Laurier students work on Cambridge heritage inventory initiative - Waterloo Region Record

CAMBRIDGE — The City of Cambridge has a problem with its inventory of heritage properties.
It's a little lopsided, as hundreds of old homes and public buildings have been listed, but very few commercial/industrial properties are in the inventory.

In an effort to try and get more business building owners to list their properties the city has recruited urban planning students in Bob Sharp's class at Wilfrid Laurier University to work on the Capstone Urban Sustainability Project (CUSP).

The project is a credit course for the students, which takes a collaborative case-study approach, where teams of students work together to analyze and resolve an identified urban or local issue within Waterloo Region. The City of Cambridge and the university have worked out a memorandum of understanding where CUSP students will work on city issues over the term of a four-year agreement. This is the second year of the agreement and the CUSP students have been tasked with trying to develop new marketing materials and strategies designed to persuade the city's business community to consider listing their heritage properties.

Divided into five teams the student looked at different areas of the city. Three of the teams worked in Galt, while one each tackled Preston ad Hespeler. The teams explored each of the areas and then dug into the Cambridge City Archives and the Hespeler Heritage Centre to find out what buildings were build prior to 1950 and would qualify to be part of the heritage property inventory. They also researched the history of the old buildings that qualified looking at who had owned them, how they were used, and how they might have contributed to the development of the community.

For the full story go to:  Record news story

Professionalism, Research and Pilot Presentations

At the end of January, the CUSP class continued their professional development with a workshop from the Laurier Community and Partnerships Office. The students learned about professional communication and presentations and had a fun experiential learning activity where they practiced conversations with potential community members. They left the workshop with new tools to use for their projects as well as in their future after Laurier. 

Since then, the class has been working hard at completing their deliverables for the City of Cambridge. They have been attending community meetings, visiting neighbourhood organizations and Business Improvement Areas, visiting the Cambridge archives and completing their property data assessment forms for the commercial and industrial buildings they have chosen to assess.

As a new addition to the course this semester, CUSP collaborated with Ada Sharpe’s class (ENG206 Writing for Business) class for a mutual learning opportunity. The CUSP groups sent drafts of their outreach materials to the English class and they provided copy editing of the documents and gave helpful feedback to the groups. Both sets of students learned a lot during this exercise.

On March 7, the class went back to the Cambridge City Hall to give pilot presentations to the City representatives, April Souwand and Laura Waldie. The students showed that they have been working hard and provided a snapshot of what we will see for their final community presentations. They received excellent feedback from the City that they will be able to use to refine their final deliverables and final community presentation on March 28. 

Getting to Know Hespeler and the Cambridge Archives

This semester has has already been busy for the CUSP class. On January 10, we headed to Hespeler to visit the Company of Neighbours Hespeler Heritage Centre. It is an extremely informative display of the history of the community, located in the Old Hespeler town hall. A local historian, Lary Turner walked the students through the centre, sharing some rich facts about Hespeler. We then did a walking tour with Lary through the neighbourhood surrounding the Centre and learned about some of the developments and how the area has changed through time. The team who will be working in Hespeler, Great Lakes, left inspired by the potential for their project in contributing to the preservation of heritage in this great community. The other groups were intrigued to find a similar organization in their research areas. 

CUSP in Hespeler with Lary Turner

On January 17, the CUSP students went back to Cambridge, this time to downtown Galt. A deliverable of their projects this year is to complete Heritage Inventory Templates, which require significant details about the properties that could potentially be added to the Cambridge Heritage Register. Because of this need, the students were able to visit the City of Cambridge Archives and meet with Dan Schmalz. The class was split into two groups and each had the opportunity to visit the archives and see the type of resources stored there and were given a lesson on how to go about their research. This was an informative tour and the class learned how and where to get the necessary information for their projects. They had an hour to start looking into some of their properties but were also invited back to come spend more time at the archives. For many of us, this was a new experience and the visit was really beneficial. We learned just how integral the archives are to the history of a city and now appreciate the vast amount of knowledge that can be found there. 

With Dan Schmalz in the Cambridge Archives

Responses to RFP submitted!

The end of last semester was a busy one for the Capstone Urban Sustainability students. On November 15 they had a presentation from Kevin Cahill, the Speakers Bureau Coordinator for KW’s Toastmasters clubs on “Building Connection Through Communication.” The students learned how best to open and close a public speaking engagement, techniques to address the fear of public speaking, methods of preparation and practice and the use of body language. 

The students spent the remainder of the Fall semester working on their responses to the City of Cambridge Request for Proposal (RFP). They then presented a draft version of the RFP to the instructors and City representative, April Souwand, and received valuable feedback. Their presentations went very well as the students showed their newly acquired Toastmasters skills and brought forward innovative and exciting ideas. The students then revised their ideas based on the feedback given and delivered a final Response to the RFP on December 16.