Consultants tell city: tighten your Greenbelt
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/busines...986/story.html
Ottawans sure to balk at logical solution to lack of land needed to attract new employers
BY RANDALL DENLEY, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN MAY 16, 2010 12:02 AM
A new study done for the City of Ottawa invites councillors to choose between logic and worshipping a sacred cow. Anyone want to guess which way they will go?
The report by consultants Metropolitan Knowledge International says the city is short of employment land that has good access to transportation and can be developed at an economically feasible cost. This is a critical problem as the city prepares its new economic-development strategy. Part of the solution, the consultants say, is to make available Greenbelt lands adjacent to Highway 417 and around the Ottawa International Airport. The city needs to make this point now, the consultants say, as the National Capital Commission is developing its new Greenbelt master plan.
This, of course, is heresy. Every square inch of the Greenbelt is sacred to most people in Ottawa. Sure, the Greenbelt does include such slightly non-natural uses as the airport and the entire community of Blackburn Hamlet, but it’s critical that the rest be preserved. For Ottawans, driving on a four-lane highway through government-owned fields is an important aesthetic experience, one of the top ways to commune with nature without leaving your vehicle.
It’s easy to tell these consultants are from Toronto. No one in Ottawa would make such a logical suggestion. They don’t know that Ottawans think that farming is a good use for land in the centre of their city. That’s also an idea endorsed by NCC chief executive officer Marie Lemay, who is interested in some kind of more relevant or interesting farming taking place on these valuable lands. What other city sees farming as an inner-city development option? Yes, people like it, but it’s simply not a realistic way to plan a city.
The city is beginning to wake up to the challenge of broadening the economy, but there is no use talking about attracting new employers if there is no place for them to locate. The total acreage nominally available for light industrial development has lulled people into thinking there is land to accommodate new employers, but too much of it consists of expensive and tough-to-develop parcels inside the Greenbelt or unserviced land farther out, the consultants say.
The problem has become acute because short-sighted councillors keep redesignating employment land for residential and commercial
uses.
Ottawa has lost approximately 35 per cent of its vacant employment land since amalgamation due to conversion to other uses. That has contributed to a land shortage that makes much of what’s left too expensive to develop.
The solution, the consultants say, is exactly what logic and a map would suggest. Vast tracts of land along the 417 in the east and west ends of the city are perfectly suited for development.
“Ottawa’s future economic growth is dependent upon access to lands along the 417 corridor to serve as a natural extension of the Ottawa and Hawthorne business parks, which are at or near capacity and landlocked by the Greenbelt,” the report states.
The consultants challenge yet another favourite Ottawa viewpoint when they say that the industrial parks necessary for employment expansion require good roads, not light-rail transit lines. Some councillors want to stop building roads altogether, but businesses rely on good road connections. By suggesting development along highways 417 and 416, the consultants are saying we need to do far more with the roads we already have.
The land around the airport is another prime opportunity. There are 860 hectares of federally owned land under the jurisdiction of the airport authority, but there is no plan to maximize their industrial and commercial potential. The lands aren’t even properly serviced.
“We have no idea what the economic potential of the airport lands are,” says Councillor Peter Hume, chairman of the planning committee.
To really get anything done in Ottawa, one requires intelligent involvement by either the federal government or its agencies. That’s a problem. The consultants highlight the disconnect between federal actions and good land use policies. For example, the federal government has done nothing to intensify development in its outmoded office campuses at Tunney’s Pasture and Confederation Heights. These are prime revenue-generating and intensification targets, but the government has no particular motivation to act.
The least we should expect from our councillors is that they mount effective pressure to get the feds to assist with economic development in Ottawa, not block it. If councillors follow staff’s advice, they will duck all these issues entirely when the consultants’ work comes to the next meeting of the planning committee. Staff want the report simply to be received and forwarded as another piece of information for the economic strategy.
That’s not good enough, Hume says. “This should be a major point of discussion for us.” If this city is serious about economic development, “Ottawa has to lead.”
Councillors need to address this issue, even if it means challenging some popular local perceptions. If they don’t, they will be limiting the city’s economic future.