‘A CROWN JEWEL’
The master-planned community of Stonebridge is one of Monarch’s most successful. Much of the thanks for that must go to retired land manager Bruce MacNabb.
Bruce MacNabb is a tenacious Scot and the quiet, unstoppable energy behind the launch in 2000 of one of the most successful golf course communities in Ottawa by one of the oldest and largest real estate companies in the country.
Today there are more than 2,000 homes wrapping around a rolling 18-hole golf course at Stonebridge. There are compact, stacked townhomes geared to firsttime buyers for $189,000 while, a few streets away, plush 3,000-square-foot homes sit on big golf course lots and carry price tags topping $1 million. In between, there are townhomes and one-floor villas for older folks.
There is room for another 425 homes in Stonebridge and then it’s done and the golf course will likely be sold because it’s not part of Monarch’s core business, says Kevin O’Shea, vice-president of operations for the Ottawa offices.
“Stonebridge is regarded as a crown jewel in the Monarch portfolio. It is truly a master-planned community.
“The entire business today is reaping the work of Bruce in bringing on land and to Rosemary (O’Shea) for the housing end.” (Rosemary O’Shea is Kevin’s mother. He replaced her at Monarch when she retired in 2009.)
Rewinding 13 years, McNabb was celebrating on a sunny Saturday morning in late April as a line of men and women sipped coffee, patiently waiting outside a huge white tent for a chance to buy a new Monarch house. Nearby, Cardel Homes was also selling homes. The tent was placed beside the new links-style golf course that would mature into one of the top courses in Ontario.
By the end of that first Saturday, Monarch had nine sales and Cardel 13. Within weeks, building crews were busy and machinery was carving out roads in the first phase of a community that would spread out over 715 acres.
“It was my job to keep the land coming, so we could keep building,” says MacNabb, who has vivid memories of late Fridays throughout the ’90s when the fax machine would spit out objections to development at Stonebridge from Nepean’s planning and engineering departments.
Despite contrary guidance from the region (this was before amalgamation), Nepean staff thought development south of the Jock River was “decades premature” and shouldn’t happen until 2016.
“Today, I would be considered a lobbyist,” says MacNabb, who attended countless meetings, co-ordinated engineering studies, funded large sewer pipes and organized trips to show councillors and staff Monarch golf course communities in Toronto and the United States.
The campaign lasted 10 years, culminating in a Nepean planning committee meeting in May 1997 where the region repeated its support for development south of the Jock River. Nepean councillors swung behind the approval and Stonebridge was on its way.
“The devil is in the details and it certainly was details, many of them technical, such as pipe capacity and transportation, together with strategic timing in the use of those details that won the day for us,” remembers MacNabb, who is now retired, tending to trees covering 25 acres around his home in the Carp Hills.
“I prefer being outside than attending another committee meeting. Yet it all worked out because it was the right thing to do.”
Since April 2000, Stonebridge has posted some of the best sales for the company, sometimes outperforming Toronto, the city where Monarch started to build homes in 1917 in the tiny village of Forest Hill. The highwater mark for sales was two years ago, when closings hit 440, a number that has since shrunk to 325 a year, says O’Shea.
At 96 years and counting, Monarch is Canada’s oldest and one of the largest real estate companies, with towering condos across Greater Toronto and master-planned communities across Ontario.
The local economy was good to Monarch and Stonebridge was well positioned as an “upscale green community” with more cachet than Barrhaven and more choice than larger estate homes in Manotick.
The referral rate is astronomical, with friends bringing friends and some families buying three and four Monarch homes as their lifestyle changes, says Patrick Meeds, managing director for the new home division at PMA Brethour Realty Group.
Home values are better than investing in gold, with prices zooming upward, says Jim Cooper, a veteran real estate agent and Stonebridge resident who bought a two-storey house in 2002 for $380,000, selling it for almost double nine years later.
The community has won awards as best in the city, while decked-out models have repeatedly reaped design honours at the annual Housing Design Awards.
Very soon, observant drivers heading toward Stonebridge will notice a quiet tribute to the early work by MacNabb. The new double span bridge over the Jock River is to be named the Bruce MacNabb Bridge.
The veteran engineer and land surveyor won the admiration of Ottawa councillor Jan Harder, who urged city council in 2011 to name the new bridge after “this fair, honest, insightful and diligent community-minded individual” and “for his balanced approach to development and the environment that has preserved
BRUCE MACNABB
Retired land manager, Monarch Homes
natural lands including riverfronts and mature trees.”
“It is a nice honour,” he says modestly. “I never took my eye off the goal of launching Stonebridge. I didn’t want to get bogged down when I knew it was the right land to develop.”
‘The devil is in the details … such as pipe capacity and transportation, together with strategic timing in the use of those details that won the day for us.’