A new diverse community takes shape in Dalhousie

This is an expanded version of the article that appeared in the March 2021 Centretown BUZZ.

Alayne McGregor

The pieces have come together this month for Gladstone Village, a massive public redevelopment of the western end of Somerset Ward in lands formerly used for federal government warehouses.

A doubling of the size of Plouffe Park and 1160 new, mixed-income residences are in the immediate plans. An expansion of the Plant Recreation Centre, a new school, and even a grocery store could come later.

Councillor Catherine McKenney said this new development is planned to be the “most inclusive neighbourhood we will have in the city, an amazing mix of incomes, [with] a mix of uses from housing to retail to institutional to an arts hub.”

Having families with different incomes living beside each other, shopping in the same stores, and with their children going to the same schools, builds “the kind of equity that we need in our city,” McKenney said.

Development centred around the LRT station

Gladstone Village is a large (8.52 hectares) and mostly vacant site stretching along the Trillium LRT Line from Somerset to Gladstone. It will be jointly developed by the city and Ottawa Community Housing (OCH), which had earlier bought the southern 3.26 hectares for its 933 Gladstone mixed-use project.

The entire development will be centred around the planned new Corso Italia LRT station on Gladstone Avenue. Its design will minimize car use and strongly promote cycling, walking, and transit.

“It will have the best active mobility network in the city. It will have access to the entire city; you will be able to travel by train in the next five to 10 years to just about any part of the city,” McKenney said.

This month, the City of Ottawa arranged to buy 1010 Somerset Street, the final outstanding piece of Gladstone Village, from the federal government. And on February 25, the city Planning Committee approved the Corso Italia Station District Secondary Plan, which provides a detailed framework for the entire area. The secondary plan covers a larger area than Gladstone Village, extending west to Breezehill and Loretta Streets, and east to Preston and Booth Streets, and in particular covering the extensive Ottawa Community Housing redevelopments at 811 and 818 Gladstone.

Both decisions were expected to be approved by City Council on March 10. The 1010 Somerset purchase also needs federal Treasury Board approval.

As part of that purchase, the city will also develop a concept plan for a new community hub effectively expanding the Plant Bath. The French public school board will have two years to investigate a primary school in the development, replacing the school currently on Beech Street.

A significant increase in park space

Last summer, the Dalhousie Community Association (DCA) submitted a list of concerns with the secondary plan, in particular about insufficient affordable housing and park space.

DCA President Michael Powell said he felt these concerns had been responded to in the current plan. “Broadly the CDP is in the right direction.” The acquisition of 1010 Somerset was particularly important: “This is a significant increase in park space, and compared to earlier drafts of the plan, it’s contiguous park space.”

The one-hectare park was an essential part of the development, McKenney said, and they refused to support the secondary plan without it. The report noted that this area is underserved in terms of large, outdoor active recreational city parks.

McKenney said that, pre-pandemic, the Plant Centre was the #1 recreation centre in Ottawa for memberships, and it’s “just not big enough to accommodate the people in this neighbourhood. It’s hard to get your kids into swim lessons at Plant. It can be overcrowded at times.” Powell agreed the centre was already “super-busy”, and was interested in it possibly expanding. “The ability to offer courses locally is really constrained by the capacity of the space, and we need more community space in this area generally.”

Avoiding excess traffic

Powell said that one problem the plan faced was “how do you get people to the new parts of the development without turning every other street into a traffic sewer?” The DCA wanted to avoid through traffic on Larch and Balsam Streets, for example, to ensure quiet dead-ends remain that way, and “I think the solution they’ve mostly found there is reasonably sensible with permeable to people but not to cars.”

In Gladstone Village, the DCA wanted to avoid north-south through car traffic, and ensure that the new neighbourhood is “walking-focused and doesn’t have an endless amount of cars,” he said.

In fact, the secondary plan strongly de-emphasizes the car. “New streets or extensions will prioritize the safe movement of pedestrians and cyclists in their planning and design so that they enhance the active transportation experience, ensure safety, calm traffic and create a more enjoyable and welcoming public realm,” it says.

The plan in general will prohibit new surface car parking across the district, and “strategically control the availability of on-street parking, only where the need is most anticipated” – instead using the space for bike lanes. It does envision cars still being driven and parked in the district, but suggests more efficiently sharing parking among developments with different peak demand times, and permitting paid public parking in underground garages of buildings which are near main streets.

It calls for bike parking to be “ubiquitous and plentiful” and located as close to destinations and entrances as possible.

It also proposes creating a City Centre Underpass Pathway, linking 1010 Somerset Street and City Centre Avenue. This pathway would become a “primary north-south pedestrian and cycling gateway and route” from the district to City Centre, LeBreton Flats, and the Bayview O-Train Station.

At 933 Gladstone, buildings will connect directly to multi-use pathways. Streets will be pedestrian-oriented with widened sidewalks, passive recreational space, and a “woonerf” (shared) street. The plan also proposes a new pedestrian/cyclist bridge over the LRT trench at Laurel Street.

“This whole area is getting denser. We’re building a community on top of a transit station,” Powell said. “I think that the focus should be on that as a preference. People will still move in and out [by car] and there will be garbage trucks. It’s just how you do it in a way that’s primarily local in nature.”

“Basically a blank slate”

He said he thought the long-term effect of the new development on the Dalhousie area is “all positive. The ownership structure of this is really important, making sure that it’s a real diverse neighbourhood in terms of economic opportunities for people to rent, not just if you’re particularly affluent or double-income. City affordable and deeply affordable housing will be important. The children going to schools will be of all types and that will be good.

“Having a huge chunk of land that’s basically a blank slate will allow for some development opportunities in terms of laying out the community that wouldn’t otherwise be available. And I think how we think of where the front and back are will change a little bit. The Trillium multi-use path will be the easiest connection to transit stations and to 900 Albert. It could become a more primary conduit than we have seen previously.”

He said the DCA’s first priority will be to “move the park expansion forward as soon as possible. It shouldn’t wait for the buildings.” The city should also determine how it will fund the new bridge over the LRT, he said.

McKenney said they were worried that city services like parks, transit, and recreation programs won’t keep up with the development. “The plan looks great, but unless we follow it, we’re not going to build the kind of neighbourhood that we have the perfect opportunity to build.”