City of Ottawa's architect panel underwhelmed by tower project plans at Gladstone
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: February 11, 2019
A panel of design experts had a ho-hum reaction to a developer’s pitch to protect transit passengers from ugly weather in a preliminary concept for a major tower project next to a future train station.
Trinity Developments is going through the municipal planning approval process for its three-tower vision for the connected properties at 951 Gladstone Ave. and 145 Loretta Ave., west of the future Gladstone Station along the Trillium Line. The approval process includes at least one meeting with the city’s urban design review panel, which reviewed Trinity’s concept in an open meeting this month.
The urban design review panel is made up of architects from outside city hall and provides independent assessments of building designs. Most of the members are from outside of Ottawa.
Trinity’s design includes a bridge leading from a renovated Standard Bread Building, over a pathway, to a second level of the train station.
Gladstone Station is part of Ottawa’s Stage 2 rail expansion of the Trillium Line, scheduled to be done in 2021.
James Parakh, the manager of urban design for Toronto and East York District, first questioned the pedestrian bridge and wondered whether the crossing to the train station was necessary since people could just walk outside to the station, which will be a short distance away.
Landscape architect David Leinster, a partner with The Planning Partnership, who chairs Ottawa’s urban design review panel, encouraged Trinity’s architects to create a strong street connection, potentially through an outdoor plaza, rather than building a pedestrian bridge.
The size of the proposed development also raised some eyebrows around the table.
The planning application calls for 931 residential units, 140,000 square feet of office space and 21,000 square feet of retail space at full build. The tallest tower would be 41 storeys along Gladstone Avenue, while the other two towers, moving north down Loretta Avenue, would be 35 storeys and 30 storeys, respectively.
The panel expressed concern about the mass of the complex boxing out the historic Standard Bread Building, which could be subject to a heritage-protection application at the same time Trinity’s development plan moves through city hall’s approval cycle.
Emmanuelle van Rutten, director at Moriyama & Teshima Architects’ Ottawa office, observed that the complex would be “very big” compared to the low-scale residential and light-industrial buildings in the neighbourhood. Heather Rolleston honed in on the “overbuilt” blocky podium under the tallest tower and was concerned about the “generic” design of the towers so far.
The huge Trinity complex wouldn’t stick out so much when future projects in the area are considered.
Ottawa Community Housing is developing about seven acres of land on the east side of the future train station and the panel heard the development could be as tall as 30 storeys. Trinity also has planning approval to build a 65-storey complex one train stop to the north, across from Bayview Station. At Carling Avenue and Preston Street, Claridge Homes is currently building a 45-storey tower.
Leinster applauded Trinity for preserving the old bread building, but he suggested the panel wouldn’t support the totality of the complex design in its current form.
Barry Hobin, the Ottawa architect whose firm is designing the development, said he wasn’t alarmed by anything he heard from the panel experts, but he pushed back a bit over their criticism of the weather-protected pedestrian bridge, considering Ottawa has been buried in snow and subjected to bone-chilling temperatures this winter.
Creating a transit plaza between the proposed development and the train station would also create a challenge of where to shovel all the snow, Hobin said.
The planning committee still needs to consider the development plan, but it’s likely the urban design review panel will get another peek at any tweaks before zoning and official plan applications hit the political agenda. The panel’s comments are considered by committee and council.
jwilling@postmedia.com
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