City begins rezoning process for new Civic hospital lands

The City of Ottawa has started paving the way for the Ottawa Hospital’s relocation of the Civic campus to a chunk of the Central Experimental Farm.

The city’s planning department recently filed the rezoning application which, if approved by council, will make the necessary changes in the official plan to essentially hive off the future hospital land from the rest of the research farm.

The federal government is making available 21 hectares of the old Sir John Carling site at the east end of the farm for the new $2-billion Civic hospital.

The feds last December decided on the Sir John Carling site after the previous Conservative government offered up farmland across from the current Civic hospital on Carling Avenue.

After the Liberals won power, they tasked the National Capital Commission to study all potential locations for a new hospital and the agency concluded Tunney’s Pasture would be the best site.

The Ottawa Hospital, however, didn’t like that idea.

Mayor Jim Watson ended up brokering a compromise between the hospital and the three levels of government.

The city’s responsibility is to make sure the hospital conforms to municipal planning policies, while not impeding the hospital’s plans to replace its aging Civic facility.

In its proposal to change the land use, the city notes that large urban facilities like hospitals should be located near good transportation corridors. The new Civic will be located off Carling Avenue and be about a block away from a Trillium Line train station.

According to the proposed rezoning map, the maximum height for a building in the middle of the hospital land will be about 10 storeys. Closer to the train station, the Preston-Carling secondary plan would kick in. The maximum building heights in that plan allow for 20 storeys southwest of the station.

The rezoning application also includes the parking lot northwest of the Dow’s Lake Pavilion. The land would change from open space and park (which has included an exception to allow facilities like a hospital) to a mixed-use centre.

The design of the new Civic campus won’t be finalized until later in the Ottawa Hospital’s own planning process. The hospital is working on master programming plan and conceptual block drawings with the anticipation of submitting them to the Ontario Ministry of Health in early 2018. This fall, the hospital intends to hire a consultant to create a public engagement plan.

The city is collecting comments on the planning application until Sept. 15.

It’s looking to have the application on the planning committee’s agenda by Dec. 22. jwilling@postmedia.com twitter.com/JonathanWilling