Greystone Village development [Main St] | up to 28m | up to 9f | U/C

[Harley613]

How does 9 stories here affect ANYONE'S life. These people protest for the sake of protesting.

[Uhuniau]

Seriously.... and a few blocks over, you have an overlapping set of nattering negatives whining about losing their canal view to a pedestrian bridge. It must be a tough life, crying into the deed of your $2-million home every night.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

The opponents need to come up with better arguments than "there should not be amendments to the plan" The secondary plan is 8 years old and amendments are permitted after 2 years in the Planning Act. So the City must consider the amendments. Especially after Bill 108 they are fighting a losing battle. No plan is perfect and the amendment process is there to consider new ideas.

Disagree. Why bother with plans at all if they can be amended at whim? Just make it official and give developers a blank cheque.

And politicians wonder why residents don't get involved. The entire planning process seems like one giant attempt to legitimize any musings from a developer.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Seriously.... and a few blocks over, you have an overlapping set of nattering negatives whining about losing their canal view to a pedestrian bridge. It must be a tough life, crying into the deed of your $2-million home every night.

On the other hand, how many hundreds of thousands did they pay for the view that they've now lost? Their choice and their problem, I know, but complaints/venting are hardly surprising. At the end of the day, the project is built so what does it matter?

[Harley613]

That bridge is drop dead gorgeous at night. They have the lights on now and it looks amazing.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Harley613

That bridge is drop dead gorgeous at night. They have the lights on now and it looks amazing.

I thought so too - will it always be white light, or will the colours change?

[gosouth]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Seriously.... and a few blocks over, you have an overlapping set of nattering negatives whining about losing their canal view to a pedestrian bridge. It must be a tough life, crying into the deed of your $2-million home every night.

The houses most affected by the blocked view are on the east side of the canal, on Echo Drive to the south of Clegg St. These are mostly older modest houses and apartments that are nowhere near $2M. These homes used to have a nice view of the canal, but they are now staring at a 15 foot high stone wall which is the side of the ramp onto the footbridge. I would be pissed if I was them.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by gosouth

The houses most affected by the blocked view are on the east side of the canal, on Echo Drive to the south of Clegg St. These are mostly older modest houses and apartments that are nowhere near $2M. These homes used to have a nice view of the canal, but they are now staring at a 15 foot high stone wall which is the side of the ramp onto the footbridge. I would be pissed if I was them.

True, but they now have super easy access to the Glebe and Lansdowne. Personally I think it’s a wash.

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Disagree. Why bother with plans at all if they can be amended at whim? Just make it official and give developers a blank cheque.

And politicians wonder why residents don't get involved. The entire planning process seems like one giant attempt to legitimize any musings from a developer.

What 'WHIM' are you referring to? The multi-year planning process, the bylaws and laws governing said process, or the extremely vocal and thorough appeals process?

If what they've gone through to get this amendment is a 'whim', I'd hate to see what actual though-out and planned decisions look like. No wonder nothing gets built in this friggin city.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

What 'WHIM' are you referring to? The multi-year planning process, the bylaws and laws governing said process, or the extremely vocal and thorough appeals process?

If what they've gone through to get this amendment is a 'whim', I'd hate to see what actual though-out and planned decisions look like. No wonder nothing gets built in this friggin city.

Oooh there's a process. So that makes it less discretionary?

Sorry. From the point of view of any resident the process is not close to balanced or fair these days. The OMB and city planning departments are simply rubber stamp bodies for developers. Which would be less concerning if the net output was decent urban design. It isn't. Our cities are getting uglier and still sprawling.

On this particular type of issue. If sightlines are not to be protected at all, it's time to start forcing developers to make that explicit up front. Let them take the revenue hit. It's borderline fraudulent to collect a premium on some implicit assumption of how future development will proceed and then flip the script after you've made the sale. Hiding behind some faux concern about urbanism doesn't make the practice any less unethical.

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Oooh there's a process. So that makes it less discretionary?

