneway, which links Dundas Street to the north entrance of the Covent Garden Market, just beside Fanshawe College’s future School of Applied and Performance Arts.

The winning team will now work on the construction documents to be tendered this April, in order for construction to begin in July. The unveiling of the new Market Lane is anticipated to take place November 2012.

Ward 1 councillor and committee chair Bud Polhill said he is please with the outcome of the competition and in particular the design elements that won Hapa the competition.

However, Polhill said he is also cautious about how the entire project might play out and he points to the often-maligned stone elements installed on the Veterans Memorial Parkway as examples of how reality doesn’t always play out as is expected.

“I think it (the Hapa design) looked good, but pictures are wonderful. I remember when we approved the structures out at Oxford Street and Veterans Memorial Parkway, they looked wonderful on paper, but not as much once they got them up,” Polhill said. “The people who voted for them said, ‘If I knew what they looked like in real life, I may not have supported it.’ So, it looks good on paper, we will have to see how it comes out. It looks very interesting and I think will really liven that place up.”