THE BIG PROJECTS
Major developments aim to produce complete communities in years ahead, writes Don Butler.
LeBreton and Rockcliffe are part of a wave of major redevelopments, many on federal land, that will change the city’s face over the next two or three decades. “It’s an exciting time for Ottawa,” says Lee Ann Snedden, the city’s chief of development review services. “There’s so many things happening.”
The city wants redevelopment to produce new, complete communities — places where you can stroll to a coffee shop for a latte, nip into a grocery store to pick up that night’s dinner and walk to the office. “That’s the ideal opportunity that we’re trying to create.”
LeBreton Flats and Zibi: Though separate projects, they are joined at the hip.
Of the two, Windmill’s übergreen Zibi — which will occupy 15 hectares of islands and Ottawa River shoreline around Chaudière Falls — is far more advanced. Windmill started offering some of the $1.2-billion mixed-use project’s eventual 2,800 residential units for sale in 2015. The first residents should arrive in 2017, though it will take another decade or more to complete everything.
Meanwhile, negotiations are expected to continue throughout 2017 between the National Capital Commission and RendezVous LeBreton group of partners to develop 21 hectares of LeBreton Flats that have been vacant for more than half a century.
Many hurdles remain, but the project includes a new downtown arena, a dual-rink Sensplex and Abilities Centre for ablebodied and disabled users, a restored heritage aqueduct, 4,400 residential units and offices and stores.
The goal, says NCC chief executive Mark Kristmanson, is nothing less than to change the face of Ottawa. “It just has so much potential to create a fantastic new neighbourhood.”
The full development of LeBreton will take two decades or more. If it proceeds, it will effectively enlarge what we think of as the city’s core — and along with Zibi, provide a new destination for residents and visitors.
“When Aunt Zelda comes to visit from out of town, these are some of the places where people are going to take visitors,” Snedden says. Zibi’s commitment to sustainability, she says, will become internationally known. “People are going to come here just to be able to research and understand how they were able to put that together.”
The Zibi project, which proponents have likened to Vancouver’s Granville Island, will afford vistas of the Chaudière Falls, long hidden from public view. “That’s going to be a go-to place in years to come,” says John Moser, acting general manager of the city’s planning, infrastructure and economic development department.
A new arena on LeBreton Flats will draw residents and tourists to major events. “I think it’s really going to create some vibrancy for the city,” Snedden says.
The proposed LeBreton and Zibi developments will add a huge amount of new housing in a market where the absorption rate for new condo units is about 500 a year, Gianni says.
“When you look at the number of highrises being proposed, you can’t help but feel you’re looking out into a future galaxy somewhere,” Gianni says.
“It’s a 25-to-30-year timeline, so whether it actually gets built out in quite that way remains to be seen.”
Wateridge Village: Better known as the former Rockcliffe airbase, the massive 131-hectare mixeduse community will be the single largest development within the Greenbelt since amalgamation in 2001.
The first 214 housing units will be available in 2017. When fully built over the next 15 to 20 years, Wateridge Village will house 10,000 residents and employ as many as 2,600 people.
All but about five hectares of the site is owned by the Canada Lands Company, an arm’s-length, self-financing Crown corporation. (The National Research Council owns the rest.) While the community won’t have the kind of densities found downtown, they will be higher than in the developing suburbs.
The layout is intended to provide safe and appealing alternatives to cars through a network of sidewalks, cycle tracks and pathways.
However, the community is not on a planned rapid transit network, raising concerns about transportation.
Greystone Village: Built on lands owned by the Oblate Brothers, a Catholic missionary congregation that lived there for 150 years, the 10.5-hectare Greystone Village will transform Old Ottawa East, almost doubling its population.
The new community will ultimately include 1,400 single, townhouse and condo units, mixed retail, green space and an events plaza. The Regional Realty project will also preserve the heritage Edifice Deschâtelets, which dates from 1885.
A wide swath of trees and bike and walking paths will stretch along the Rideau River, and a grande allée will link Main Street to the front portico of the grey stone Deschâtelets. It will take a decade or more to complete.
Tunney’s Pasture: After local opposition derailed a plan to turn almost half of the 49-hectare federal government employment campus over to The Ottawa Hospital for its new Civic campus, the master plan for Tunney’s — approved by the National Capital Commission in 2014 — appears to be back on track.
The 25-year plan provides a vision for the future development of the site, which — like LeBreton and Zibi — is conveniently located along the city’s Confederation light rail transit line. It envisions a complete community, with as many as 3,700 residential units, employment for more than 20,000 workers (about 10,000 are employed there today), retail components and a block devoted to a major community park.
City officials have had “very preliminary discussions” with the property owner, Public Services and Procurement Canada, about the project, says Don Herweyer, the city’s manager of development review. “I think it will be a year or two before they start coming in with applications.”
Booth Street lands: Canada Lands Company acquired 2.5 hectares of the Booth Street campus from Natural Resources Canada in 2015.
No plans have yet been developed for the property, bounded by Booth, Orangeville, Norman and Rochester streets, but public consultations are planned early in 2017 to gather community feedback.
During a panel discussion at the 2016 Ottawa Real Estate Forum, Ottawa architect Roderick Lahey called the Booth Street property “a real jewel in the heart of the city. It’s such an important site — right where we all work and live. There’s the potential to do something much more there than just knocking the buildings down and building more highrises.”
Because there are heritage buildings on the property, some have suggested that it could be redeveloped into a lively mixeduse area similar to Toronto’s Distillery District.
“There’s some attractive building stock there that would make that project stand apart from some others,” Herweyer says.
The shopping centres: Several of Ottawa’s aging shopping centres are slated for redevelopment over the next decade or two. Because of its position at an LRT station, Lincoln Fields, a struggling 44-year-old mall on Carling Avenue at the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway, has been pushed to the head of the line, city officials say.
The mall’s owner, RioCan, told the Citizen this past summer the shopping centre will likely be torn down to make way for a major redevelopment that could include as many as 4,000 rental housing units.
RioCan also plans to redevelop the 61-year-old Westgate Shopping Centre, Ottawa’s first shopping mall, in three phases over the next 20 years.
It will be replaced by five highrise towers containing more than 1,100 new residential units. RioCan is planning similar transformations at Elmdale Acres Shopping Centre and SilverCity Gloucester.