Sorry. From the point of view of any resident the process is not close to balanced or fair these days. The OMB and city planning departments are simply rubber stamp bodies for developers. Which would be less concerning if the net output was decent urban design. It isn't. Our cities are getting uglier and still sprawling.

On this particular type of issue. If sightlines are not to be protected at all, it's time to start forcing developers to make that explicit up front. Let them take the revenue hit. It's borderline fraudulent to collect a premium on some implicit assumption of how future development will proceed and then flip the script after you've made the sale. Hiding behind some faux concern about urbanism doesn't make the practice any less unethical.

Yes, there's a process. Exactly for this purpose. To rubber stamp something and call it unchangeable is a waste as well. Change happens.

In this instance, what kind of sight line are we referring to, where a 6 or 9 storey building is built next to the main drivelane up to an old 4 storey heritage building. The new condos are set to frame the drivelane and a peek at the front of the heritage building. Nobody's taking a drone up to the 7th storey level next to a condo to get a 'sightline'.

As for design, yes you're right, design sucks in this City. Changing a condo 3 stories, set in a group of condos surrounded by condos is not going to kill anybody.

[waterloowarrior]

Lots of letters to the editor on this
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/le...ne-development

Be loyal to the people, not the developers

Re: Community fails to convince councillors to block taller building in Greystone Village, June 28.

The planning committee’s recent decision to allow The Regional Group to go against the approved plan and construct a nine-storey building instead of a six-storey building at Greystone off Main Street demonstrates two points.

The city needs two planning committees, one making decisions for the area covering the pre-amalgamated Ottawa, and another planning committee made up of suburban councillors making decisions about their own suburban wards. The planning committee, consisting mostly of suburban councillors, voted 8-to-1 in favour of the Regional Group and against the wishes of the community association and citizens of the downtownish Capital ward. Jeff Leiper was the only councillor who voted against the greater height; thank you, sir. Capital ward councillor Shawn Menard is not on the planning committee and his pleas to this committee fell on deaf ears.

Second, we need leadership on council to firmly establish that city planning staff and planning committee councillors must be loyal first to the electorate, not primarily to developers. The citizens of Ottawa deserve better than this.

Theresa Wallace, Ottawa

Old Ottawa East residents are right to feel betrayed

Rather than adopting an adversarial approach to the development of Greystone Village, the residents of the Old Ottawa East Community committed themselves to work in partnership with the developer, Regional, and the city. Concessions were made, trusting that each partner would adhere to the agreed-upon plan. The city and the developer have changed the plan against the wishes of the community.

Residents are justified in feeling that they were betrayed by the planning process. This can only mean that all future interactions, in Old Ottawa East or elsewhere, will revert back to behaviours associated with lack of trust. This will not produce the excellence that residents deserve.

Nancy MacDonald, Ottawa

Councillors, do the right thing on the Oblate lands

It turns out a carefully conceived community plan, with hundreds of hours of volunteer community input and agreement among all parties, becomes a non-plan as soon as a developer wants to change things, like adding height but no density and ignoring community and even city legal input. Out comes the rubber stamp from both the city planners and planning committee.

To add insult to injury, the planning committee chair, Jan Harder, made it seem like the developer, The Regional Group, was a driver for the canal footbridge, the clean-up of the Oblate lands and Main Street. That would be marvellous if true, but we as taxpayers footed the bill for half the clean-up, and the cost of Main Street and the bridge.

Can’t they do anything right at City Hall? It’s not too late for council as a whole to put things right on July 10.

Jeff Sutton, Old Ottawa East


Regional has broken faith with the community

I was one of the speakers at the planning committee when it dealt with the Oblate lands, the first time I had encountered councillors in full earplug. Their minds had obviously been made up already. The process was, to me, a sham, from start to finish.

Regional’s architect, Barry Hobin, seemed genuinely mystified as to how anyone could object to the way the building mass was squashed, trimmed, then poked up three more storeys to accommodate the trees on the Grand Allée. I really appreciate his efforts to protect them, but I don’t think the new resulting wind tunnel will help. I wish he had come to the community to discuss these ideas, instead of letting the suits ram it through the committee.

