Orléans office complex announced, no tenants yet
By David Reevely, OTTAWA CITIZEN September 12, 2013
OTTAWA — Hoping that higher-class office space will attract the high-end jobs that Orléans has always found so elusive, politicians and developer Groupe Brigil announced plans for an office and conference hall complex near Trim Road Thursday morning.
The only thing missing is a tenant.
The plans include a 370,000-square-foot office building, medium-sized by downtown standards but by far the largest of its type in the east end, plus a 67,000-square-foot hall for big meetings and parties and some more routine retail space, on a piece of land north of Highway 174. It’ll also have “a residential component,” 800 units more in keeping with other Brigil projects nearby — this proposal is called “Petrie’s Landing III,” following two previous phases that have been focused on housing.
In theory, there’ll be room for up to 2,100 workers, though it’s not yet clear who they’ll work for: Often announcements of this type feature politicians and a big-time employer, with the builder taking a back seat. In this case, it’s clear Brigil is making an investment and taking a risk, but the hope is that having the office space will attract employers, not that employers want to move in and need office space to move into.
“If you build it, they will come,” Coun. Bob Monette argued. He’s shepherded the plans for months and has fought at the council table to get “good jobs” to Orléans, including with subsidy programs.
Brigil first presented a version of the plan in public last March, at a meeting of city council’s planning committee. At the time, it involved an expansion of the nearby trades-education centre run by La Cité collégiale, an idea that appears to have evaporated.
In addition to having no announced tenants, this project has a second catch: It means giving up land for residential uses that the city’s official land-use plan says is reserved for employment. Brigil’s property is in one of two big chunks of Orléans that are saved for office parks and industry (the other is south of Innes Road), land that’s been chipped away for residential and retail over the years because it’s been worth a lot more as subdivisions and box stores than as office buildings nobody wants. In fact, Orléans has both the fewest jobs of any of Ottawa’s suburbs and the smallest share of available employment land.
A study the city commissioned as part of the overhaul of its citywide land-use plan it’s conducting now pointed out the problem in Orléans in particular: “If conversion is not tightly disciplined, the expectation of conversion will cause price inflation and encourage other owners to withdraw their lands in anticipation of potential conversion. The decision process should be clearly biased in favour of protecting employment lands,” said the report, written by Danix Management Ltd.
In this case, the 2,100 jobs the development could bring would be better than the city’s targets for the property, even including the part Brigil wants to carve off for housing. But it does mean the project needs more than routine zoning approval: it needs a more extensive amendment to the city’s land-use plan.
The city has also struggled with properties where developers are supposed to include both housing and big employment uses, so much so that the drafts of the current official-plan revision recommend scrapping a different designation that requires mixing the two. What happens too often is that developers promise both, usually with housing first and the offices to follow, but they never get around to building the offices.
In this case, Brigil promises the conference and banquet hall will be in the first phase but it’s otherwise not clear what’s to be built when.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa
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Who owns these lots? This is a major intersection and will be has a major OC transpo stop and will also host a major LRT station, why isn't this is TOD?
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