Downtown Ottawa Revitalization Initiatives

[Truenorth00]

It's not going to get better. They are cutting off-peak LRT to save $1.6M while spending $50M to widen Bank St, which basically increases road maintenance liabilities. So just play these trends out to their logical conclusions. Nobody wants to say it but Ottawa is not going to become more European. It's going to become more American. As in more of a hollowed out core with flight to the suburbs. That's where the current investment patterns logically take the city. Less Gothenburg. More Detroit.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You seem to be struggling with a keyword there: "relative".



https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/urban-expansion-costs-menard-memo-1.6193429

Butthurt suburbanites should take it up with the City and Hemson Consulting. I can't help it, if the math shows them leeches on city finances.

Yes, it is more efficient to provide services in a high rise than a SFH, but what does that have to do with urban and suburban? Downtown NIMBYs have pushed much of the high rise development into the suburbs so the Westboro millionaires can keep their SFH.

A more useful comparison would be the cost of delivering services to SFH in Westboro (the ones complaining about high taxes) to homes in the suburbs.

Also, this is true for almost any government service. I didn’t use any healthcare last year but paid a lot of taxes for healthcare.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's not going to get better. They are cutting off-peak LRT to save $1.6M while spending $50M to widen Bank St, which basically increases road maintenance liabilities. So just play these trends out to their logical conclusions. Nobody wants to say it but Ottawa is not going to become more European. It's going to become more American. As in more of a hollowed out core with flight to the suburbs. That's where the current investment patterns logically take the city. Less Gothenburg. More Detroit.

Detroit at least has a vibrant downtown. We can’t even get that.

[DTcrawler]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Yes, it is more efficient to provide services in a high rise than a SFH, but what does that have to do with urban and suburban? Downtown NIMBYs have pushed much of the high rise development into the suburbs so the Westboro millionaires can keep their SFH.

A more useful comparison would be the cost of delivering services to SFH in Westboro (the ones complaining about high taxes) to homes in the suburbs.

Also, this is true for almost any government service. I didn’t use any healthcare last year but paid a lot of taxes for healthcare.

???

Where is this suburban high rise development you speak of? Sure there's the odd suburban tower here or there but even those are all inner-Greenbelt. I could probably count the number of high rises built outside the Greenbelt in the last 10 years on one hand.

And based on voting records (at various levels of gov) I don't know if it's the Westboro millionaires raising the biggest stink about taxes. It's mostly the McMansion owners in Stittsville and similar areas.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

???

Where is this suburban high rise development you speak of? Sure there's the odd suburban tower here or there but even those are all inner-Greenbelt. I could probably count the number of high rises built outside the Greenbelt in the last 10 years on one hand.

And based on voting records (at various levels of gov) I don't know if it's the Westboro millionaires raising the biggest stink about taxes. It's mostly the McMansion owners in Stittsville and similar areas.

There are at least a half dozen high rise residential projects at various stages of construction in Gloucester. There is a fairly significant development at the end of Trim Road in Orleans. I assume the Commie Block developments in Nepean will eventually be addd to with more buildings.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Yes, it is more efficient to provide services in a high rise than a SFH, but what does that have to do with urban and suburban? Downtown NIMBYs have pushed much of the high rise development into the suburbs so the Westboro millionaires can keep their SFH.

A more useful comparison would be the cost of delivering services to SFH in Westboro (the ones complaining about high taxes) to homes in the suburbs.

You can whinge on about Westboro. But any density map will show, they aren't nearly as much of a problem as Farhaven or Sticksville or Boreleans which is where most of the low density is happening, substantially exacerbating the revenue-expenditure imbalance being discussed here. A handful of condos near Petrie Island doesn't substantially change that.

Originally Posted by acottawa

Also, this is true for almost any government service. I didn’t use any healthcare last year but paid a lot of taxes for healthcare.

Sure. And if seniors (who consume the most healthcare) suddenly started insisting that regular spa treatments should be part of the healthcare plan, I'm sure you'd have plenty to stay.

Funny how fiscal conservatives suddenly lose their nerve when it comes to $80M stroad expansions. But taking food out of grade schooler's mouth? Ever ready to defend that.

