Alayne McGregor
Ottawa Community Housing (OCH) has started construction on two major developments which will add thousands of residents to the western end of Somerset Ward.
Cranes, dump trucks, and pile drivers are now changing the landscape at two places: the second Mosaïq complex at 820 Gladstone at Rochester, and Gladstone Village at 933 Gladstone/75 Oak, beside the yet-to-open Corso Italia LRT station. Both are expected to be finished in 2026.
And depending on government funding, many more units could be built in the next few years, according to OCH Chief Development Officer Cliff Youdale. This has become more likely with recent funding announcements from the city, the province, and the federal government.
Mosaïq Phase 2, with 273 new homes in two nine-storey high rises and three townhouse blocks, broke ground last fall. OCH will partner with PAL Ottawa to provide 86 homes for older members of the artistic community in one high rise. It will have space for families, with three and four-bedroom units as well as smaller units.
Phases three and four of Mosaïq, continuing south towards the Queensway, are also being planned.
“In a perfect world, we’d be starting those within the next four to five years,” Youdale said. He said the replacement of the Rochester bridge on the Queensway required some change of plans in scheduling, but “given the availability of funding, it didn’t really hold us up an awful lot.”
Gladstone Village to built in stages
The eight-acre site of Gladstone Village will be built in stages depending on funding, he said. It will eventually accommodate 1,100 new residential homes.
Phase 1 will be at the Oak Street (north) end of the site, adjacent to Plouffe Park. It will be mixed-use (residential/ retail/ office), mixed-income (affordable and market rent), mixed-density (low, mid, and high-rise) and mixed tenure (rental/ ownership). It will include a nine-storey and an 18-storey building, sharing a four-storey podium, and will provide 336 homes (56-studio, 182 one-bedroom, 57 two-bedroom, 35 three-bedroom, three four-bedroom) and 2,000 square feet of commercial space.
Youdale expected work on Phases 2 and 3 of Gladstone Village to start in 2026.
All of these developments are being built to Passive House standards (as was Mosaïq Phase 1) to minimize energy use. Gladstone Village will be district energy-ready and will include high-efficiency heating and cooling and wastewater heat recovery. There will also be a solar photovoltaic array on the building rooftops.
He said OCH is also working closely with local utilities to ensure the new units do not overload pipe or electricity capacity in the area.
The fences around 820 Gladstone advertise “Affordable Rental Housing.” By the time both developments are fully built out, Youdale said, OCH should have that a full spectrum of affordability in that area, from market rents to deeply affordable, but the number of affordable units “will be very much dependent on the funding that we can acquire.”
Youdale said the ground-floor commercial space in Mosaïq Phase 1 hadn’t been rented out yet because OCH needed the space for its own use. OCH will be going to market soon for tenants, looking for those which are both economically viable but also add value to the community. “So we’re shopping for the right type of tenants, aligned with OCH values.”
He said that some of the spaces in the new developments, like meeting rooms, would be accessible to the community.
“We’re trying to leverage the space in ways that would really benefit our tenants and the community.”