General Update/Rumour thread [Urban Ottawa]

[Marcus CLS]

In the past week and today while cycling I noticed minor activity.

1. During the same walk I take every day from the O-Train early last week a for sale sign went up at the N.E. Corner of Carling and Preston. This site has been undergoing environmental clean up for the past two years. Major developement location. This won't take long to sell.

2. Today while cycling by, the proshine car wash at Wellington and Island Park had 6 noticable orange paint marks on the asphalt. Usually these mark future drill holes for soil testing. The site is for a proposed 7 sty. building status unknown.

3. Later today, the east half of the parking Lot at the S.W. corner of O'Conner and Nepean was closed off with a Drill truck and workers on site with several orange cones spread out marking various locations (working on a sunday?).

[McC]

Originally Posted by Marcus CLS

2. Today while cycling by, the proshine car wash at Wellington and Island Park had 6 noticable orange paint marks on the asphalt. Usually these mark future drill holes for soil testing. The site is for a proposed 7 sty. building status unknown.

Redeveloping the Proshine lot didn't go much of anywhere last time; see, e.g., http://spacingottawa.ca/author/chrishenschel/

[waterloowarrior]

Local landlords and developers had less than two weeks to respond to the federal government's latest request for information for office space in the National Capital Region.

Public Works said it needs almost 285,000 square feet of office space – enough, it says, to house between 1,600 and 1,700 civil servants – to replace existing accommodations by 2015. The property must be close to a Transitway station, specifically those between the St. Laurent and Walkley stops. The Confederation O-Train station also qualifies.

http://www.obj.ca/Real%20Estate/Construc...nning-for-second-new-government-office/1

If the government acts on the current request for information and goes out to full tender, the leading development sites are likely to be:
• The VIA Rail property on Terminal Avenue, south of the station and tracks, which would be developed by Canderel;
• The Train Yards property, also in the Terminal Avenue area;
• St. Laurent Shopping Centre, which has redevelopment plans that include office components;
• Billings Bridge Shopping Centre, which has land available for development;
• The government-owned development site at the corner of St. Laurent Boulevard and Tremblay Road.

[waterloowarrior]

from http://www.bennettpros.com/

Distillery Lofts
Launching Fall 2011


The Next
Launching Fall 2011

[S-Man]

I can figure out the Central Park building, but where and what are the Distillery Lofts.......we have a distillery?

[amanfromnowhere]

an article from OBJ:

Developer says discussions with city show desire for intensification
Catherine Street, running parallel along the Queensway, is poised to turn into a gold mine for condo developers thanks to the city's intensification efforts, says one builder with a stake in the area.

Topics : Fortress Real Capital , Crerar Silverside , Lamb Development , Ottawa , Richmond Hill , Lyon
Richmond Hill, Ont.-based Fortress Real Capital has its eye on at least two more properties in the area of Bank and Catherine streets, in addition to its newly unveiled SoBa development, which will go up just south of the intersection. The 19-storey, nearly 250-unit tower scheduled for completion in 2014.

"The city has indicated they want to intensify that area," says Jawad Rathore, chief strategic officer at Fortress.

"They want to increase height in that area. We think it's going to be really revitalized, that part of Centretown."

Fortress and Lamb Development Corp. are working together on the SoBa project, with each chipping in capital costs. This is their second such agreement since starting work on the Gotham, a 17-storey, 240-unit building at the intersection of Lyon and Gloucester streets that will be finished in 2012.

The companies are part of an influx of Toronto developers eyeing Ottawa's condo market. Commonly cited factors for building in the national capital include the stabilizing presence of government, the number of young professionals looking to buy urban real estate, and older people seeking to downsize.

But the Bank and Catherine streets area in particular will be where Fortress expects to see the most growth, Mr. Rathore says.

"It's close to dining and restaurants, bars and shopping, close to where you want to be - and it has the added advantage of being a hip, cool address in a hot area."

