[Nepean]

Interesting blog post from David Reevely.

Why the Norman Street condo proposal is different

This condominium proposal for Little Italy is only one of many in the area — I’ve written a lot lately about the condo boom around the Carling O-Train station, so many projects I don’t think I could name them all — but it is the one that got dozens and dozens of people out to an evening meeting to talk about what’s going on.

An established conflict in that area, at the south end of Preston Street, is whether tall buildings should be confined to Carling Avenue (which everyone is pretty much OK with) or should be allowed to head north up Preston some distance (which is controversial, because Preston Street merchants in particular are worried that the towers will just stomp their way north through Little Italy’s low-rises).

The Soho Italia building, which city council has approved, is north on Preston and suggests that the city is cool with at least some movement in that direction. If you believe Darwin, that’s pretty much the plan. And Norman Street is significantly north of the Soho Italia.

The argument for tall buildings on Carling is that it’s a busy artery and they won’t interfere with anybody’s enjoyment of the street. They may even help the streetscape, by bringing more people to what Clive Doucet memorably called a “traffic sewer.” Whether that justification should apply to Preston, or whether Preston is just fine as it is, is a matter of judgment on which I think reasonable people can disagree: Preston isn’t as big a road as Carling, but it’s still big, and if you design the buildings and the street right, more people should probably be an asset. Your judgment probably depends on just how attached you are to the current “feel” of Preston.

The Norman Street proposal is a step beyond that. Norman is a minor road that runs east-west off Preston; the proposed 18-storey condo building is close to Preston but not on it. As it stands, the northwest corner of Preston has the Black Cat Bistro on it, in a little two-storey building, and west of it on Norman there are a couple of houses and then a couple of light industrial buildings. Past them, more houses, and then a dead end and the O-Train tracks. It’s not a lovely block (with apologies to the people who live there) but as a general rule, it’s not the sort of place where Ottawa drops in 18-storey towers.

Ordinarily the city’s official plan is in favour of quite tall buildings on major roads like Carling, medium-height buildings on walkable commercial streets like Preston, and leaving blocks like Norman pretty much alone. Maybe you’d get two houses knocked together to make a triplex, or a four-storey apartment or something.

Additionally, the proposed tower would only cover half the block, replacing the industrial buildings and some houses along Norman but not the houses they back onto, which face the next street to the north. The quarters are pretty tight. Existing property owners on Beech Street, which is that next street, would have a condo build right beyond their back fences.

Here’s a clip from would-be builder Tamarack’s documentation in support of the project. It’s a graphic designed to show the pedestrian routes around the joint, but it’s the best thing I could find for showing how the building would land on the block:

As I say, this is not the sort of development that the official plan, for all its foibles and flaws, usually promotes. Indeed, under the rules in force today, the site’s designated for “residential low-profile” uses, which means a lot fewer than 18 storeys. But then, it’s also part of a “mixed-use” district, which allows a big range of building heights in addition to encouraging combinations of, e.g., stores and residences.

You can read Tamarack’s rationale for yourself here. Among other things, you’ll see how all the different overlays of rules make it hard to be definitive about what’s allowed and what’s not.

Maybe the Norman proposal really does make sense on its merits, and maybe the complex set of different rules that apply to the property allow it. But when you hear about it, keep in mind that this one isn’t just any old downtown condo proposal. It would set several precedents by doing things that downtown condo proposals do not usually do. Both specifically, for Preston Street in particular, and generally, for how we fit new towers onto existing residential blocks.