I think it is reasonable to worry that an increase in population might strain some city services, but the only example she gives is playgrounds - right after complaining there weren't enough children moving into the new condos.
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City centre unprepared for condo influx
Diane Holmes decries lack of amenitiesas committee approves another highrise
By David Reevely, The Ottawa CitizenOctober 25, 2011 10:05 PM
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The city is happy to see thousands of people lining up to buy new downtown condominiums, but it doesn’t have a plan for supplying the amenities that make for nice neighbourhoods, city council’s planning committee heard Tuesday morning as it debated a new highrise at 346 Gloucester St.
The 18-storey tower itself, though it’s opposed by Somerset Councillor Diane Holmes (who finds it too tall, stuffed into an odd-shaped lot with two blank faces and an unconvincing “glass hat” to prettify the top), received unanimous approval from the committee. Holmes did, however, get support for an effort to look at whether the city government is really ready for what’s going on downtown.
The city compiles an annual development report that offers numbers but no evaluation. Last year, for instance, 44 per cent of Ottawa’s construction was in areas targeted for intensification, when the city was hoping for 36 per cent.
“It seems we are just marching along with the bubble and having no analytical capacity to say, ‘What should we be doing?’ ” Holmes said.
If the city isn’t ready, a good part of the problem is the city’s own doing. For many years, city politicians and planners have thought downtown’s biggest problem is a lack of people, especially after business hours, and more condos the best solution.
Way back in 1994, the pre-amalgamation Ottawa started waiving development charges — fees cities levy on construction projects to help pay for the services new residents and business will use, from water pipes to parkland — to revive downtown construction.
The program evolved and narrowed over the years as downtown projects picked up, but didn’t end completely until the beginning of August this year. And there was a two-year delay, so any developer with a condo-shaped twinkle in his eye rushed to get projects submitted by the deadline.
The amounts aren’t small. The city charges between $5,700 and $8,000 per unit for new apartments and condos inside the Greenbelt, depending how many bedrooms they have. For a medium-sized building like 346 Gloucester, with 200 units, that’s between $1 million and $1.5 million. Considering the city spent less than $60,000 on a new play structure in Osgoode recently, that money could go a long way.
Now, Holmes brandishes an information sheet showing that in her Somerset ward alone, the city has issued building permits for 430 condo units and a further 3,600 are working their way through the city’s approval process. These are all in addition to towers that are under construction now or have recently been finished.
“We should have ended it sooner, and we shouldn’t have given two years’ warning,” Holmes says of the fee holiday.
Holmes worries that there’s a bubble in the condo market, with would-be residents giving way to investors who rent units out, and investors giving way to speculators who care even less about the buildings they buy into.
And even if there isn’t a bubble, Holmes worries that the city isn’t doing much to make downtown a welcoming place to live.
The city actively wants more people living downtown, but it also wants a demographic mix, and most condos are being built for singles and retirees, Holmes said. Even if families wanted to move in, there’s a shortage of city amenities. Centretown is OK for open grass, but not much for slides and swings. “Where’s the (new) downtown library? Where are the parks?” she asked. Services like community health programs and day cares struggle to keep up.
It’s not just development charges that could pay for some of these things. The city is also close to setting guidelines for concessions and compensation it hopes to extract from developers who get rezonings to erect buildings taller than the rules ordinarily allow — something it’s had the power to do under the provincial Planning Act for nearly 30 years but never got around to. In planning jargon, these are called “Section 37s,” for the part of the law that allows them.
The city has already done a handful of similar deals in a less formal fashion. For instance, it extracted $1 million from Claridge Homes in exchange for permission to build two very big towers at Gloucester and Metcalfe Streets. The money paid for a renovation to the dog run at Jack Purcell Park and landscaping for neglected road allowances.
Holmes got help from the vice-chair of the planning committee, Councillor Jan Harder, who announced she’ll formally request the study Holmes wants at the committee’s next meeting.
Cities from Chicago (“my new favourite place”) to Vancouver to Barcelona manage to include small amenities in dense, historic neighbourhoods, Harder said, and there’s no reason why Ottawa can’t do the same. Development charges and Section 37 payments are the perfect way to fund pocket-sized parks and start saving for bigger projects, she said.
“Whether it’s a play structure or even just some benches to sit on, that’s definitely something we can do,” she said. “You need those things.” Downtown might not have room for the sprawling parks like those in Harder’s Barrhaven ward, she said, but there is space for neighbourhood-scale amenities and the city should have specific policies for providing them.
The study would also look at how well the city’s more mundane infrastructure, like its sewer and water pipes, can handle more development. One premise supporting downtown intensification is that the city doesn’t have to lay new pipes and roads for it, but the pipes can’t accommodate new condo towers indefinitely.
As for 346 Gloucester, the planning committee voted for the tower despite confusion over whether it’s subject to the new development-charge regime. The builder, Richcraft, argues it only would be if the revised plan included more units than had already been approved. The committee asked the city’s legal department to provide an opinion before full city council takes the plans up on Nov. 9.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.comottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa
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