If a proposed pilot project gets a green light, people strolling Ottawa Street will be able to stop, sit and smell the roses . inside industrial shipping containers.

A report going to the public works committee Monday looks at the feasibility of modifying shipping containers to create "mobile urban parks."

The portable green spaces, which would include benches or other seating, could then be transported on trucks around the city, installed and dismantled as needed.

The pilot project is proposed for the Ottawa Street BIA, which has noticed a need for additional seating during street-wide events including the annual Sew Hungry food truck rally (coming up on May 2) and the weekly Saturday farmers' market.

Councillor Sam Merulla pitched the idea on the BIA's behalf in September.

While the report stresses that the portable green spaces should not be seen as a solution to parkland deficiency, which is also an issue, Merulla sees them as a "unique, progressive and cost-effective" enhancement.

The report suggests two options.

The first - at a cost of $40,000 - would entail chopping a container down to about half its height, and then converting it into a large planter. Benches would be cut out of the side to provide seating.

The second - pegged at $150,000 - would be more like a picnic shelter: a container flipped on its side to offer shade, with benches 'inside' and a plant-covered "green" roof.

Shipping containers have become trendy in recent years as a cheap and sturdy building material for everything from skateboard parks to shopping malls to homes - most notably, the Downtown Container Park in Las Vegas.

Toronto's Scadding Court Community Centre has a year-round street food and retail market, Market 707, with vendors set up inside retrofitted shipping containers on Dundas Street West.

In Hamilton, an antique rail car was retrofitted last summer and turned into a literacy centre, parked next to the Eva Rothwell Resource Centre on Wentworth Street North. That project cost $130,000, including $30,000 for the rail car.

Patty Hayes, executive director of the Ottawa Street Business Improvement Area, says the options are endless.

"It's fun to be imaginative, creative . I think we lose that spirit sometimes."

Most importantly, she says, the project is mobile.

"This isn't going to sit on Ottawa Street 365 days a year."

Merulla, too, says he could see these fitting well in areas across the city.

"I know staff's excited about it."

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According to the report, four of the city's 13 BIAs expressed support for the program, provided it does not cut into the city's contribution toward their budget.

Some felt they didn't have the space or the need for a container park, and others preferred the city spend its money on permanent streetscape projects.

The committee will vote on the report Monday.