Ottawa Senators LeBreton Arena | 11 Acres | In Planning

[SL123]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

NCC will also update the Ottawa River Parkway bridge over the Trillium Pathway (CWC Bridge area) to allow OC Transpo (and one would assume the STO) to run bus routes free of charge.

Source? I'm not sure I understand how the current bridge prevents that unless where talking about buses going under that bridge?

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by SL123

Source? I'm not sure I understand how the current bridge prevents that unless where talking about buses going under that bridge?

It was posted on the RFC Community Discord. They had screenshots, but no link. It will be discussed next Planning Committee.

Here's the full transcript:

Official Plan Amendment – Preston Street Extension
File No. ACS2026-PDB-PS-0021 - Somerset (14) Report Recommendation(s) That the Planning and Housing Committee recommend that Council: Approve an amendment to the Official Plan as detailed in Document 2 to replace the Preston Street Extension from the City’s Road network with an active transportation bridge; and Direct staff to remove the Preston Street Extension from the Needs Based Road Network and Ultimate Road Network in the Transportation Master Plan Capital Infrastructure Plan; and Direct the General Manager of Planning, Development and Building Services to execute the Memorandum of Understanding with the National Capital Commission, attached as Document 4, immediately following the By-law coming into effect, with all appeals exhausted; and Direct staff to work with the National Capital Commission and Capital Sports Development Inc. to finalizing a three-Party Memorandum of Understanding, as described in this report, and bring forward an information report to Planning and Housing Committee once finalized and executed; and That Planning and Housing Committee approve the Consultation Details Section of this report be included as part of the ‘brief explanation’ in the Summary of Written and Oral Public Submissions, to be prepared by the Office of the City Clerk and submitted to Council in the report titled, “Summary of Oral and Written Public Submissions for Items Subject to the Planning Act ‘Explanation Requirements’ at the City Council Meeting of January 28, 2026,” subject to submissions received between the publication of this report and the time of Council’s decision

Then someone posted an image on Regular Transit Service. Here's a summary. Seems the current bridge has a weight limit:

1. OC Transpo minibuses, defined as transit vehicle under 4 tons, shall be permited in the KZM without prior approval by the NCC.
2. Current bridge is not design to accommodate regular transit service using conventional buses. Once the NCC upgrades the CPR Bridge on KZM to accommodate conventional buses., scheduled to occur before the [arena] is built, a regular OC Transpo bus route shall be permitted to access KZM. Furthermore, once the Parkdale overpass has been modified to accommodate the required load-bearing capacity, regular local OC Transpo services shall be permitted to access KMZ.
3. The NCC will not charge the City for local regular transit operations.
4. The NCC will advise the City of planned closures and work on mitigating the impacts.

Currently, OC Transpo is only allowed to run buses on KZM between Dominion and Lincoln Fields, and pays the NCC for the privilege.

I'm only to assume the City and NCC negotiated to remove the Preston extension in exchange for free transit access to KZM where needed, once infra is upgraded to accommodate the weight.

[SL123]

Oh ok so its a weight issue! Thanks for the clarification.

Overall I'm personally really happy the city seems on board to not extend Preston into Lebreton Flat

[J.OT13]

New information;

• could be at least a year before shovels in the ground, but could be years away
• arena might be built over a parking garage (which I suspect may limit opportunities for a partially sunken arena)
• project will be connected to the district energy system.

Challenges include soil remediation, relocation of a major sewer pipe, the proximity to the O-Train and that integration to the district energy system.

NCC reports progress on LeBreton Flats arena, but Senators exec warns of engineering hurdles before ‘shovels in the ground’

Robin MacLennan, Editor, Ontario Construction News
February 2, 2026

The National Capital Commission (NCC) says plans for a new Ottawa Senators arena at LeBreton Flats are moving forward without delay, though team officials caution that significant infrastructure and engineering work remains before construction can begin.

Speaking after an NCC board of directors meeting on Jan. 22, NCC CEO Tobi Nussbaum provided an optimistic update on the major events centre, which is set to anchor the redevelopment of the historic site west of Parliament Hill.

“After the agreement of purchase and sale was signed last summer, talks have continued to help the (Ottawa) Senators get to a place where they can move towards shovels in the ground,” Nussbaum told reporters, according to the Ottawa Business Journal. “There aren’t any obstacles that are stopping us or delaying us from moving forward at the pace that we anticipate.”