The Greyhound station at Kent Street, just west of SoBa, is another site that could eventually sport residential condominium towers.

Last week, the city's planning committee endorsed a rezoning request by the property's owner - Crerar Silverside Corp. - that would allow for four buildings on the site, including two 25-storey towers containing retail, apartment and office space.

Vancouver-based Crerar wanted the property rezoned in case the operators of the intercity bus service opt to relocate the Ottawa facility. However, in an interview last year, the controlling shareholder of Crerar told OBJ he'd like it to continue to be a bus station as an income-generating property in the company's portfolio.

According to Mr. Rathore, discussions with the city during the summer indicated staff are looking at increasing the density allowances on Catherine Street, with towers ranging between 20 and 30 storeys. Past zoning restrictions for height made it too difficult to pursue for developers, he says.

"The city has mapped out that area for intensification, we're the first down there, and we're excited about that," he says. "The plan is for more."

FORTRESS AND LAMB'S DEVELOPMENTS IN OTTAWA

Gotham

Location: Lyon and Gloucester streets

Height: 17 storeys

No. of units: 240

Expected completion date: 2012



SoBa

Location: Bank and Catherine streets

Height: 19 storeys

No. of units: Up to 250

Expected completion date: 2014

[McC]

All of the parking and the low rise portion of the Staples (with or without the book store) is another lot ripe for re-development in that area.

[Uhuniau]

Close to the Transitway?

Too bad that condition wasn't applied to the disgusting RCMP move.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by S-Man

I can figure out the Central Park building, but where and what are the Distillery Lofts.......we have a distillery?

This is Ottawa. You can't actually make any local references in the names of any local developments. It's a rule. They have be (pick one):

- references to New York, specifically Manhattan (the SOHOs, "Tribeca", "Central Park")
- imports from Toronto ("Distillery")
- vaguely London or English ("Notting Gate"), or Scottish (Glen This, This Glen)
- faux-frenchified, usually by adding "on the Parc"
- bizarrely nautical ("South Keys", "Barrhaven", "Old Barrhaven" for the love of frig; is there a "Kanata Wharf" yet?
- generic, sold by the strip to any developer in English-speaking North America ("Honeygables", "Bridlewood", "Centrepointe",
- just plain made up ("Morgan's Grant")

If your building or development is not named in accordance with one of these infallible rules, you are doing it wrong.

[OttawaSteve]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

- just plain made up ("Morgan's Grant")

Sources: CCADP and the google.

[Umpaidh]

Barrhaven is names after Mel Barr. I'm not familiar with how that would relate to a nautical term.

I understand what you are saying about the recent condo's that all want to evoke NYC in their names, though.

[RTWAP]

Centrepointe is descriptive. Nepean was a spread out suburb with little intensification and realized that they should try to build a denser 'central' area. Hence the name, and moving city hall, the main library and the cultural centre there.

For the most part, the people who ran Nepean did a good job of setting ambitious long term goals and working toward them methodically.

[S-Man]

Hmmm...I recall a blog post by Ken Grey not too long ago warning of the dangers of an 'extremified' Centrepointe....not realizing that was always the intent....you know, with that whole school/mall/office/transit station thing going on.

A suitably logical argument would be: 'The shadows from the tall buildings will fall on the theatre and render the stages useless!'

[reidjr]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

This is Ottawa. You can't actually make any local references in the names of any local developments. It's a rule. They have be (pick one):

- references to New York, specifically Manhattan (the SOHOs, "Tribeca", "Central Park")
- imports from Toronto ("Distillery")
- vaguely London or English ("Notting Gate"), or Scottish (Glen This, This Glen)
- faux-frenchified, usually by adding "on the Parc"
- bizarrely nautical ("South Keys", "Barrhaven", "Old Barrhaven" for the love of frig; is there a "Kanata Wharf" yet?
- generic, sold by the strip to any developer in English-speaking North America ("Honeygables", "Bridlewood", "Centrepointe",
- just plain made up ("Morgan's Grant")

If your building or development is not named in accordance with one of these infallible rules, you are doing it wrong.