[acottawa]

If you look at an actual density map of Ottawa that doesn’t seem at all apparent. The densest part of Westboro is 6000/sq km, which is comparable to the newer neighborhoods in places like Barrhaven. The less dense parts of Westboro (which is 1950s sprawl) is 3000, comparable to anywhere in the suburbs.

https://2021-census-highlights-for-ottaw...?location=45.400453%2C-75.745339%2C12.55

[Westbro]

You are ignoring that there are like 10 unbuilt but approved developments along Scott and Richmond. Westboro has received a bunch of approvals for buildings but market forces are prevent their build. Take a walk through Westboro and you will realize that a lot of it doesn't even have proper storm sewers and uses ditches. It's not like our taxes are staying here in the ward.

That being said Westboro just has better organized NIMBYs so you hear it more, they have been at it longer than the outer burbs. At meetings you hearing hand-wringing mostly from the older folks from the neighbourhoods who don't understand the difference between allowed to build vs forced to build. You will see 99% of people who are immediately adjacent to a development complain no matter where it is built.

Most younger people are mostly supportive of development north of Richmond along the LRT. The Stitsville towers referenced above had a larger outcry than the two 40s towers at Scott and Athlone.

[lrt's friend]

You can only densify to the degree that there is a market to build it. Infill housing almost always costs more to get less, so the appeal is not there. Being close to work in urban areas also doesn't work when most jobs are now outside of old urban Ottawa and as we continue to degrade transit, mobility becomes a bigger issue. Urban Ottawa doesn't offer the services that it once offered. It wasn't long ago that urban Ottawa had movie theatres, furniture stores, hardware, even a Canadian Tire and probably others now mostly requiring a car and leaving the old urban areas. We may cheer on intensification but some amenities have long gone and won't be coming back because land costs and rents are too high.

[Truenorth00]

Pretending that Westboro = all of downtown and then trying to strawman into arguing that there's not much difference between downtown and the suburbs is a real reach and some obvious diversion. Guess so those new condos on Rideau don't exist. Because Westboro NIMBY.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You can only densify to the degree that there is a market to build it. Infill housing almost always costs more to get less, so the appeal is not there. Being close to work in urban areas also doesn't work when most jobs are now outside of old urban Ottawa and as we continue to degrade transit, mobility becomes a bigger issue. Urban Ottawa doesn't offer the services that it once offered. It wasn't long ago that urban Ottawa had movie theatres, furniture stores, hardware, even a Canadian Tire and probably others now mostly requiring a car and leaving the old urban areas. We may cheer on intensification but some amenities have long gone and won't be coming back because land costs and rents are too high.

You must not understand how businesses work. There's no business case to have furniture and big box stores in the core. No way their sales would justify the rents/land costs. Get over it.

And building these businesses in the hopes that suburbanites are going to drive half an hour, passing a whole bunch of closer alternatives, is particularly nonsensical.

And all of this in an era where you can buy practically anything online and have it delivered to your doorstep.

Next thing we'll hear from you is that downtown is dying because there's no Blockbuster and Rogers Video stores.

You seem to be really struggling with the idea that your narrative is a reach. Downtown is not "dying" because there's no Canadian Tire for suburbanites to go to. It's struggling because there's a post-Covid hangover and everybody is trying to figure out what life is like without everybody in their downtown offices 5 days per week. And having angry public servants in for 3 days a week isn't going to make a substantial difference.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Pretending that Westboro = all of downtown and then trying to strawman into arguing that there's not much difference between downtown and the suburbs is a real reach and some obvious diversion. Guess so those new condos on Rideau don't exist. Because Westboro NIMBY.

The people who are actually paying more taxes than people in the suburbs are people in neighborhoods like Westboro sitting in multimillion dollar houses in low density areas.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The people who are actually paying more taxes than people in the suburbs are people in neighborhoods like Westboro sitting in multimillion dollar houses in low density areas.

I don't live anywhere near Westboro and I assure you the nearly $4k in property taxes I pay on my condo don't come close to the servicing cost of my condo, especially on a private street. Westboro is not the only place subsidizing those burbs.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I don't live anywhere near Westboro and I assure you the nearly $4k in property taxes I pay on my condo don't come close to the servicing cost of my condo, especially on a private street. Westboro is not the only place subsidizing those burbs.

If you still live in Gloucester then you live in the burbs. Do you think all of those stroads come cheap? The money you pay in federal taxes and provincial taxes almost certainly exceeds the services you get from those levels of government. That is how taxation works.