The NCC and Capital Sports Development Inc. (CSDI), the Senators’ development arm, finalized a land purchase agreement in August 2025. Since then, the focus has shifted to the complex design and engineering required for the site.

Nussbaum emphasized the commission’s high expectations for the facility’s architectural significance.

“We want to see something beautiful. We want to see something that demonstrates the major events centre as a real landmark for the nation’s capital,” Nussbaum said. “The process is going very, very well.”

However, the path to groundbreaking involves navigating a web of technical challenges that could extend the timeline. In a recent interview with Postmedia, Senators president and CEO Cyril Leeder offered a tempered view of the schedule, suggesting that actual construction could still be years away due to the site’s complexity.

“If we were ready to break ground, we’d be four years,” Leeder said, estimating a 34-month construction period preceded by extensive site preparation.

Leeder highlighted several specific engineering hurdles that must be resolved before the arena can rise, including the remediation of contaminated soil, the relocation of a major sewer pipe, and the integration of a district energy system.

The site’s proximity to the O-Train LRT line also presents a unique construction challenge.

“Then you’re butting up against the LRT line. We’ve got to do some shoring up on that LRT line and on Albert St.,” Leeder told the Sun, noting that the arena itself would likely sit on a “floating slab” above parking facilities.

Leeder indicated that the team is “at least a year” away from scheduling this preparatory work, as they continue to determine the precise location of site services.

While the timeline remains fluid, both parties acknowledge the significance of the project. For the construction industry, the project promises to be one of the most complex and high-profile undertakings in the city’s history, requiring specialized expertise in environmental remediation and urban infrastructure integration.

https://ontarioconstructionnews.com/...-in-the-ground

[dougvdh]

They need to take a page from Winnipeg and just not build the parking (or at least build very little of it). Recent projects for below grading parking are seeing costs come in at over $100k per spot, so I just don't see the business case being there unless they can convince people to pay a lot more to parking during a game.

Also, trying to provide a bunch of parking in that location is just going to contribute to additional traffic to and from games. It defeats the whole point of trying to have an arena located right on rapid transit.

[Harley613]

Hopefully 'Parking Facilities' are loading docks and such, not attendee parking. I can't see the need for attendee parking when there's dozens of empty parking garages within three light rail stops (or a moderate walk) every evening.

[J.OT13]

Adisoke has 200 spots. The War Museum has 230. They'd be wise to make them available on event days. As mentioned, we have thousands in the CBD.

City could encourage the use of PnR, the baseball stadium parking for urban east end residents. There are lots of nearby opportunities and a few few further afield well connected to the O-Train.

I heard somewhere the Sens plan to build 3k (no word if this includes reserved residential/commercial) compared to 6,5k at the Palladium.

[ponyboycurtis]

Just make the beer cheaper so everyone gets liquored up and leaves the car at home. We'll have the rowdiest arena in the league. Get two birds stoned at once.

Honestly though with free transit before game time, even mid sized jaunts like Greenboro Park n' Ride become completely viable. Myself I would just take the 15 minute walk to SK.

I really hope we beat Carolina tonight btw. I've watched just about every game this season and boy it's been up and down. If Linus can come back and give us some .915 goaltending to close the season and play a little bit heavier work load than he's used to I think we have a shot at the playoffs. Lots of teams to pass over but somebody ahead of us who is "over-performing" is going to drop off.

[AuxTown]

The internet continues to read my mind. This just popped up on my Facebook feed:



Looks awesome! But also not real

My buddy still owns the URL for Gatineau Senators so this may come in handy

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

The internet continues to read my mind. This just popped up on my Facebook feed:



Looks awesome! But also not real

My buddy still owns the URL for Gatineau Senators so this may come in handy

Football stadium recast as hockey rink?

[skyscraperaccount]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Football stadium recast as hockey rink?

LLM recast as artist

[zzptichka]

Finally something replacing the toilet paper plant!

[golfguy9]

They will probably build like 500 spots under the rink for players, staff, media and a select few season ticket holders. The Bell Centre is like this.

On another note, I'm not quite sure what's complicated about connecting to the DES. It was specifically designed to be scalable and the closest pipes are about 400 ft away.

[OTownandDown]

Honestly PdV, C.D.Howe (if it EVER reopens), Claridge Skye, and the plethora of mom'n'pop Capital Parking garages, this will be a boon for them. The walk isn't THAT far. Its about 20 mins walking, which is about double the length of the existing parking lot at CTC.

