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Posted Jan 31, 2011, 6:10 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 1,859
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Here comes a HUGE one....The Oblate Order is thinking about selling its property in Ottawa East (next to St Paul University) for redevelopment.
Quote:
Catholic orders take ‘a leap forward’ in planning city development
By Don Butler, The Ottawa Citizen January 30, 2011
One of central Ottawa’s largest parcels of undeveloped land — three-quarters the size of Lansdowne Park — is being readied for eventual sale.
And the property owners, the Ottawa East Community Association and city planners are working together to ensure that when the land is put on the market, any future redevelopment won’t trigger another Westboro-convent-style cat fight.
The Oblate Fathers, a Catholic religious order, owns most of the 12-hectare property on Main Street. Another Catholic order, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, owns about one hectare of the site.
Much of the land, which adjoins Saint Paul University and is bounded by Springhurst Avenue, Clegg Street and the Rideau River, is now open space. But it also includes the Oblates’ historic Deschatelets Building, constructed in 1885, and a convent of more recent vintage for the nuns.
There’s no timetable yet for the sale of the property. “Developers aren’t anywhere near this project now,” said Jeff Polowin, a spokesman for the Oblates.
But a sale at some point is “inevitable,” said consultant Ted Fobert, who represents the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, because both religious orders are winding down as older members die and aren’t replaced.
“There’s a lot of elderly sisters who are in the building, a lot of them not healthy,” Fobert said. “It’s a question of timing. There’s nothing imminent, but they are preparing for that future.”
Last June, the two religious orders obtained a deferral of a draft community design plan for Ottawa East — in the works since 2006 — so they could work with the community association and the city to devise a mutually acceptable plan for the redevelopment of the lands.
The Oblates and the Sisters hired Bruno St. Jean from Montreal’s DCYSA architects to produce a “demonstration plan” for the property, which will be incorporated in the broader community design plan. It was presented, to generally favourable reviews, to community association members earlier this month.
The demonstration plan envisages 1,300 housing units in townhouses and apartment blocks between four and nine stories tall — enough for 3,000 or more residents. It also calls for retail development along Main Street and the preservation and repurposing of the Deschatelets Building, which the city is expected to designate as a heritage structure.
The plan preserves much of the land as open space, with buildings occupying only about 20 per cent of the site.
The existing tree-lined “grand allée” from Main Street to the Deschatelets Building would remain, though it would be flanked on both sides by four-to-six storey buildings, which would give it a “very European feel,” Fobert said. Public access to the river would be preserved through a 30-metre-wide corridor.
The plan includes some property owned by Saint Paul University — a parking lot now occupied on weekends by the Main Street farmers’ market — which the university would likely trade for some adjacent Oblate land.
Nobody expects the demonstration plan to be implemented intact when the land is actually developed, though Fobert said whatever happens there “will be fairly close.”
Its main purpose is to illustrate how to create “a sustainable community within an existing community,” said Nick Masciantonio, president of the Ottawa East Community Association.
“We’re trying to get in front of the process a bit, because in the development process, there really isn’t a lot of time to react,” he said. “There’s a number of things there that will be taken out of negotiations with a future buyer, we hope.”
If city council agrees, the demonstration plan will form the template for rezoning the land — now zoned for institutional use only — in advance of any sale.
That would make it easier to determine the land’s resale value and add “a level of certainty” about future opportunities on the site, Fobert said.
It also would reduce the likelihood that future developers would propose projects unacceptable to neighbours, as happened at the Soeurs de la Visitation convent site in Westboro, which Ashcroft Homes purchased for $12 million in 2009.
And it would help protect legacy features — including the Deschatelets Building, the grand allée and a small woodlot and Madonna statue — the two religious orders are anxious to preserve.
David Chernushenko, the city councillor for the area, said the collaborative process has been “a leap forward compared with most potential developments in this city.”
Chernushenko’s also impressed with what he’s seen of the demonstration plan. “I look at this and go, wow, what a great opportunity,” he said. “This could be a real showpiece. It’s got sustainability, its got community livability and quality of life written all over it.”
Neighbours remain wary. John Baglow, who lives adjacent to the Oblate lands, said people are “a bit apprehensive. It does make us a bit nervous to think of a 1,300-home development taking the place of a very nice, pristine bit of green space.”
Traffic implications and the height of some apartment blocks worry those who live near the site, Baglow said. Despite that, he isn’t opposed to redevelopment of the property. “I just want to know more and have some safeguards built in.”
Chernushenko has heard concerns about the height of the apartments. However, some of the existing historical buildings are almost as tall, he said. “I would say to the community, ‘keep an open mind.’
“It is Oblate land,” he said. “To some degree, they can do what they want with it. But we all acknowledge that if you choose to take that approach, you waste a lot of time and money on lawyers.”
The two religious orders acknowledge that raking in huge profits at the expense of the surrounding community would be incompatible with their values, Chernushenko said.
At the same time, “they’re thinking of the retirement of their own religious order and being able to support their own aging members. This is about the only source of income. I think it’s possible to have a win-win out of that.”
Masciantonio said the community design plan, including the plan for the Oblate lands, will be presented at an open house in mid-to-late February. If all goes well, it will go to city council in March.
[email protected]
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Ca...lopment/4193520/story.html#ixzz1Cdb4QrOq
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Hopefully not, any ideas on the location? Their is a parcel of land at Gotham private fronting onto merivale that this could fit in, although the houses rendered in do not fit.. ?
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