To be fair its not just a ottawa issue they do this in toronto as well.

[amanfromnowhere]

From Jon Willing twitter

Construction fence up for Rink of Dreams at #OTTCity Hall. http://lockerz.com/s/142954099

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by OttawaSteve

Sources: CCADP and the google.

And?

"Morgan's Grant" is still not a historical name. It was made up when the developer's marketer did the same thing you did, flip through the Atlas of the County of Carleton. It may as well have been "Bradley Estates" or "Armstrong Acres".

Nothing evokes the memory of a nineteenth-century plan of settlement like curlicue subdivisions, cul-de-sacs, and cookie-cutter houses.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Umpaidh

Barrhaven is names after Mel Barr. I'm not familiar with how that would relate to a nautical term.

Do you know what a "haven" is?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by RTWAP

Centrepointe is descriptive. Nepean was a spread out suburb with little intensification and realized that they should try to build a denser 'central' area. Hence the name, and moving city hall, the main library and the cultural centre there.

For the most part, the people who ran Nepean did a good job of setting ambitious long term goals and working toward them methodically.

That's almost funny!

Yeah, the municipality that bitched about its old downtown being annexed by Ottawa, and then spent decades allowing sprawl, sprawl, sprawl. "Centrepointe" wasn't, and still isn't, much of a centre, nor does it have much of a point!

It's also a bland, generic name that recurs in a number of other English-speaking North American cities.

[OttawaSteve]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

And?

And:

- George Morgan was not some random landowner, but one of the half dozen or so original (c. 1820) settlers of March Township (and, for a time, the township Treasurer)

- the original Morgan's Grant subdivision was built encircling Morgan's Grant Woods (slightly off-topic: a designated urban natural area of "exceptional natural diversity" (report)). These woods are in fact located right in the middle of one of George Morgan's land grants, but I was unable to determine whether the name of the woods pre-dates the subdivision (anyone know?)

- purely incidentally, it's neat that some of the original forced road network for this immediate area has been retained, namely the Goulbourn Road (now Flamborough Way).

All of this is, of course, neither here nor there.

The bigger question concerns this desire to draw a firm distinction between legitimate "historical names" and categorically "not...historical" labels that have been "just plain made up" by developers' marketing teams. But I wonder if this is even a plausible distinction, given 1) the history of the way names have been assigned to places in North America, and the rationale; and 2) the arbitrariness of the criteria by which we decide to define the continuity of places, people, and cultures over time.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by OttawaSteve

And:

- George Morgan was not some random landowner, but one of the half dozen or so original (c. 1820) settlers of March Township (and, for a time, the township Treasurer)

None of which detracts from my basic point: "Morgan's Grant" is a recent fabrication, which could easily have been [OTHER NAME]'s [OTHER GENERIC]. It's not a long-standing cultural feature, in the topographical sense of the term.

- purely incidentally, it's neat that some of the original forced road network for this immediate area has been retained, namely the Goulbourn Road (now Flamborough Way).

Too bad it didn't retain that name. That's the kind of historical continuity I like.

The bigger question concerns this desire to draw a firm distinction between legitimate "historical names" and categorically "not...historical" labels that have been "just plain made up" by developers' marketing teams. But I wonder if this is even a plausible distinction, given 1) the history of the way names have been assigned to places in North America, and the rationale; and 2) the arbitrariness of the criteria by which we decide to define the continuity of places, people, and cultures over time.

I would really like to see the power of developers to just give places crappy, cheesy, tacky names, taken away from them, along with their power to draw crappy, cheesy, permanently inefficient street layouts.

You want to develop an area? Give it a nice marketing name? Sure - now, here is the list of locally-relevant geographical features or historical references which you will pick from when naming your subdivision.

Happy sales!