Ottawa’s heritage community forms demolition-by-neglect working group

By Allen Brown

In late May 2025, the first post-pandemic meeting of Ottawa’s heritage community was convened by Heritage Ottawa and the Lowertown Community Association at the Routhier Community Centre. About 25 heritage proponents from various community associations across Ottawa met to discuss heritage-related issues and priorities.  

Linda Hoad, Heritage Ottawa’s Advocacy Committee co-chair, began by noting that the City’s Culture Plan, which will determine funding for heritage programming, is currently open for comment on the city’s https://engage.ottawa.ca/culture-plan site, and that a new provincial Heritage Tool Kit was worth examining. Current work and challenges on heritage matters were then discussed in a roundtable setting.  

One issue quickly emerged as a priority for most participants from across the city — the issue of demolition-by-neglect.  LCA Heritage Committee participants noted that the past year had seen four of Lowertown’s oldest and most historic heritage buildings lost to demolition-by-neglect, and observed that the city has not yet developed effective measures to prevent future losses. Their proposal that a working group be established on this issue was overwhelmingly approved by the heritage community.  

The working group intends to build on the city’s March 31 workshop on At-Risk Heritage Buildings, using the city’s workshop summary, an LCA Discussion Paper, and Heritage Ottawa’s “Carrots and Sticks” paper as a starting point for developing community-based recommendations to the city. Nine heritage proponents from across the city signed-up to participate in the working group.

The working group has since prepared a discussion paper, combining the three documents mentioned above, which it will use as the basis for ranking viable measures to combat demolition-by-neglect and deciding on further areas of research. At its inaugural meeting on June 19, the working group further agreed to produce a list of recommendations to discuss with city Heritage Planning staff in preparation for presenting a revised final list of recommendations to the city’s Built Heritage Committee. At its second meeting on October 9, the working group reviewed the discussion paper, identified the most relevant and viable options and arranged them in a rough order of priority. This work will be further refined into a draft set of recommendations for discussion with city staff.

If you would like to participate in this working group, please contact the LCA Heritage Committee: heritage.lowertown@gmail.com