Builder has plans for King Edward
Nine-storey rental building exceeds area’s height limit
An Ottawa builder is planning the first significant construction project on a blighted stretch of King Edward Avenue in years, proposing to construct a nine-storey apartment building at the corner of King Edward and St. Patrick Street.
It’s a gravel parking lot now, right by one of Lowertown’s busiest intersections and across from a Tim Hortons and a tiny used-car lot. Manor Park Management wants to turn it into 98 furnished rental apartments with a restaurant on the ground floor and two levels of underground parking. “The project is intended to provide short- and medium-term rental accommodation in the form of furnished units in an apartment hotel type of operation,” say Manor Park’s application documents.
“We’ll have to go back to see what the community thinks, but I’m personally encouraged to see that there’s renewal on King Edward,” said Coun. Mathieu Fleury. The height may be a concern for nearby residents, said Fleury, though the building’s relative isolation should help with that. It’ll need to have “active frontages” on three sides, though, including on Murray Street to the south.
The building would be the tallest thing on King Edward north of Rideau Street, a length of road notorious for traffic bound to and from Quebec’s Highway 5, including heavy trucks. Neighbours include the Shepherds of Good Hope homeless shelter and a strip of rowhouses Mayor Jim Watson decried a few months ago as among the worst eyesores in the city, owned by the Claude Lauzon empire. But the new building would be on a little island between eastand westbound lanes of St. Patrick, almost by itself.
“Given the site’s physical separation from the adjacent blocks by the surrounding streets, it presents an opportunity to use a transitional height as a landmark and entrance feature into the neighbourhood as well as the city as a whole,” says the application, written by the city’s former chief of planning policy, Dennis Jacobs, who’s now a private consultant.
“Ottawa has a very temporary and transient group of people who are in and out for government or other business,” Jacobs said in an interview. Perhaps they’re here for training, or a placement or some other short-term purpose. There may also be a market for students at Ottawa U.”
King Edward is not a hot place to move to, he said, but every neighbourhood revitalization starts with something like this. “Not that long ago, there were parts of Hintonburg that people weren’t that interested in moving into. I think the important thing is to look at the changes that are coming as opposed to what may be the existing situation,” Jacobs said. The city recently rebuilt King Edward, and although it’s still an extremely busy street, it’s more pleasant than it used to be. Adding more people will only help.
The proposal does need a rezoning. The property, whose official address is 364 St. Patrick, has zoning that allows a building of 11 metres, or about three floors; Manor Park’s proposal is for 27 metres. Otherwise, the “traditional mainstreet” zoning Manor Park wants closely matches the “general mixed use” designation the property already has.
Besides Manor Park’s proposal, the Nouvelle Scène theatre closer to Rideau Street is in the middle of a complete reconstruction into a taller, more modern building and Claridge has bought property at the northwest corner of Rideau and King Edward — now the site of the city’s biggest liquor store — with an eye to building a tall condo tower eventually. Lauzon may sell his rowhouses, as well.