[Richard Eade]

I think that lrt’s friend is talking much more broadly that you are giving him credit for. He is not only taking about the post-CoViD issue.

Cities develop and change over time, as they grow. When small, a lot of essential services are located in the core. That is THE place to do everything that is located on the High Street. As the city grows, more people occupy the outer reaches, mostly because housing prices are lower out there. Living in the core of the city is more expensive because everything is at their finger-tips.

Once enough people live away from the core, businesses begin to locate further out, to catch those potential clients. Sometimes, these are branches of the main location, which remains in the core; sometimes the remote location becomes the main location, and the core is abandoned. This is especially true if the core has not developed enough residents.

Thus, the centrally situated High Street jewelry store used to be the place people traveled to to buy a ring – because it was the only jewelry store in town. Once a store opened closer to the suburbs, people could save the trip downtown and buy their rings closer to their home. As fewer people ventured into the core, the downtown store had to rely almost exclusively on local (downtown) residents. If there were not enough of those to cover the high rent, the store closed and the downtown residents traveled to the suburbs for jewelry.

There is nothing unusual about Ottawa’s downtown changing. It has become primarily a business location, with most of the unique reasons to go there – apart from work – removed to the suburbs. There was no longer a need to head down to the Elgin Theater, for instance, since a suburbanite could see the same movie – granted, on a smaller screen – at the new multi-plex theater in their local suburban mall. And the multi-plex format allows several different films to attract customers. The huge ‘Big Elgin’ had to attract hundreds of customers for a single movie.

People still travel to the core for the unique things that are there. The NAC still draws in suburbanites, for example. But there really needs to be an excellent reason for suburbanites to go downtown. And there are still not enough local residents to support a lot of other offerings in the core. There is only one local mall downtown. And the grocery stores were clustered near the highest ‘captive’ population; the university.

Things are changing in downtown Ottawa, however. More residential units are being developed. Gradually, grocery stores, hardware stores, and movie theaters will return. It just won’t happen overnight. And there is little that anyone can do to speed things up. (Well, maybe governments could make it easier and cheaper to house people downtown.)

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

If you still live in Gloucester then you live in the burbs. Do you think all of those stroads come cheap? The money you pay in federal taxes and provincial taxes almost certainly exceeds the services you get from those levels of government. That is how taxation works.

You really wanna argue that Saint Laurent and Brian Coburn are serving similar densities? I'll happily put up my walkscore, transitscore and bikescore up against ex-greenbelt suburbanite.

Those stroads aren't cheap. Which is exactly the point. We shouldn't be building new ones with even less density. That is simply accruing liabilities which means even less resources to support everything from transit to library hours to emptying garbage cans. Especially at the cost that these new stroads come in at (tens to hundreds of millions).

At least we know the limits to your fiscal conservatism I guess. Apparently ends where your search for parking begins....

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

I think that lrt’s friend is talking much more broadly that you are giving him credit for.

He routinely whines about how downtown is dying because people can't drive there. And by people he's referring to himself. So I'm giving him exactly the credit he's earned. Old man doesn't understand how demographic changes and development means downtown today is not what he grew up with. And he doesn't seem to get that it will never go back to what it used to be. The question now is how we build something better than the morass we have.

[ponyboycurtis]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Promise made, promise broken on CBC's part.



It has not been under construction any more for a while.

Really? I passed by earlier in the summer and it was still fenced off but appeared to be approaching completion. That is good to hear. Once again though.. what on earth took so long? I want to say this is possibly the 3rd season it was under construction. I've walked within a block or two of that place multiple times since and just kind of forgot all about it at this point.

It will be my first point of interest next time I am in the area.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

???

Where is this suburban high rise development you speak of? Sure there's the odd suburban tower here or there but even those are all inner-Greenbelt. I could probably count the number of high rises built outside the Greenbelt in the last 10 years on one hand.

And based on voting records (at various levels of gov) I don't know if it's the Westboro millionaires raising the biggest stink about taxes. It's mostly the McMansion owners in Stittsville and similar areas.

Anyway those Westboro millionaires are dwarfed by renters and people in social housing who don't even pay taxes so elect pro tax increase counciloors. It's the middle class anti tax suburbanites.

