Barrhaven: Booming or sprawling?
Ever-expanding community seeks to be high-density while remaining pedestrian friendly
By Maria Cook, Ottawa Citizen December 25, 2013 6:00 PM
By settling in Chapman Mills, a newer part of Barrhaven, Xiaopeng Li says his family has all it needs for a good life: a network of friends, a comfortable house, recreation and proximity to shopping and transit.
“We feel quite happy,” says Li, 49, a federal civil servant. “In the last several years, we can see Barrhaven is booming. You still see lots of construction. Gradually, we have Walmart, a cinema, Home Depot. The educational facilities are wonderful.”
The Li family is among thousands who have chosen in the past decade to move to the city’s new suburbs south of the Greenbelt. The southern urban area, which includes Barrhaven, Riverside South and Leitrim, is the fastest growing part of Ottawa.
Over the past 11 years, Barrhaven’s population increased by 85 per cent — from 41,711 in 2001 to 77,245 in 2012. By 2021, the population is projected to swell to 95,000, and by 2031 to 110,000. (These numbers include all of Barrhaven, which is divided between two wards: Barrhaven and Gloucester-South Nepean.)
Barrhaven was established by Kingston contractor Melville Barr, who in 1959 bought 200 acres at Greenbank and Fallowfield roads to build a race course. After the Rideau-Carleton Raceway appeared, he subdivided the land instead and sold lots to builders.
The original Barrhaven, now called Old Barrhaven, was developed in the 1960s. Since then, it has grown south, east and west. The boundaries of Barrhaven are now the Greenbelt to the north; Rideau River to the east; Highway 416 to the west and Cambrian Road and Strandherd Road to the south.
Barrhaven is surrounded by rural areas and farmland, with the exception of the growing Riverside South community across the Rideau River. Directly south is Manotick, a village that has become part of Ottawa.
New Canadians are among those attracted to Barrhaven, including a significant Asian community. Li came from China to New Brunswick in 1994 to pursue his PhD in geomatics and remote sensing. The family, including wife Huili Wang, daughter Mengting and son Andy, moved to Ottawa in 1999 when Li got a job at a mapping company.
In 2000, they bought in Old Barrhaven because that’s where they had friends. In 2009, they moved to Chapman Mills for a newer and bigger house, going from 1,800 square feet to 3,400 square feet.
A Chinese volunteer group in Barrhaven organizes sports and social activities: Li plays volleyball three times a week, while his wife participates in traditional dance. A Chinese Saturday school in Barrhaven has 600 students, including their son.
At Water Dragon Park on Chapman Mills Drive, a pair of stone lions frame the entrance to the park. They were a gift from China, arranged with the help of Gloucester-South Nepean Coun. Steve Desroches, who wanted to mark the presence of the Chinese community.
“We like this kind of environment,” says Li. “We don’t like Toronto or Vancouver. Too many people. Too noisy.”
Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder says the Greenbelt creates a transition zone from work to home “that’s almost like a poignant pause. Once you cross Hunt Club Road you can feel the stress leave your body. You know you’re almost there.”
Driving south on Greenbank Road, through the cornfields of the Greenbelt, just before Fallowfield Road, motorists are greeted with a sign that reads “Barrhaven — Welcome Home.”
A short drive further, Greenbank narrows to two lanes and seems to enter woodlands, leading past elegantly simple 1970’s townhouses set among trees — a new form of housing then. A sign on a treed site announces a church to be built.
But, rather than becoming more rural as it moves further beyond the Greenbelt, the road soon emerges into the broad, bare streetscape of new shopping centres. Village Square Mall, Chapman Mills Marketplace, Barrhaven Town Centre, and others provide residents with Loblaws, Canadian Tire, Wendy’s and banks in multiple buildings arranged around parking.
During the 1990s and 2000s, Barrhaven expanded south and east toward Woodroffe Avenue and the Rideau River into subdivisions with names such as Chapman Mills, Longfields, Davidson Heights and Stonebridge, built beside a golf course.
In the 24-year period between 1988 and 2012, more than 21,000 new houses appeared in Barrhaven. Today, Chapman Mills and Longfields are still growing. Half Moon Bay is a new district down Greenbank Road on the Jock River. Further south, development is slated for neighbourhoods called the South Nepean Town Centre and Barrhaven South, for which the City of Ottawa has prepared community design plans.
While the shopping centres look like suburban malls everywhere, the nearby stacked townhouses signal new ideas about how a suburb should be designed.
Under the City of Ottawa’s intensification policies, new subdivisions are being developed to a higher density, which includes smaller lots and narrower road allowances to increase the number of houses built on the land.
The city’s new official plan has density targets of 34 units per hectare in subdivisions, compared to 29 units/hectare a decade ago and about 20 units/hectare in Old Barrhaven.
Barrhaven has exceeded the target: Over the past five years the density of new development has been 37 units/ hectare.
For example, Li’s house, built in 2007, sits on a relatively tight lot. The width is about 36 feet and the distance between houses is 10 feet. “This is between urban and suburban style,” he says. “We are very close to each other.”
The city’s plan for Barrhaven is to become a self-sustaining centre, with employment, and dense, walkable core areas connected to transit.
One such mixed-use district in the making is the South Nepean Town Centre. The 165-hectare site is planned for 22,000 residents and 12,000 jobs by 2031.
It is bounded to the north by Strandherd Drive, to the west by the Kennedy-Burnett Stormwater Management Facility, to the east by the future extension of Longfields Drive, and to the south by the Jock River.
