Ottawa commuters’ next headache: A massive redevelopment opposite Parliament Hill

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The federal government is asking the city’s permission to block lanes on Wellington, O’Connor and Metcalfe streets — possibly for years — for its massive redevelopment opposite Parliament Hill.

The makeover of “Block 2”, which sits literally in the shadow of the Peace Tower and has been called “the most prestigious property in Canada,” will also include a tunnel network connecting Parliament’s East, West and Centre blocks to parliamentary offices on the south side of Wellington Street. Some 40 per cent of Parliament employees, including the Prime Minister’s Office itself, are on the south side of Wellington.

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Block 2 is a nearly 80,000-square-metre block bounded by Wellington, O’Connor, Sparks and Metcalfe streets that forms the fourth and final side of Canada’s Parliament Square. In May 2022, the government announced that Zeidler Architecture Inc. of Toronto and David Chipperfield Architects of London, England, were the winners of a design competition for the redevelopment. 

At the time, the government said the project would cost $430 million and it expected to start work by the fall of 2024. The cost of the project has reportedly ballooned to nearly $1 billion.

The tunnel network, a portion of which has already been completed during the renovations of West Block and the new visitors’ centre, will “ensure the safe and efficient movement of parliamentarians and materials in support of Parliamentary operations,” according to Public Services and Procurement Canada.

PSPC is expected to make its pitch for partial road closures to Ottawa’s transportation committee on Thursday, with one lane closed on O’Connor and Metcalfe streets and two of Wellington’s four lanes to be cordoned off.

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Wellington Street was completely closed to traffic for more than a year after the February 2022 convoy occupation of the downtown core, and the city and the federal government have been talking ever since about who should control the street.

In December 2022, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs recommended the Parliamentary Precinct be expanded to include Wellington and Sparks streets to improve security, and that Wellington be closed to traffic between Elgin and Kent streets.

In May 2023 briefing notes, PSPC said the government wants Wellington closed to vehicles and redeveloped as “a civic gathering space for celebration, national mourning and peaceful protest — a welcoming, open, safe and secure space for residents and visitors alike, befitting a major national capital.”

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said last month that he met with members of cabinet in 2023 about potentially transferring the roadway to federal control, including a letter with a “draft framework,” but after a federal cabinet shuffle the issue appears to have been put on the back burner.

Since then, while the subject has “come up in passing,” Sutcliffe said there have “been no meaningful discussions” with the federal government on Wellington Street.

“I don’t want to have a conversation with the federal government about one street and just do a transaction on that, I want to have a conversation about the entire downtown and what we plan for downtown together, and Wellington can be a part of that,” Sutcliffe told reporters.

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