A new plan for Centretown–gains and losses

by Judy Forrest
Co-Chair, CCCA Planning Committee

On May 8, City Council approved a Community Design Plan (CDP) and an Official Plan Amendment (OPA) for Centretown.

The CDP is a huge, very descriptive vision and policy plan which will provide the framework within which the City will assess future changes for Centretown. The OPA sets the primary policies of the CDP into the City’s Official Plan, which is the legal framework for planning decisions—it replaces the Centretown Secondary Plan which was approved in the 1970s and has guided development in Centretown for almost 40 years.

What are the main changes for Centretown?

Height limits: Under the old rules, heights were supposed to be capped at 12 storeys. Now they can go as high as 27 storeys in some areas.

The higher height areas will be: 27 storeys between Lisgar and Gloucester and between Bank and Elgin; 25 storeys along most of Catherine Street on both sides; and 16, 18 or 21 storeys (depending on location) in the north and south areas mentioned above, as well as several other areas (see map below).

Heights will be set at nine storeys along both sides of Bank for most of the mid-Centretown area between Kent and Elgin, and in several other blocks west of Kent and east of Elgin. On Gladstone they are set at five storeys.

New mixed-use zone: The old rules zoned most of Centretown as residential—except for main streets like Bank and Elgin. The new plan introduces a Residential Mixed-Use (RMU) zone for a significant portion of the Mid-Centretown area (most of the area between MacLaren and Argyle between Kent and Elgin). The actual blocks affected can be seen on the Land Use map below. This new zoning will allow the first two storeys of the buildings in this area to be non-residential although the exact uses to be permitted have not yet been defined.

Change in zoning Somerset between O’Connor and Elgin: Formerly residential, these blocks are now designated “secondary mainstreets” which will allow commercial uses on the ground level.

Tall Landmark Building Policy: After three years of meetings and discussions, at the end of the planning process the City announced this new policy, which would permit buildings to exceed, essentially without limit, the height permitted for the property (later capped as will be described below), provided that certain fairly stringent conditions existed.

The long, long process…

If you have been reading The Buzz regularly over the past three years, you will know that the CCCA has been very active in the process of developing the CDP and the OPA, including participating on an advisory committee for the study, preparing written submissions at each milestone point along the way, attending the three public meetings sponsored by the City, hosting two public meetings (May 30, 2012, and April 23, 2013) and making presentations at City Planning Committee on March 26, 2013.

Over the past 18 months, members of the CCCA met with the chair of the City Planning Committee, the ward councillor and with planning staff to discuss evolving concerns.

In February of this year, when the City unveiled its final version of the CDP and OPA (and they fell so short of what we had been fighting for), we entered into an unprecedented discussion with a group of developers to see if we could come to an agreement on some changes to the CDP and OPA which we could present to the City.

Within a very tight time frame, we did come to an agreement, which included compromises on both sides, and presented it to the City. The City studied the agreement and then held a public meeting on April 30, 2013, to announce its response, which was mixed—acceptance of some proposals and rejection of others.

What we’ve lost…

The CCCA never supported heights of 27 storeys. In fact, over the past few years, as this plan was in the works, the CCCA opposed several applications which came into the City for rezonings to 27 storeys. Despite the existing limit of 12 storeys and the fact that a plan was in the works, staff consistently supported these applications and City Council approved them.

If you follow what is happening in other communities, this move to greater and greater heights is apparently unstoppable!

The CCCA discovered late in the process that the height limits in the low-rise residential area west of Kent had become 14.5 metres instead of 11 metres, which is what they used to be. We opposed this, but the City argued that this change had actually been made back in 2008, within the context of an omnibus zoning update, and they refused to consider changing it.

The City refused to change the designation for Somerset between O’Connor and Elgin from secondary mainstreet back to residential. Similar to the issue for the low-rise area, the City argued that this street had been changed to “traditional mainstreet” a few years back, during an omnibus Official Plan update.

From the first day that the consultants proposed the RMU (mixed-use) zone, the CCCA opposed it. We have fought for decades to maintain Centretown as a strong residential community. The City’s primary goal in initiating the CDP process was to ensure that Centretown could accommodate 10,000 more residents. The consultants argued that Centretown should accommodate more employment and, therefore, supported replacing residential zoning with mixed-use zoning for the Mid-Centretown area.

Centretown does not need more employment; in fact, the existing commercial/employment areas within the community (Bank, Elgin, Gladstone, parts of Somerset) have been struggling for years. The Central area north of Gloucester is the commercial/business/employment core of the City and is within easy walking distance for most Centretowners.

The consultants also argued that the Mid-Centretown area already has a mix of uses. This is true, but it is interesting to note that the vast majority of the non-residential uses existing in the Mid-Centretown area have been there since the sixties or seventies, before the last Centretown Plan rezoned that area to residential in the mid-seventies. Very few applications for non-residential use have come forward since then.

Although the CCCA opposed the introduction of the Tall Landmark Building Policy, it was approved—although in a modified form.

The CDP is lacking in two very significant areas: heritage and open space/green plans. It is acknowledged that the current heritage policies pertaining to Centretown are ineffectual and need to be updated. The consultants did not address these issues but basically deferred them to a future study. With regard to the “greening of Centretown,” the CDP has quite a few good ideas and proposals but the City has no plan to accomplish any of them.

What we’ve gained…

We now have a new updated OPA for Centretown, assuming it is eventually approved by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), which will provide some certainty for residents and developers, and which will hold more weight at the OMB.

Also, because the new height maximums are in the OPA and not in the zoning, we will be able to obtain Section 37 benefits for the community when developers apply to build higher than the old height limits. This section of the provincial Planning Act enables the City to negotiate community benefits from developers when they are seeking greater height and/or density than is permitted under the existing zoning.

Through the agreement we negotiated with some developers, we did achieve a number of changes to the final CDP and OPA, the primary ones being:
• maintaining the existing 11-metre height limit for the low-rise area east of Elgin
• modification of the Tall Landmark Building Policy to impose a 27-storey cap, to state that open space being provided must be publicly owned, to clarify that the property must be a corner lot, and to require the retention of any designated heritage building
• redesignation of the north side of McLeod between Metcalfe and O’Connor from RMU to residential
• change in the height limit on Gladstone from Percy to Bank to five storeys
• inclusion of a general reference in the OPA to all the Built Form Guidelines in the CDP and specific reference to the three-metre setback from the front lot line
• modification to recognize existing non-conforming uses

Although City Staff rejected the Small Moments Policy, which was recommended as part of the CCCA/Developer Agreement (to replace the Tall Landmark Building Policy), Council directed staff to undertake a study of the Small Moments recommendation in 2014 to determine its applicability on a city-wide basis.

Next steps

Following Council approval of the CDP and OPA, individuals and corporations had until June 6, 2013, to decide whether to file an appeal of the Council decision to the OMB. At the time of writing, the CCCA knows of at least three appeals which will be filed: one from a developer, one from an individual and one from Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation (CCOC). The CCCA Board has also decided to file an appeal on some of the decisions that Council made with which we do not agree.

Once appeals are filed, there is usually a process of negotiation to see if agreements can be reached to avoid actually proceeding to a full OMB hearing.

Other upcoming activities arising from this process will be zoning bylaw amendment to implement changes such as the RMU, the heritage study and the Small Moments study. So stay tuned for the next episode!