I’ve received several inquiries about the advertisement recently posted online by Mastercraft Starwood showing a high-rise at 403 Richmond – currently the site of the Tubman Funeral Home.
I will note first that the only development permission on the site is for nine-storey building to which Council gave its approval in 2021. Any further height will have to be applied for, consulted, and voted on. I have let the developer know that I cannot support that future application if it comes.
Around two weeks ago, Mastercraft Starwood and its consultants met with me to pitch the proposal. Specifically, for the properties at 403 Richmond along with 394/396 Winston, they are proposing a 27-storey tower, including a four-storey podium.
The crux of our conversation was about the context. I think we all agreed that this was an extraordinary proposal. Outside of the downtown context, we see very few 20-plus-storey towers on our traditional mainstreets – streets like Richmond, Bank, Main, etc.
If I may grossly simplify our Official Plan, Council has set forth a vision for how our city will grow that roughly amounts to maintaining low-rise neighbourhoods as low-rise (albeit with greater density), our traditional mainstreets and corridors built up to a mid-rise height (6-12 storeys), and putting the greatest height immediately adjacent to major transit stations and along big arterial roads like Baseline and Carling.
This proposal is not that.
The developer’s argument is that the site is close to the Line 1 LRT Kichi Sibi station, and its location toward the far west end of Westboro’s commercial strip along with atypical lot depth makes it a candidate site for a high-rise. To make that case, I suspect they’ll rely not on the Official Plan – which I consider very clear on how traditional mainstreets outside the downtown are intended to develop – and more on the ultimate planning policy for Ontario, the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS).
The PPS has a very high-level direction to cities in Ontario that they grow mostly through intensification, and that that intensification will be focused on transit.
I don’t want to write an essay on how cities are planned in Ontario, so I will simply say that while cities are required to adhere to the PPS, each city describes how that will be interpreted in their own jurisdiction. Official Plans do that heavy lfiting, and – like ours has been – those are approved by the minister in charge.
I do not agree that we need to approve 27-storey towers on Richmond in fundamental opposition to our own Official Plan vision for the city. That scale of development is being proposed and built on Scott, on Carling, at gateway locations like Breezehill, at Tunney’s Pasture and along Parkdale and more. Significant new density permissions at the mid-rise and low-rise scale have recently been adopted in our new zoning by-law for our main streets and low-rise neighbourhoods. There will be lots of density in the years to come to support transit ridership, and at scales that have been carefully thought-through.
Richmond and Wellington are two of Ottawa’s most vibrant, walkable, main streets. We can already discern their future shape in new developments that will both add housing and maintain those as popular destination streets at a human scale. The Mastercraft Starwood proposal would throw both our relatively new Official Plan and brand new zoning by-law out the window. If the developer persists in applying for it, I will oppose it with both the City and my Council colleagues.