Regional has broken faith with Old Ottawa East. I am ashamed to have wasted so much of my time over the years the company was negotiating with our community. and sad that the engagement of so many residents has been rudely wasted on broken commitments.

Barry Davis, Ottawa

Community made Old Ottawa East attractive

The chair of the city’s planning committee had it backwards when she claimed that Regional’s Greystone development was the impetus for major infrastructure improvements in the neighbourhood of Old Ottawa East. In fact, it was community-led initiatives resulting in the “complete street” (Main Street) and the Flora Footbridge that attracted the developer to the community.

Coun. Jan Harder’s comments were not only inaccurate, they were also completely inappropriate for a committee chair, who is supposed to act impartially.

We are an actively engaged community, pushing for improvements eons before they are on the city’s radar. Groundwork for the Flora Footbridge, developed by the community and acknowledged by the mayor in his bridge opening ceremony, started 15 years ago. Let’s give credit where credit is due: It’s the community residents who have made Old Ottawa East the best in the city, not the developers.

Heather Jarrett, Ottawa

Developers’ change of mind is all too common

This case of a developer successfully asking for Ottawa Council’s planning committee to approve building higher than what was originally agreed to is, for community associations, all too common. It is interesting that the developer was praised for working with the community but then, apparently, found that the rules were ambiguous, and profitably (so far) went for higher limits. Let us hope that this was not a planned tactic.

The role of the vast majority of councillors on the planning committee was all too familiar to residents in communities in the city’s more central ridings. Any councillor who knew about the background of the understandings between the developer and the Old Ottawa East Community Association should have voted to uphold the original understanding. That would have been the honourable thing to do.

Chair Jan Harder gave the impression that the developer was doing the city a favour by being “…willing to redevelop a property with heritage elements…” Wasn’t this attractiveness worth money to the developer as well as to prospective residents?

It appears that the “city’s legal department believes the six-storey maximum would hold up on appeal at the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal, with (a) … caveat…” Should observers be hopeful that the original zoning would actually hold up? For those of us who have felt betrayed by City Council many times in the past, it’s very difficult to be hopeful, even after personally raising all the money that would be necessary to fight both the developer and the city.

Jon Legg, former President of Action Sandy Hill

Greystone is another lost opportunity

One can’t help but be inspired by the dedication of the residents of Old Ottawa East in ensuring we remain a neighbourhood and not become just another “area” of the city.

Most unfortunately, that dedication, explained with eloquence and passion, did nothing to persuade the city’s planning committee to support the residents. Another opportunity lost for Ottawa. What could and should have been a world model of collaborative planning for a heritage parcel of land within a heritage city has once again evaporated. Shame!

Monica Helm, Ottawa

Planning committee just overrides agreements

In 2012, with great fanfare, Mayor Jim Watson promised predictability and certainty in planning. Yet at the recent planning committee, the suburban councillors once again ran roughshod over approved community design plans which were to have provided predictability and certainty.

Perhaps Watson will be able to persuade council to overrule planning committee, but if he doesn’t, he will be revealed as untrustworthy, just like the planning committee, the planning department and much of the development community.

The city seeks community engagement with the new Official Plan yet its planning committee simply overrides what has already been approved. It’s really discouraging. We need councillors who care about the wellbeing of communities rather than that of developers.

John Dance, Old Ottawa East

Accepting developer’s money is a conflict

Some planning committee members at City Hall don’t see a conflict of interest in accepting campaign donations from developers, then supporting their requests for changes to zoning and community design plans. Four of the nine members at the June 27 planning committee meeting received hefty donations for their 2018 re-election campaigns from Regional personnel and their families. Jan Harder, the Chair, received $1,200; Tim Tierney received $900, Allan Hubley received $1,200; and Eli El-Chantiry received $750. Planning committee members who received donations did not recuse themselves from voting on Regional’s requests. Shame on them.

