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May 10, 2013 6:28 PM |
Quote:
‘A milestone of urbanization’
by Patrick Langston May 10, 2013 in Homes (Ottawa Citizen Style)
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OTTAWA — It used to be a gas station. Now it will be a 45-storey condo tower.
Claridge’s Icon, approved last month by the city for the corner of Preston Street and Carling Avenue across from Dow’s Lake, is the latest symbol of the changes sweeping the area bounded roughly by Rochester Street to the east, Champagne Avenue South to the west, Carling Avenue to the south and the Queensway to the north. It includes part of Little Italy and bustling Preston Street.
There are, at last count, 10 highrise condo projects in this area at various stages of construction, planning or awaiting zoning or other municipal decisions.
That could increase depending on what happens with the plan for the area proposed by consultant George Dark and now wending its way through city hall. It recommends more mid- and highrise construction, including 40 storeys along Carling, 18 storeys along Rochester, more tall structures elsewhere, and up to six storeys along Preston.
It all constitutes what David Choo of Ashcroft Homes, which is building two towers on Champagne Avenue, calls Ottawa’s first “condo precinct” — a concentrated area of intense condominium development.
There are plenty of condos in the ByWard Market areas, but they’ve arrived slowly and are nothing like the 30-, 45- and more-storey buildings waiting to turn this well established area of mostly, although not exclusively, low-rise homes and businesses on its ear.
“Ottawa is emerging as an urbanized city,” says Choo. “It’s not that one precinct is important in itself; it’s that it’s a milestone of urbanization.”
A precinct like this fits the city’s densification drive, especially around transit hubs like the O-Train station at Carling near Preston.
Not surprisingly, many residents of the area are upset. They envisage a sea of highrises bringing noise, wind tunnels, shading, and traffic and parking nightmares. Others object on different grounds saying, for example, that densification can be achieved without a glut of highrises.
The Big Picture
Condos represent a shift in the way we live, says Choo, the desire among ever more people for a downtown, minimal-maintenance lifestyle. As a result, building height “should never be a parameter in zoning, only the results of height: densities, shadows cast by buildings.”
Ottawa should “embrace” changes like those happening in the Preston Street area, he says.
Architecture critic Rhys Phillips says projects like Icon “verge on the bizarre” when developments like Blatchford, a brownfield development for 30,000 people being planned for Edmonton’s largely defunct municipal airport, show how a mix of row house and low- to mid-rise buildings produces intensification without highrises.
Phillips worries that “you lose contact with the street as soon as you’re above about six storeys. People just come down and get in their cars.” He contrasts that with low-rise areas like the Glebe, where residents are attached to the neighbourhood and spend time on the streets.
Dark, however, says a percentage of the population likes the panoramic views and other aspects of highrise living. “It’s one way of building; cities have them.”
In fact, highrises seem to be self-fertilizing. No sooner did Claridge get the city’s nod on Icon than Mastercraft Starwood, which last year had to scale back its SoHo Italia on Hickory Street to 30 storeys from 35 to get city approval, was back at the municipality’s door with a request that is now making the rounds of the bureaucracy to increase the tower to 35 storeys.
Richcraft, meanwhile, is touting the possibility of two 48-storey towers and a smaller one on Carling just west of Preston where Dow Honda currently operates.
In a side note, the city’s planning department recently recommended capping buildings at 27 storeys along Lyon, Kent, Metcalfe and O’Connor streets, bringing those streets into line with height restrictions elsewhere in Centretown.
Word on the Street
“Some are embracing tall towers at the end of Preston Street as a reasonable concession. It won’t damage the fabric of the neighbourhood,” says Michael Powell, president of the Dalhousie Community Association.
However, he says that Dark’s proposal for nine-storey towers and a new road (Dark calls it a “mews”) along the O-Train tracks just west of Preston are a “red line that we don’t want to cross” because the surrounding, narrow streets couldn’t support the increased traffic.
Somerset Ward Councillor Diane Holmes, who has accepted towers on Carling but wants to protect the low-rise environment north of there, opposes both the nine-storey towers and mews.
Counters Shawn Malhotra, vice-president of Claridge, “The city talked about intensification for years, and some day this had to become a reality. You’re going to lose some low-rise feel.”
Lori Mellor of the Preston Street Business Improvement Area says her association is pro-development but worries about how it’s being done. She’s concerned, for example, that homeowners finding a skyscraper suddenly sprouting beside them might neglect their property, figuring it has lost value as a single-family home anyway.
She also worries that young families who have moved into the area and helped revive it will exit when they see an army of tall towers marching through their community.
Design
Tall towers, say developers, are an opportunity to shine architecturally. The extra square footage means enough revenue to splurge on design, while the height allows interesting shapes like the undulating balconies of the most recently proposed 35-storey SoHo Italia.
Phillips slams such buildings. Referring to Icon, which has some similar balconies, he says “It’s an elongated shoebox. They’ve learned to make them sexy by adding undulating balconies.”
Set far enough back on a ground-level podium, however — he gives Minto’s UpperWest tower in Westboro as an example — Phillips says towers can be less overwhelming.
Elephants and Other Issues
At present there’s an absence of grocery stores and other services in the Preston Street area. That doesn’t jibe with densification’s goals that include walkable neighbourhoods.
Dark, however, says that population increases can also increase the range of local services.
Some worry that intense development will inflate land prices, ultimately putting new projects even further out of the financial reach of many potential homeowners.
The real elephant in the room, not just in the Preston Street area but throughout Ottawa, is how much of a market there is for all these condo units.
The 10 buildings on the accompanying map alone amount to roughly 2,000 units. That’s a lot of selling in a market that’s slowed considerably over the last year.
People like John Herbert, executive director of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association, have expressed concern that large numbers of baby boomers may not actually want to abandon suburbia for downtown condo living as has been predicted.
Domicile’s David Chick echoes other developers in saying he has confidence in the Ottawa condo market. “We’ve been weathering the storm of a lot of negative (economic) news. We’re still trucking along.”
Quotables:
“Point towers traditionally are beautiful buildings. When you have short, stumpy buildings there’s only so much you can do.” — Shawn Malhotra, Vice-president, Claridge Homes
“What kind of cross-section are we getting? Empty nesters and likely single professionals. Anyone in between, it’s not going to happen.” — Stanley Wilder, Planner, City of Ottawa
“There’s lots of intensification along Rochester and Carling. Leave us the four-storeys. You don’t have to ruin everything.” — Diane Holmes, Councillor, Somerset Ward
“Demographics are shifting significantly in Canada, and it’s more than just everyone aspiring to live in a house.” — George Dark, Urban design consultant to the City of Ottawa
“It’s all about getting balance in the neighbourhood.” — Lori Mellor, Executive director, Preston Street Business Improvement Area
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