Fighting for diversity and affordability in Centretown

By Louise Rachlis
With all the words going back and forth, it all comes down to one thing: How do we keep Centretown an affordable place for people to live.
“I want more kids downtown,” says Catherine Boucher, who has been involved in Centretown development for over 30 years. “We lost schools. We want to make it a family-friendly area.”
Ms. Boucher is the retired executive director of Centretown Citizens’ Ottawa Corporation, a private non-profit social housing provider which has been an important player in the Ottawa context and beyond. She’s currently involved in the new Centretown Neighbourhood Plan.
“I think Centretown is a very important place for our city, reflecting a lot of the good stuff that people like about Ottawa,” she says.
About 35 years ago, downtown residents came together to create the Centretown Plan, with the goal of keeping Centretown a mainly residential area rather than a conglomeration of commercial and office buildings. “It was a huge victory to retain this very important residential heritage,” she says.
Today, that fight has morphed towards concerns about residential developers wanting to develop in Centretown, and the big question is “how high one should go.”
“That has to do with questions of people adapting to change, and what’s an acceptable height,” she says. And that literally depends upon your point of view. In some cases it’s a NIMBY reaction in a way, but there’s a real consideration of ‘is Ottawa Manhattan?’ Condo town like we see near the waterfront in Toronto doesn’t have a lot of attraction for me. It’s too single-purpose, not pedestrian/bike friendly, a high income wind tunnel ghetto”
The community embarked upon a new Centretown plan to see how and whether the old plan should be changed. “I come at it from many points of view,” she says. “I worked for 30 years as a non-profit developer. Many buildings we built were in the downtown core and it’s not like building in farmland. You are always pressured by encroachments and setbacks; it’s expensive and it’s not easy. And my job is to build affordable housing.”
When she looks around at what is being proposed by the current spate of development applications, she sees “mainly one bedrooms, a community of rich, retired people and yuppie singles.” Her basic concern regarding the current development plan is “where is the diversity” of age, levels of ability, and income?”
“How do we continue to have diversity in Centertown? How do we work in more pedestrian friendly neighbourhoods, more green space, and all the new recreational facilities that outlying areas get more easily? The Corkstown foot/bike bridge has phenomenally high usage, yet it took twenty years of fighting to get it built. The community spent years doing bake sales to help re-build the Plant Bath, which is now the second highest used pool in Ottawa.”
She believes it’s extremely important to have mixed communities to ensure a vibrant neighbourhood. “The people who have money have more ability to make things work for them….to phone the councilor’s office and get something done. In big cities where you have high concentrations of low income people, those areas tend to be forgotten because they don’t have champions. That’s an important piece of what makes Centertown a good community.”
People who have more than others should live side by side with people who aren’t as well off financially, she says. “Being in the elevator and common areas and sharing space with people has a great moderating influence both ways. It’s equally good for both.”
Mixed communities providing affordable residential units but all of the other components – recreation, pedestrian friendliness, good transit - are needed for the public good as well. “Obviously there is a push from the development community, but we want to make sure this doesn’t become the focus of this plan.”
One of the negative situations that happened to Centretown was becoming a ‘pass through’ for commuter traffic. “We want to return those streets into liveable spaces.”
For instance, the plan looks at the whole area of the Catherine corridor – “Catherine Street is a bit of a wasteland and could be a really good place to put a grocery store, the bus station might be moving, and there are other opportunities on Catherine as well. We could build up abutting the Queensway….that’s another exciting piece of work the consultants have put out that could be good or bad, depending on how it happens.”
There is also discussion around the provincial Section 37 tool – extra height to negotiate community benefits - that municipalities can use to finance walkways, public art, heritage refits, and affordable housing.”
About 20 years ago, to encourage residential development, reclaiming surface parking lots, the city exempted developers from development charges in Centretown. “Now it’s not needed any more; they want to be downtown. Those development charges are coming back in August, but if you have an approval from the city beforehand, you’re exempt.” All the developers are trying to get their applications in before August and so there’s now a huge glut of applications being approved without much thought to the impact on the community. .
“We don’t want to be left with just a bunch of tall buildings and nothing to say about it,” she says. “Tall isn’t necessarily bad, but everybody just looks to downtown to do that. That has to work its way through all of Ottawa. We don’t want to gobble up more agricultural land.”
The draft plan for Centretown can be viewed at www.midcentretown.wordpress.com . A public meeting to review the draft plan was held on June 29th at the Museum of Nature.