Come for the views: Zibi 'pioneers' start move-in to future One Planet Community
Anita Murray, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: January 25, 2019
Three years after beginning the long process of reclaiming the old Domtar lands in the Ottawa River, the site that is becoming Zibi still has the feel of an industrial wasteland.
But as residents move in to the first condo building, a new sales/tourist centre gets ready to open, demolition nears the end and the painstaking restoration of many of the property’s dozens of buildings progresses, there’s a sense that — finally — significant signs of the rebirth of the area are beginning to emerge.
Zibi is the 37-acre redevelopment of abandoned downtown waterfront straddling the Quebec and Ontario border, encompassing Chaudière and Albert islands as well as a portion of the Gatineau shoreline. The property is being developed by Dream Unlimited and Theia Partners, a spinoff of Windmill Development Group, who have an ambitious plan to bring upwards of 1,500 condos and rental apartments, more than 1.5 million square feet of commercial, retail, cultural and institutional space and almost eight acres of greenspace to the site.
Zibi president Jeff Westeinde sees the project as a much-needed fourth corner of the national capital’s tourist sector.
“If you look right now, you’ve got the War Museum, all the way down past Parliament, the National Gallery, across the bridge to the (Canadian) Museum of History (then) it stops and there’s really nothing on this side of the river to bring tourists along Laurier (Street),” he says on a recent tour of the development. “Zibi is for sure going to change the face of Gatineau.”
Designated a One Planet Community, which is a growing global network of über-green neighbourhoods that are the cutting edge of sustainable development, even beyond the industry-leading LEED program (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), Zibi will emphasize people through the Dutch concept of woonerfs, which promotes streets that give pedestrians priority over cars, as well as public plazas and squares.
So far, besides demolition and remediation, the focus on the Gatineau side has been on a section along Laurier Street, between Eddy Street and an extended Laval Street. This phase encompasses the first condo to be finished, a 70-unit six-storey building called O and built along the shoreline. Next to it, the hardscaping for a waterfront plaza is complete, with furniture, lighting and public art to be added in the spring.
Along Laurier, an old eyesore of a warehouse that had blocked the view to the river is now gone, as is a neighbouring servicing garage, completely opening up this corner of the property.
Just west of O, restoration continues on a pair of old buildings fronting Eddy (they’re actually a collection of several buildings that were all fused together over the years). The buildings will house commercial space that is expected to be ready later this year and feature a glass atrium between them that extends to a linear park with a view of Parliament Hill.
“From everywhere in that park you’re going to see Parliament Hill framed by our development and that’s one of the main pedestrian entrances onto the site,” says Westeinde.
Next door, Zibi’s new sales centre, which boasts a tree growing in the middle of it, is scheduled to open this winter. “We’re curating a five-senses experience,” explains Zibi events co-ordinator Scott Simpson. “Yes, it’ll be a sales centre but, if anything, it’s more like a tourist destination.” It’s designed, he says, so that one would be able to experience the five senses using the history of the site.
Meanwhile, construction continues on the first condo released on the Ottawa side, a 71-unit six-storey building that’s a mix of stacked townhomes and condo flats along the Buchanan Channel between Chaudière and Albert islands. It’s expected to be ready by the end of this year. And now open — if covered in snow — is the park overlooking the Chaudière Falls, the jewel of Ottawa that had been closed off to the city for so long.
Up next is a 14-storey rental building in Gatineau on the east side of Eddy that will boast prime views of the falls. And the sister building to O is expected to launch later this year.
Despite the progress, it’ll be some time before the site looks like the One Planet Community it’s designed to be and it’s perhaps appropriate that initial residents have been labelled by Westeinde as pioneers, even if the label conjures up comparisons to settler predecessors, who tamed the falls that have been deemed so important to the area’s Indigenous Peoples. (There is still a contingent — and probably always will be — of those who believe there should be no development of the area; that it should be returned to its natural state.)
“We really are pioneers,” says Danny Jeannot, who moved in with his partner, Jinny Jobin, at the end of November. He’s referring partly to the fact that it will be some time before much of the site is built — that doesn’t bother them at all — and partly to the sparse furnishings in their apartment, which is due to a complicated housing arrangement that is seeing their possessions temporarily scattered across three properties.
Both triathletes who work in the downtown core — he at Place du Portage in Gatineau, she at the Canadian Nurses Association across from the University of Ottawa — they were seeking a lifestyle change from their Aylmer bungalow. They loved the idea of being both close to work and of having a weekend cottage getaway where they could train in a lake. That meant finding a cottage and a sort of pied-à-terre in the middle of it all. Zibi fit the bill.
“It was my dream to come closer to downtown,” says Jobin.
Getting to work is now just a 10-minute walk for Jeannot and a short bike ride for Jobin. Plus, they’re close to the places they like to frequent downtown.
“When we saw everything that they’re planning to have here, I thought, ‘Oh my god, it’s going to be nice, beautiful,’ and also with the project at LeBreton Flats that’s going to come, this area will become the new downtown, pretty much, even more than the (ByWard) Market,” says Jeannot. “On top of that, with all the One Planet Community (aspect) I was in love with the idea of the project.”
They’re keeping their bungalow as an investment, renting it initially to a family that lost everything in last fall’s tornados. As a result, Jeannot and Jobin are leaving the family much of their furniture until a new home is built for them later in the year.
“All of these things are coming together at the same time,” Jeannot says of the chaotic couple of months ahead of them. Adds Jobin, “It’s exciting and stressful at the same time.”
And as far as being at Zibi before many of the development’s features are in place, Jeannot keeps a positive attitude. “Even if they do only 25 per cent of what they’re planning to do, it’s going to be great.”
With Citizen files
Zibi
What: A very green, 37-acre mixed-use community of condos, townhomes and rentals, as well as commercial, retail, cultural and institutional tenants, on the former Domtar industrial site along the Ottawa River.
Builders: Dream Unlimited and Theia Partners
Prices: From $339,900 in Gatineau and $639,900 in Ottawa
Sales centre: 6 Booth St.
Hours: Weekends noon to 5 p.m.; otherwise by appointment
Information:zibi.ca; 613-224-0134
https://ottawacitizen.com/life/homes/con...t-move-in-to-future-one-planet-community
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