Posted Jan 10, 2012, 7:38 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Mar 2010
Posts: 1,022
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S-man wrote:
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That story is ridiculous - it's a double lot with a tiny house on it! And she chose to sell! And made big, big bucks off it!
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Really big bucks. Hard to beleive it is worth that much--and it probably would not be if developers were not after that piece of land.
Gray is no longer on the Citizen editorial board and I guess it shows. The Citizen ran an editorial with a view directly opposite of Gray's on the issue of this property.
for the Record--here is that editorial
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Intensification is a fact of life
The Ottawa CitizenJanuary 10, 2012
The intensification of Ottawa’s established neighbourhoods in recent years has been good for the city and even better for those particular neighbourhoods. The proof is in skyrocketing property values.
So it is somewhat rich to see homeowners determined that, somehow, their own property will never be intensified — even after they have sold it for an eye-popping profit. Not only is that a futile wish — it is up to the new owners, within city zoning regulations, to determine what to do with it — but it is misguided.
The very reason properties in neighbourhoods such as Old Ottawa South, the Glebe and Westboro are so valuable is because they can be successfully intensified.
The Citizen reported this week on the case of former homeowners in Old Ottawa South who were horrified to learn their former house on a 81-by-80-foot double lot was being torn down to make way for a development of semis. The new owners are applying for permission to split the two lots into four.
The previous owners said they went out of their way to sell the house to new owners who would live in it just the way they had for decades — as a single family home.
They saw it as a legacy to the neighbourhood they had loved so much.
In the end, they sold their 1,200-square-foot house for more than a million dollars (they paid $12,300 for it in 1945) to someone they believed would keep it as a single family home but, it turned out, had other plans.
It is understandable that homeowners would be nostalgic about what becomes of their own home and neighbourhood, even after they no longer live there.
But such nostalgia ignores the fact that Ottawa is different than it was 50 years ago when the city’s neighbourhoods were a sea of mainly single-family homes surrounding a more dense centre. The population is bigger, for one, and more people prefer to live in something other than a single-family home, which is easier on the environment as it helps to cut down urban sprawl. Nor could many people afford to spend more than $1 million on a 1,200-foot home.
While some clumsy infill developments in the city have given the practice a bad name, there’s no reason the development of four low-rise units can’t be done in a tasteful and attractive way.
Screening potential buyers to keep out developers is really just another form of keeping out people who are different — condo dwellers, for example. Whether you call it Not in My Backyard or Not My Kind of People, it is not necessarily the best thing for our neighbourhoods.
Ottawa Citizen
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
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