I agree that 500-1000 spots are all that is needed. The VIP parking for Club Bell, people dumb enough to use the chaotic valet, players, accessible spots, and a loading dock. Could probably just ring the arena in a podium with parking below?

I recently used Parking Lot 1 at CTC, on another note. and it was LUXURY to enter the highway using the secret OC Transpo on-ramp. I felt like I was leaving the plebes behind while I used my 1%'er private on-ramp. Honestly solves like 80% of the pain of going to the game.

[ponyboycurtis]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

Honestly PdV, C.D.Howe (if it EVER reopens), Claridge Skye, and the plethora of mom'n'pop Capital Parking garages, this will be a boon for them. The walk isn't THAT far. Its about 20 mins walking, which is about double the length of the existing parking lot at CTC.

I agree that 500-1000 spots are all that is needed. The VIP parking for Club Bell, people dumb enough to use the chaotic valet, players, accessible spots, and a loading dock. Could probably just ring the arena in a podium with parking below?

I recently used Parking Lot 1 at CTC, on another note. and it was LUXURY to enter the highway using the secret OC Transpo on-ramp. I felt like I was leaving the plebes behind while I used my 1%'er private on-ramp. Honestly solves like 80% of the pain of going to the game.

Yes. I recently had the luxury of using that lot. Buddy visiting from Toronto with an 8 and 10 year old. He makes good money. Was a no brainer in his mind to accelerate the entire process on both ends. It's like a beer and pizza slice difference in price.

All that being said. I really don't mind the Connexion 400 busses. Good vibes and they run enough of them they aren't usually overpacked.

Listening to Gord and Dean on 580 CFRA while waiting to exit the parking lot is definitely a staple of my childhood past though.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

The internet continues to read my mind. This just popped up on my Facebook feed:

Looks awesome! But also not real

My buddy still owns the URL for Gatineau Senators so this may come in handy

AI slope that came with a fake article. Should be illegal. Of course our AI Minister is more focused on how AI can replace real jobs instead of limiting its use by scammers.

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

Honestly PdV, C.D.Howe (if it EVER reopens), Claridge Skye, and the plethora of mom'n'pop Capital Parking garages, this will be a boon for them. The walk isn't THAT far. Its about 20 mins walking, which is about double the length of the existing parking lot at CTC.

I agree that 500-1000 spots are all that is needed. The VIP parking for Club Bell, people dumb enough to use the chaotic valet, players, accessible spots, and a loading dock. Could probably just ring the arena in a podium with parking below?

I recently used Parking Lot 1 at CTC, on another note. and it was LUXURY to enter the highway using the secret OC Transpo on-ramp. I felt like I was leaving the plebes behind while I used my 1%'er private on-ramp. Honestly solves like 80% of the pain of going to the game.

Agreed. Don't build infra that's already there. There are so many underutilized parking lots in this City, we don't need more.

I know the Sens wanted to open that ramp to cars, but didn't realize the City finally gave permission for other vehicles to use that ramp.

[J.OT13]

No place like home for sens (in near future)

Ottawa Citizen
BRUCE GARRIOCH Sen­at­ors bgar­ri­och@post­me­dia.com
15 Jan 2026

The Ott­awa Sen­at­ors will spend the week­end cel­eb­rat­ing the 30th anniversary of the Cana­dian Tire Centre.

This will likely be one of the last mile­stone moments at the rink, but the Sen­at­ors won't be head­ing to a new home at Lebre­ton Flats any time soon.

“We're going to be here for a while,” Sen­at­ors pres­id­ent Cyril Leeder told the Cit­izen dur­ing an inter­view on Tues­day before the team beat the Van­couver Canucks 2-1 at home.

As the Sen­at­ors pre­pare to mark the occa­sion by host­ing the Montreal Canadiens on Sat­urday, and with Van­couver-born singer Michael Bublé belt­ing out the tunes on Fri­day, a lot of work is tak­ing place behind the scenes on the Lebre­ton project.

Leeder told the Cit­izen that the organ­iz­a­tion is work­ing with groups on the logist­ics and the design of the rink that will sit on 11 acres the club agreed to pur­chase from the National Cap­ital Com­mis­sion last August. The Cit­izen has repor­ted that the Sen­at­ors agreed to pay $37 mil­lion for the land.