Lorna Kingston, Ottawa

[waterloowarrior]

Site plan for building 2A (6 floors where the sales office is) approved. Building 2B (behind it) is the proposed 9 floor building.

https://app01.ottawa.ca/postingplans...appId=__AZ4CKJ

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

Lots of letters to the editor on this
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/le...ne-development

"The city needs two planning committees, one making decisions for the area covering the pre-amalgamated Ottawa, and another planning committee made up of suburban councillors making decisions about their own suburban wards. "

We're either all in this together or we aren't. If we do something like this we may as well just de-amalgamate.

Whatever the local residents feel is necessary won't trump the fact that we need more housing in central Ottawa. Not all of us can enjoy single family homes in an urban setting.

[waterloowarrior]

[J.OT13]

I think it was Hobin who said that some of the buildings were built with reduced heights, and of course, no opposition? Is that true?

[rocketphish]

Council approves three extra storeys to Old Ottawa East development, contrary to previous plan

Jacob Hoytema, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: July 10, 2019

Ottawa city council on Wednesday green-lit a controversial plan that will add three storeys to a residential development in Old Ottawa East, leaving residents and the councillor for the area up in arms.

In a 14-9 vote, councillors allowed the developers of Greystone Village to construct a residential building at 10 Oblats Ave., just north of Saint Paul University, to a height of nine storeys rather than the six storeys that had been promised to residents in a previous plan.

Capital Ward Coun. Shawn Menard, who represents the area, said the approval of the new height is “a classic bait and switch” on the city’s part.

Menard argued residents “put their trust in a city process” only to have council approve a development contrary to the plan that had been created with residents’ input.

Greystone Village, a 26-acre project by the Regional Group, is under development on the former Oblate lands. The parcel at the centre of the dispute is near Main Street. It had been listed as a six-storey building under Regional’s original plan, which was based on a 2011 secondary plan developed in conjunction with the community.

Council approved zoning for the entire Greystone Village property in 2015 and the community was largely ecstatic with the result, since it worked closely with the developer on the blueprint.

Then, Regional filed an application to make one of the towers at 10 Oblats Ave. nine storeys instead of six storeys. Residents cried foul.

A group of the community’s residents, as well as Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden, had attended a June 27 planning committee to urge councillors to “respect approved plans,” as it was worded in slogans printed on their shirts.

Menard made a request before Wednesday’s council vote that those who had taken campaign donations from the developer would recuse themselves from the vote.

Coun. Jan Harder shot back that as long as the donations are legal, there shouldn’t be a problem. She also said she wanted to take a stand against any notion that council is in the pocket of developers, arguing that many applications are regularly turned down by the city, “but the public never hears about them.”

The now-approved site on Oblats Avenue will include the nine-storey residential building, as well as a six-storey mixed-used building, both of which will share underground parking.
City to consider alternatives to putting low-income families in hotels

City council on Wednesday also approved recommendations from the city’s auditor general to look at whether funds spent on putting low-income families in hotels and motels could be used more efficiently.

The vote came after a report from the city’s auditor general Ken Hughes last Thursday, which found the city has paid $9.3 million to hotels and motels to house families in danger of homelessness. This figure is up 29 per cent from the previous year.

While the auditor found there are policies in place which allowed the city to use hotel accommodations, the investigation put a spotlight on the amount of money the city paid for emergency shelter at hotels and motels, and that the deals weren’t done through a competitive process.

The report’s first recommendation is to look into whether the city’s money would be better spent in setting up a new, permanent housing facility owned by the city or a non-profit organization.

The report also included a recommendation that the city make a “business case” to find ways to save money on booking hotel stays, such as seeking discounted rates or starting a bidding process amongst various hoteliers.

One hotelier at the source of the auditor’s investigation received 41 per cent of the money in 2018. The investigation also revealed the city in some cases had been paying the hotelier $3,000 per month for apartments used by families.

That hotelier owns the hotel and eight residential properties.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...-previous-plan

[OTownandDown]

This image.

Like really, this is what hours of news time has been taken up discussing?

Having irregular roof heights creates dynamic frontage, something also sorely needed in our flat-top city. I think it's better this way.

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

[kwoldtimer]

Lower ceiling heights in the 9 storey tower?

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Lower ceiling heights in the 9 storey tower?

On the ground floor, definitely.