How tricky infill blew up an old family home and messed with David Chernushenko
Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: November 14, 2018
About 10 years ago, 26 Aylmer Ave. in Old Ottawa South was a fine brick house with plenty of breathing room on all sides — setting off its traditional porch and attic dormer, its old-bones feel — in a mature neighbourhood.
Then a portion of the lot on the Bank Street side was severed, and a tall, narrow house went up, making things tighter, if not a little visually jarring. And in 2016, a big addition was added to the rear of the brick house, a pale-sided box with nine windows on one side and five hydro meters out front.
It is the kind of infill that pre-occupied Capital Ward councillor David Chernushenko during his term — the kind, in fact, that helped lose him an election on Oct. 22.
“It is the most frustrating part of this job,” he said recently, calling the addition an “inappropriate” use of the city’s rules on infill housing, which encourage greater density.
The councillor was so concerned about changes to 26 Aylmer that he invited planning staff to tour the site (on bicycles) to demonstrate how this kind of urban development should, in his view, not work.
“It isn’t an actual rooming house,” he said, in reference to the legal definition. “It’s an oversized building for its lot that has made no effort at all to be aesthetically, architecturally attractive or in keeping with the neighbourhood.”
And, to the amazement of neighbours, the city has approved major changes every step of the way.
“Oh, it’s a bunkhouse,” said neighbour Susan Brousseau, who works on planning issues for the Old Ottawa South Community Association. “He’s maximizing the rental space and I think the intention was to build that, from Day 1.”
A little history: In 2016, the owner, Cherina Sparks, and David Pfaff, “agent for the owner,” went to the city of Ottawa’s Committee of Adjustment seeking three variances to build a large rear addition to 26 Aylmer that would make it a three-unit dwelling. The plan, which neighbours opposed, failed.
“The committee is therefore of the view that the bulk and massing of the proposed three-storey, two-unit addition would amount to overdevelopment of the site at the expense of the usable rear yard.” But the case wasn’t closed.
Along comes the city with the so-called Infill II rules, which allow greater intrusion into existing backyards for additions. The owner now reapplies, calling the big box an addition to a single-family home — not a duplex or triplex. A permit is issued and neighbours are left wondering what is really going on: It couldn’t be a triplex but, with minor changes, could be one giant house? And, as neither Sparks or Pfaff lived there, who was it for?
It certainly looks as though a large new student residence has been built, but neither Sparks or Pfaff could be reached for comment or clarification. A student who lived in the brick house, pre-addition, said it already had six bedrooms, going for $500 a month, including one in the basement.
A student who answered the door said there were 10 people living in the current structure, which has an exterior staircase in the rear.
Any doubt among neighbours about the occupants of the house was wiped out on Panda weekend, when crosstown university rivals attempt to play a football game in the middle of a drunken apocalypse. A party erupted at 26, neighbours report, and had to be broken up for rowdiness. Bylaw and police confirm they were on scene.
“There were so many people in the street that it was completely blocked from traffic,” a neighbour reported to Brousseau, who is something of a clearing-house for zoning complaints. And it’s not like student housing is a foreign concept along Aylmer, she added, it being so close to Carleton University, with an enrolment of 29,000.
“Nobody in the neighbourhood feels good about giving the students a hard time. This is about what the owner has created here.”
This whole area of communal living in old neighbourhoods is a regulatory swamp. There is nothing illegal about turning an existing family home into a student residence — both campuses, in fact, need off-site housing to survive. Nor is it illegal to run a “rooming house” but such operations require a licence, have strict rules, inspections and zoning restrictions.
(Current zoning, in force since June to deal with “bunkhouse” building, restricts the number of bedrooms in a detached house to eight. And, in a duplex or triplex, to four in each unit.)
The problem, as Chernushenko explained, is when a plan is sold to the city as X but turns out to be X plus Y. After a building is up, in other words, how can the city control whether one big bedroom is made into two, whether a basement storage area is cleaned out and made liveable, whether a “music” or “workout” room suddenly acquires a bed and desk?
Chernushenko says another inspection of 26 Aylmer is needed by building code officials to ensure residents are only living in rooms marked “bedrooms” in the submitted plans.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email
kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/co...d-chernushenko
Prev
Linear Mode
