CAMBRIDGE — Patricia Ritchie-Hutchison, 73, sat on her front porch sipping coffee, holding open a newspaper in the Easter Monday sunshine.

Her dog Carly, a 15-year-old Shih Tzu, sat happily at her feet.

It wasn't a school day so there wasn't a parade of cars and kids passing by the corner of Eagle Street South and Queenston Road on their way to nearby Preston High.

There were just birds chirping and the soothing warmth of spring near a 100-year-old elm tree that towers over half of an 1887 stone home she rents from her optometrist son Jason. This is the Preston lifestyle she holds dear in retirement.

"It would be a shame to destroy this," Ritchie-Hutchison said, thinking of a proposed light rail transit station that could, no sooner than a decade from now, wipe out the eight homes and a handful of businesses on her block.

"I've grown up in this town so these houses have a special meaning for you."

There's the yellow house on the other side of her fence and the big red house where the station, she said, is apparently going to be built. There is the Spanish restaurant on the front corner and the Argyle Arms pub on the far side of the block, once a high-class French restaurant when Ritchie-Hutchison was a young girl.

The fate of the block, bordered by King Street, Eagle, Queenston and Chopin Drive, hinges on plans for the extension of Ion light trail transit service to Cambridge.

A report on the Region of Waterloo's latest revision to a proposed route for the second phase of the LRT goes to Cambridge council on Tuesday night.

Under the newest plan, the tracks will cut diagonally across the heart of this Preston block. City staff support this overall approach, subject to regional staff meeting with city staff and property owners to discuss impacts.

A fifth public consultation session is coming. That's after regional council considers the latest revised plans later this month.

"To be quite honest, I don't think it will happen in our lifetime, in my lifetime," Ritchie-Hutchison said. "I hope not, because it will disrupt the atmosphere of this community."

These days, Preston's sense of small-town serenity is already shattered. The death of Helen Schaller last week after police were called to a downtown parking lot to investigate gunshots has residents in shock.

"It's unbelievable, actually," said Ritchie-Hutchison, who went to school with Schaller's sister Carol and brother Ken. "You just think that's the sort of thing that happens in big cities, the same with all the drug issues, that this is never going to happen in our little quiet small town."

Maybe the LRT will never come to the neighbourhood. Ritchie-Hutchison is unsure.

"It's a big question," she said.

She's had a few words here and there with regional councillor Karl Kiefer and city councillor Mike Mann. She's been to public consultations, including one regional staff held last month at Preston Auditorium.

"They don't give you any answers," she said. "Whether they really listen to the people, I'm not sure."

Ritchie-Hutchison, whose Preston-raised sons live in Ayr, listens to her neighbours. Anxiety is high on the block.

"Do we sell? Don't we sell? Do we leave now or don't we leave now? Are they going to touch our house or are they not?" she said.

And even if a few homes are allowed to remain, being surrounded by Ion trains and traffic-heavy streets may be a Pyrrhic victory.

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"This is a really busy area to start with," she said. "To put another kind of transit in here is just beyond realistic."

jhicks@therecord.com

Twitter: @HicksJD