Deachman: The battle over Ottawa’s Plouffe Park may finally be nearing an end

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A parent of a student at Louise-Arbour elementary school said he didn’t have time to speak with me this week, so I didn’t ask him his name. But before hurrying off with his daughter, he described the past 12 months as “a waste of a year.”

I can understand his exasperation. Parents at the overcrowded and decaying French-language public school on Beech Street have spent years asking for a much-needed new school, and when it seemed last year that they might finally get one — on Plouffe Park, as part of the city’s 1010 Somerset development — residents in that neighbourhood fought against it as they rallied to preserve the century-old park.

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In response, city planners have changed things up, instead proposing to situate the school on green space immediately west and adjacent to Plouffe Park. For the frustrated father, the conflict simply added another futile year to the already-long wait for a decent school.

But it wasn’t a wasted year. The Save Plouffe Park campaign, as well as other efforts by community members to have their voices heard regarding the development, saw important concessions.

The save-the-park group didn’t get everything it wanted. The development — which proposes not only the new school, but also a new daycare; housing, both below and at market-rate; a three-storey recreation and cultural facility, with gymnasia; and roughly a hectare that will be used for a public sports field and/or passive parkland — is simply too complex to make everyone happy.

Even the doubling or so of available parkland won’t do much to address the needs of a neighbourhood already starved for green space and undergoing intensification that will add thousands of new residents in the next few years. Green is the new gold in Ottawa’s urban areas. You could raze the Plant Recreation Centre, the former Department of Public Works building at 1010 Somerset and the Indian Express restaurant and Buddhist temple in between (the latter two are not going anywhere, by the way), turn it all into parkland, and there still wouldn’t be enough green space. This is an unfortunate reality of inner-city intensification.

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But the added greenery now proposed is more than currently exists, and better than the barbed wire-enclosed weeds, dumpsters, discarded mattresses, soiled couches, private surface parking and shipping/storage containers that litter the western portion of the property.

There are numerous details still to be finalized, and the development will require Official Plan amendments, leaving room for some changes, but not many.

For example, making the westernmost part of the park more visible and accessible from Somerset Street, one of the changes Catherine Boucher, president of the Dalhousie Community Association (DCA), says her organization would like to see, is probably more easily done than, say, moving the mid-rise tower that will provide 300 residential units — half “affordable,” a requirement of the city getting the property cheap from the federal government in the first place — to the top of the rec/cultural centre. That, according to Kevin Wherry, manager of Parks and Facilities Planning, is not something the city is considering.

The DCA also wants to eliminate the proposed one-way school-bus lane running from Somerset to Oak Street, instead favouring student drop-offs and pick-ups directly on Oak Street, which the plan designates for short-term parking and drop-off. Maybe this is reasonable, maybe not. Louise-Arbour is currently served by only three buses.

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Meanwhile, critics of the additional privately developed high-rise residential units planned for the northwestern corner of the site aren’t likely to see those disappear anytime soon, as they’ll help pay for the rec centre.

As for the school, Somerset ward Coun. Ariel Troster says there simply isn’t a suitable nearby location for it other than at the 1010 Somerset site. Judging by the rancour of a year ago, many people are simply opposed to a school being built on the site at all. But we ought to welcome schools in our neighbourhoods. They’re not simply extras, like members-only pickleball enclaves; they’re essential. And as the only French-language public K-6 school in the area, Louise-Arbour’s place should be a priority.

It’s all a lot to fit into one block, but I’m encouraged by what the city, after listening to more than 1,200 concerns from residents, has come up with. It is preserving a significant park and rebuilding an essential school. And I’m buoyed by some of the parents I spoke with, like Jacqueline Ethier, who seems to understand both sides. Ethier’s son attends Louise-Arbour, yet she opposed the original plan to build the new school on Plouffe Park because of the importance of the park to families like hers. “That was a ridiculous choice,” she said. “I was glad to see that they revised the plan, and I’ve now seen the new plan and it seems great.”

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This is, after all, a community that needs parks and schools, and much more. So the last year has not been a waste. Far from it, it has served as a reminder of the importance of citizen advocacy, and that, as we continue to reshape Ottawa, we may never get everything we want, but we should keep an eye out to getting what we need.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

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