Conflicting city information leaves developer, community association at loggerheads
Taylor Blewett, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: September 1, 2018
A local builder and a neighbourhood community association both agree that a historic, wooded property at 21 Withrow Ave. in Nepean would make a great park — but the question of whether it’s possible is where they don’t see eye-to-eye.
At a rally Friday, Theberge Homes president Joey Theberge and City View Community Association president Joan Clark discussed, very cordially, the future of the property in which they’re both deeply invested. The conversation revealed they actually shared a lot of common ground, but they were operating under different assumptions about the park’s future based on conversations with local politicians.
Since the 2015 death of former resident Dr. John Roger, a 60-year fixture at the Civic Hospital, the City View Community Association has been working to see 21 Withrow turned into a park. The nearly two-century-old-house was once the home of poet William Wilfred Campbell and hosts more than 120 mature trees on its two acres.
“We would like the city to buy it, and we’re building a business plan,” Clark explained Friday at a rally hosted by the community association in front of the property.
“I’ve heard that there is a chance … if we come up with some money, and then the city would match it,” she said.
The association envisions a partnership with Poets Pathway to turn the heritage home on the site into a Canadian Poetry Centre and create a public park with its green space.
“It’s just a piece of magic,” she said of the property.
The rally was organized to protest the redevelopment plan that poses a significant threat to this dream. In December, Theberge Homes filed a development application for the property. The company plans to build a 13-home subdivision and preserve the heritage home, renovating its interior. Nine of the homes would sit on a new private street, and be built with stone and designed to match the area’s character, Theberge said Friday. He’d have to raze many of the property’s trees for the development, which has raised the ire of some.
“These mature neighbourhoods are always very sensitive areas because it’s a beautiful community,” he noted, explaining that he’s made every effort to work with neighbours to create a development that everybody can be as comfortable as possible with.
Indeed, Clark said as much in an interview at the rally. “We’ve had respect for each other, where he is developer and he’s on one side of the spectrum, and we’re on the other.
“We understand each other, (but) it’s hard to come to an agreement when this is going to be lost right away,” she said, gesturing to the green space behind her.
Asked earlier for his thoughts on the community association’s vision for the area, Theberge said he supports the park and poetry centre concept, “but who’s paying for it?”
“The city has told me there is no avenue … to buy this land as a park.”
Mixed messages were swapped after Theberge showed up in shorts and a T-shirt, with his dog in tow, to visit the rally-goers Friday night. When Clark and Theberge, who are on a first-name basis, having shared conversations about the property, were asked about their fundamentally different plans for it, they were faced with one another’s different understandings of its potential to become a park.
Theberge has a firm agreement to buy the property from the Roger family, but said he would sell it to the community association and the city for use as a public space “in a heartbeat” if that was an option on the table. But from what he’s been told, it isn’t.
“From my talk with the councillor and the mayor, there’s no avenue to expropriate,” he said. “From what I’ve heard, from predominantly even the mayor’s office…they said there is no avenue and no money whatsoever.”
Clark, meanwhile, said ward Coun. Rick Chiarelli has supported the community association’s efforts. And it didn’t stop there, she said. “We went to the mayor’s office and they said, ‘If you came up with some money … .”
They’ve been working with a ballpark figure of $500,000 on their end, she said, and believed the city would be able to come up with the same.
“People are saying different stories,” Theberge started, “to different people,” Clark finished.
“Purchase is possible; I don’t know about expropriation,” Chiarelli said Friday. He’s been working to help the community association raise money to acquire the property, and said he’s never told Theberge, who he has met with, that doing so wouldn’t be possible. He noted, however, that Theberge had a meeting with Mayor Jim Watson that Chiarelli didn’t attend.
“I’ve always said … it’s an uphill battle, but never that it couldn’t happen.”
The mayor could not be reached for comment Friday.
The most frustrating aspect of this, Theberge pointed out, is that the community association has been fundraising for three years for a park, and he’s spent a year-and-a-half working to get this development off the ground — a lot of time spent by two groups who, apparently, are open to the same solution.
“If they want to buy it, they can raise money and just buy it off myself,” he said. “If the city wants to expropriate the land for a park, I will roll out the red carpet for them.”
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...per-community-association-at-loggerheads
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