“Is it residential sprawl?” says Dana Collings, the city’s program manager, community planning and urban design. “That’s not what this is. It’s going to be more of a place to live work, shop, go to school. It’s going to have every component of an urban city, not just housing.”
The first phase of the South Nepean Town Centre is a high-density development by Minto called Ampersand, which includes stacked townhouses and four-storey apartment buildings laid out on a city-type grid. High-rise condos are planned. The four-storey buildings frame a park that planners describe as “urban” for its use of hard surfaces, lamp-posts and rectangular form.
Parking courts behind the buildings reduce the impact of garages. Balconies are larger and more enclosed than is common on apartment buildings. At completion, Ampersand will have about 1,000 dwellings.
Another developer, Tega Homes, has applied to build two condo towers overlooking the Chapman Mills Marketplace shopping centre. They would be the highest in Barrhaven at 16 and 12 storeys.
“We need to look at opportunities for more density,” says Harder, vice-chair of city council’s planning committee. Density will bring a greater variety of stores and better bus service, she says.
Part of the idea of Ampersand is to be near shopping and transit, to reduce car use. It is located beside the Marketplace, giving residents access to stores within 600 metres and a rapid-bus transit station within 800 metres.
Still, Harder is disappointed that the walkability and cycling connections promised for the mall did not happen. “When I think back to what the initial presentations were, it was far more pedestrian friendly,” she says. “We have one bench in the entire Marketplace. Lots of seniors tell me they wish they could walk about and rest on a bench when needed.”
Because of the way communities are laid out, most residents of the south urban area will not be able to walk to shops, says Carleton University architecture professor Ben Gianni.
“Retail is aggregated into fewer, larger stores in shopping plazas, often at the edges rather than through the centre of the neighbourhood,” says Gianni.
“These centres are not only more difficult to reach on foot but are less pedestrian friendly given the need to accommodate automobiles,” he says. “Arguably residents benefit from few of the advantages or conveniences we associate with density.”
A high-profile example of density without amenity is Chapman Mills Drive, lined with stacked townhouses. Light rail, cancelled in 2006, was supposed to run along a boulevard down the centre of the road. Bus transit will take over the space in a couple of years, but the impact on the houses facing the avenue will be significant compared to LRT.
Roads and transit are the issues Harder hears about most often from residents. The vast majority of people who live in the community, don’t work in the community, says Harder. “Their need for public transit, for roads for their vehicles is very very high.”
Li alternates by car and bus to get to work at Baseline and Merivale. It takes 40 minutes, which he finds reasonable. But Wang’s bus commute to Carleton University campus takes an hour and a half . Because there’s no direct bus, she must travel to Bayview Station to transfer to the O-Train.
The other major area slated for development is Barrhaven South, a 500-hectare site planned for 19,215 people and 2,092 jobs by 2031. Still mostly farms and rural houses, it lies south of the Jock River, east of Highway 16, north of Barnsdale Road and west of Jockvale, Greenbank and the Stonebridge subdivision.
The Barrhaven South community design plan envisions a core area, where transit, commerce and civic uses such as a library or community centre are concentrated, along with apartments and live-work units. The city owns land along the Jock River, where it plans a district park.
Creating such mixed-use areas “that’s the 21st century challenge, we need to resolve in terms of building suburbs,” says urban planner and Davidson Heights resident Steve Willis, 45.
There’s only so much commercial activity to go around and employment is still tough to attract. As a result, despite sidewalks and bike lanes, it’s not easy to get around without a car, says Willis. “Everything is still very spread out, because it’ s not that mixed.”
That said, the Barrhaven being shaped today, is “certainly not the suburb I grew up in,” he says. “The streets are narrower, the lots are smaller.”
Willis was raised in a 1960s subdivision in Lincoln Fields; houses had big driveways and were set back on properties typically measuring 50 feet by 100 feet.
On Barrhaven’s newer streets, garages are pushed back to make them less dominant in front of houses, he observes. Lots are 35 feet and less. Larger and smaller houses as well as townhouses and semi-detached are mixed on the same street. This new model of suburb is driven by city policy as well as rising land prices, says Willis.
Here, the city is also experimenting with narrower right-of-ways. Typically local roads have an 18-metre right-of-way but many of the new streets have a 16.5-metre right way. The amount of asphalt road remains the same — 8.5 metres — but the space for utilities, trees and sidewalks is less.
This makes “a more close-knit fabric” and “more intimate feel,” says David Wise, the City of Ottawa’s program manager, development review.
It has also led to some head-scratching. “Where do hydro transformers go? How do you squeeze the sidewalk in there and make sure you’re leaving enough room for street trees, and underground infrastructure, the gas and water pipes and sanitary pipes and storm-pipes?”
In parts of Chapman Mills, utility boxes sit between driveways and close to houses, which residents do not like and try to screen with plants. Sometimes, there’s no room for street trees.
Smaller lots also mean there’s less lawn surface to soak up rainwater. “We need to direct that water safely so we’re not talking about having issues like flooded basements or erosion,” says Wise.
Parks now do double-duty as part of the storm-management system. At Water Dragon Park, for instance, much of the grass area is sunken to gather rain water .
Last summer, Harder was chatting with fellow residents about the perception of Barrhaven as “BBQ-Haven” or “bore-haven.”
“We no longer care that people mock us and they don’t know what Barrhaven is about,” they told Harder. “We love living here.”
Li’s son Andy, 17, agrees. He hadn’t heard the term “suburban sprawl.” Once it was explained, he replied: “I definitely support the idea of controlling it. You can see how there’s a lot of construction nearby. Two years ago it was trees. I don’t want to grow up and think, ‘Wow, this place used to be filled with nature.”
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