“We haven't closed on the land yet. We've got an agree­ment that allows us to pro­ceed and do the work that we're doing and to spend money to do plan­ning,” Leeder said. “But the fact that we have a site under con­tract, it's a lot more real than it was a year ago.”

There is a lot of heavy lift­ing tak­ing place behind the scenes and Leeder pre­dicted it will be another year of try­ing to solve issues, which include decon­tam­in­at­ing the site, work­ing with Indi­gen­ous groups, design­ing the site and fin­an­cing.

All these need to be dealt with before the Sen­at­ors can con­firm a timeline for put­ting shovels in the ground.

“It's going well,” Leeder said. “We've gone from a land acquis­i­tion into a devel­op­ment project pro­cess. We're now in the pro­cess of enga­ging stake­hold­ers and get­ting people involved who need to know about the project and help us with some of the issues we need to solve.

“I was on calls this week to fig­ure out where we're relo­cat­ing some of the ser­vices that are on the site. It sounds benign, but it's a sig­ni­fic­ant issue. We've got a team of folks work­ing on that to try to fig­ure out where the hydro lines go, where the dis­trict energy sys­tem is going to go and we've got an old sewer pipe that's got to get dug up to get relo­cated.

“We've got to fig­ure those things out.”

When would the cleanup begin?

“We're nego­ti­at­ing an agree­ment now with the NCC, which is called a design devel­op­ment agree­ment, and one of the details in that agree­ment is who does the cleanup and when do they do it and how does it get paid for,” Leeder said. “And we're work­ing through that. I sus­pect that the cleanup will start when the project starts.

“I don't think we're going to or the NCC is going to go in there and clean it up until we're ready to put a shovel in the ground. What they're talk­ing about now is, `When you're ready to go, why don't you do the cleanup at the same time as you're ready to go, and we'll just pay you for the cleanup?' That's the con­ver­sa­tion we're hav­ing now.”

He said that, even when the Sen­at­ors do start dig­ging, noth­ing will hap­pen quickly.

“If we were ready to break ground, we'd be four years,” Leeder said. “It's 34 months to build.”

That's sur­pris­ing because the Cana­dian Tire Centre took just 16 months to build, but Leeder had a good explan­a­tion for why.

“We're going to dig a big hole down­town and then we're going to have to put two or three levels of park­ing in that hole,” said Leeder. “Then you've got to put a rink above the park­ing on what they call a float­ing slab. We've got to do some cleanup and then we've got to put a mem­brane around the site to make sure there's no con­tam­in­a­tion.

“Then you're but­ting up against the LRT line. We've got to do some shor­ing up on that LRT line and on Albert St. All that prep work is going to take almost a year and then you start build­ing the arena. We're not in that prep work yet, and we're at least a year from schedul­ing that prep work, because we've still got a bunch of people to engage to fig­ure out where the ser­vices are going.”

The Sen­at­ors don't have any firm plans drawn up for the rink and the sur­round­ing area, but they're work­ing on con­cepts.

“We do have plans. Firm plans would be a gross over­state­ment,” said Leeder. “We've got some plans that we need because we need to engage stake­hold­ers, to get people involved, to talk to the city and the NCC wants to know what we're doing on their prop­erty.

“We bought it from them, but part of the deal is show­ing them what we're doing, so we've got to have some plans for that. We've got a num­ber of people, we've got to engage in this pro­cess and we've got to show them what we're think­ing, and that's going to evolve, and there will be iter­a­tions on that, and even­tu­ally, it won't be a final project or mas­ter­piece until it's built.”

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/o...81870124832384

[J.OT13]

Already posted this on Skyrise, but here it is again:

ATIP info posted on RFC Community Discord reveals some new information about LeBreton.

I'll start with some renderings. Now these seem to match the 2022 winning bid, so I doubt any of it will end up looking like this:







And now the new information:

1. International Marine Signal Company/Beer Tunnel and train mentioned. Archeological monitoring could take place. If the tunnel and train are found, measures for the protection could be put in place.
2. A commitment to build a weather protected pedestrian connection between the arena and Pimisi Station has been made, so non-Sens developers to the east will need to build a continuation of whatever the NCC and Sens come up with. (my take is that they can start with the Pimisi lower level entrance, which could connect to a future building's basement, and from there build the corridor along the O-Train Line, through the concourse and to Bayview, with doors to access every building in between.)
3. If the NCC and Sens don't agree on Arena design, an independent architect could step to determine solutions.

I'm a bit worried the beer tunnel, if it's still there, will cause delays.