By Allen Brown and Warren Waters
City Council will be rezoning our entire city to implement its new 20-year Official Plan (to 2046). Check out how your home and our neighbourhood could be changing at the Engage Ottawa page: https://engage.ottawa.ca/zoning.
Stay up-to-date on engagement opportunities at: https://engage.ottawa.ca/zoning/news_feed/draft-1-engagement-opportunities-2
What will the new zoning mean for Lowertown? While we are still analyzing the implications of all the newly announced proposals, here are some of our initial thoughts:
More neighbours:
Plenty of ideas are being advanced: no “parking minimums” for new buildings, no new surface parking lots or expansion of existing downtown lots, permitting four dwellings on every serviced lot, and allowing shelters and supportive housing in all residential neighbourhoods.
Higher buildings:
Along the minor corridors of Dalhousie and St. Patrick Streets, maximum nine-storey heights are permitted – but is unrealistic in Lowertown, due to shallow lot depths, plus the need to transition to low-rise neighbours. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean developers won’t propose them.
Maximum density:
In Lowertown, existing residential lots would allow low-rise and mid-rise apartments of 500 or more dwelling units per hectare. Assuming building lots amount to about half of the Lowertown area, and less than 1% of new units will be redeveloped each year, then the overall density would increase by less than one percent a year. That is, unless developers build faster than expected.
Cars over trees:
The rezoning allows front-yard parking wherever a driveway would otherwise have been allowed, as long as it uses more space along the front façade. However, trees need space, and allowing front-yard parking would reduce that space and raises environmental concerns.
Heritage overlay removed:
Zoning changes would drop the existing Heritage Overlay requirement that limits height and massing of new construction in heritage areas. While the Ontario Heritage Act will still require owners to seek approval for alterations to designated properties and to properties within Heritage Conservation Districts, other areas and properties are now more vulnerable to inappropriate development.
We will continue our analysis over the summer. Stay tuned!