Planning committee approves controversial Stittsville highrise project

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A contentious Stittsville high-rise project that includes a 21-storey tower has been approved by Ottawa’s planning and housing committee.

The proposal for 6310 and 6320 Hazeldean Rd., near Carp Road, calls for two buildings with 431 residential units. One is an L-shaped, 12-storey highrise stepping down to seven storeys. The other is a rectangular building consisting of the 21-storey tower that transitions to seven and three storeys towards the rear property line.

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If it receives the final nod from city council, the residential tower will be the tallest building west of Bells Corners, said Stittsville Coun. Glen Gower, one of three councillors to vote against the proposal.

“It’s a big building and a big, big change.”

The proposal from Montreal-based Devmont has stirred up controversy in Stittsville since it was first presented in 2022 as a plan for three buildings of nine storeys each. That was revised to a nine-storey mid-rise and a 25 storey highrise, then again to the current revision.

For Stittsville, the proposal has been explosive. About 300 people attended a recent public meeting and more than 700 people signed a petition objecting to the project. Seven residents spoke to the planning committee on Wednesday.

“That’s more people from Stittsville speaking on planning items than we’ve had in the past six years,” Gower said.

Stittsville residents argued Wednesday that a 21-storey high-rise would be out of character and scale for the neighbourhood.

Meanwhile, they contended, Hazeldean Road is unsafe and has no sidewalks for an influx of new residents, while improving nearby Carp Road is potentially years away.

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“Why are we even bothering to do this? Because developers always get what they want,” said David Mennie, who added the view of the highrise tower from his street would be “pretty shocking.”

Hazeldean Road is not a transit priority corridor, and, while Carp Road is only about 200 metres way, it’s not an easy walk, Mennie said.

“I guess you could hop on the sidewalk that goes nowhere and walk through the farmer’s field to get to it.”

Resident Stephane Boucher said that, with other intensification proposals on the table, Stittsville faced serious congestion and transit issues. Hazeldean Road is “a zoo on the best of days,” he said.

Hazeldean is a rural road with highway traffic with pedestrians walking beside open ditches, Tony Dilliott said. “After this project gets done, put hundreds of people, multiple times a day into the picture. This is not safe.”

Residents urged the city to take the matter to the Ontario Land Tribunal, but were warned that it would likely backfire in the face of provincial legislation geared to creating more and denser housing.

Planning committee chair Jeff Leiper said the proposal met the requirements of Ottawa’s official plan and that made it hard to refuse. Making applications destined to fail at the Ontario Land Tribunal is not without consequences for municipal governments, who have seen their control over planning decisions being yanked away, Leiper said.

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“When politicians across Ontario have been making politically popular decisions not grounded in planning law, that’s when we see things like Bill 23,”  said Leiper, a reference to Ontario’s 2022 More Homes Built Faster Act.

The pains of intensification are being felt all over Ottawa from the suburbs to downtown.

“People who live very close together in the urban core are really feeling the pains of intensification and begging some of the other wards to take some of this density,” Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster said.

Infrastructure improvements and intensification are a chicken-and-egg argument, with some councillors arguing that suburban wards need the chicken of improved infrastructure before they can go ahead with the egg of intensification. But financing infrastructure is a complicated matter that involves limited funds and layers of government.

Troster said that, as a member of the transportation committee, she understood the argument.

“I agree we should be thinking very carefully about where density is and how we plan for that in terms of transportation. But it’s a little frustrating to be on this committee and have people come to oppose new housing primarily because of transportation problems,” Troster said.

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“Density goals are not just this theoretical thing, This is about homes for people who need to live here. We can’t deny that we’re in the middle of a  crisis, and sometimes the solutions appear imperfect. But it takes years to build a development of this nature. That gives us some runway to start planning the infrastructure that’s needed.”

One thing councillors can do is make sure the necessary infrastructure improvements are made at budget time, Orléans West-Innes Ward Coun. Laura Dudas said. 

“I don’t think it’s fair for us to build projects such as this and then leave folks hanging out to dry when it comes to the infrastructure piece.”

Gower said he was dissenting on the decision to approve the project to give voice to what he had heard from the community. He said he would be a lot more comfortable if he had assurances that Carp Road improvements would go ahead in 2025. As it stands, that could be 2026 or 2027.

Getting Carp Road upgraded is Gower’s top budget priority for Stittsville. He said he was going to talk to city staff in the next week to see if there might be a tool to align the project better with transportation.

The key to getting necessary infrastructure improvements is money. Raising taxes isn’t popular and neither is raising development fees, Gower said.

“The other solution would be to access the funding streams that are available through the province and the federal government, and we’re not going to get those if we reject or stop growth, whether it’s at this location or elsewhere,” Gower said. “So we’re in a real jam on that.”

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