New suburban growth may be more expensive than infill. Of course it is. But development charges may now pay for that given how much they have shot up. Regardless downtown — the resources of the city in social services, crime etc. These are rightly citywide problems exactly to avoid Detroit and flight to suburbs which is why Harris forced amalgamation before downloading services. It is a real win for rural residents unsuprisnglly.

[rocketphish]

Ottawa, Gatineau mayors pledge to work together on regional issues, downtowns

Mia Jensen, OBJ
September 13, 2024 12:42 PM ET

The mayors of Ottawa and Gatineau have pledged to work more closely together to tackle issues such as revitalizing downtown cores that have seen a sharp decline in business traffic in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe sat down for a conversation with recently elected Gatineau Mayor Maude Marquis-Bissonnette Thursday morning at City Hall as part of the monthly Mayor’s Breakfast series hosted by the Ottawa Board of Trade and the Ottawa Business Journal.

After the event, Sutcliffe and Marquis-Bissonnette hosted a news conference, where they emphasized the connection between their cities and the need to pursue a common .

“We do have a lot in common,” Sutcliffe said. “We are two cities in two different provinces, we are one economic region, and as the two cities that make up the National Capital Region, we are both deeply tied to the federal government.” Sutcliffe noted that both cities were deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with downtown businesses that relied on office workers for much of their income being particularly hard-hit.

“Our downtown cores are going through historic changes,” he said. “And working with our partners in the federal government, we need a plan for the future of the National Capital Region.” He added, “With our statement today and our commitment to work together, we’re signalling that we are ready to work together, we are ready to work with the federal government on the future of Ottawa and the future of Gatineau.”

Earlier this year, Stéphane Bisson, president of the board for the Gatineau Chamber of Commerce, told OBJ that the city had taken a major hit during the pandemic. A report from Observatoire du développement de l’Outaouais (ODO) found that federal employees had left the downtown in droves over the past five years. In 2021, 14,460 federal workers worked in downtown Gatineau, a drop of nearly 60 per cent from the 36,000 employees who worked in the area in 2016, the report said.

“We have developed the City of Gatineau over the last 50 years around the government occupation of the downtown area,” he told OBJ at the time. “The situation in Ottawa – it does have other business: law, the lobbying offices, the embassies. You still have some kind of heartbeat. We don’t have that in (Gatineau).”

In addition, the city was riddled with empty buildings, including government offices, and lacked affordable housing to draw new residents downtown.

During Thursday’s discussion at City Hall, Marquis-Bissonnette drew similar parallels between her city's troubles and those of Ottawa.

For example, she noted that both cities have the added challenges of dealing with three levels of government – municipal, provincial and federal – in one place. Both Sutcliffe and Marquis-Bissonnette pointed out that their cities are both far enough away from their respective provincial governments that many residents feel they’re sometimes forgotten about.

“It’s increasingly the case, where when it comes to everyday life, we tackle issues that used to be the responsibility of the provincial and federal government,” Marquis-Bissonnette said.

“We talk about homelessness, housing, immigration, climate change, and we know that we have the solutions to face those wicked problems. But the thing is, we have to align our strategies with the provincial and federal government. And I believe it’s particularly our case here in the National Capital Region, because of the assets and the importance of the federal and provincial government.” Marquis-Bissonnette added that although the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau may be tackling those issues for other levels of government, they’re doing it without the resources those governments have.

While the two municipalities share many of the same problems, Marquis-Bissonnette added that one unique problem for her city is that it doesn’t have a clearly defined central core.

“Gatineau has been looking for a downtown since amalgamation at the beginning of the 2000s,” she said. “It’s a situation that’s very particular to Gatineau. When we look at Montreal or even smaller cities, the downtown area is a place that is attractive to all citizens of the city. It’s something that we do have to work on. There’s something happening in Vieux Hull, I would say. It’s something we will have to do in the long run, and it has to come with financial investment.” Marquis-Bissonnette said that the goal is to diversify the downtown core and create a “complete neighbourhood” that caters to workers and residents.

“We need to make sure that public transportation is efficient, that we have small businesses, including a grocery store, drug store, and all the businesses you need in your daily life. I think it’s a challenge that will take the effort of the three levels (of government).”

https://obj.ca/ottawa-gatineau-mayors-pledge-work-together-region-downtowns/