Submission -- "Ottawa 2020: Charting A Course"

The submission below was sent by Heritage Ottawa as a formal response to the planning discussion document titled "Ottawa 2020:Charting A Course." Further information on this official long-term planning initiative for the new amalgamated City of Ottawa can be found here.

April 26, 2002

Heritage Ottawa would like to take this opportunity to present its formal response to the document entitled "Ottawa 2020:Charting A Course".

You have already received the response of the Council of Heritage Organizations in Ottawa (CHOO) dated February 19, 2002, the contents of which Heritage Ottawa fully endorses. At this time, we wish only to provide you with a brief submission in the hope that we may provide some more light on the principles thoughtfully contained in the excellent document prepared by the City of Ottawa.

We are of course extremely pleased to find the sections entitled "Preserve Our Built Heritage" (page 16) and "Preserve Local Heritage" (page 35) in Ottawa 2020. Heritage Ottawa would like to see these principles addressed as a priority within the context of growth. Heritage policy statements contained in the City of Ottawa's existing Official Plan (Chapter 11), as well as those in the Cultural Heritage section of the existing Regional Official Plan, already represent a solid base which should be both entrenched and enlarged upon in the new official plan. Heritage Ottawa would welcome the opportunity to work with the City to help it incorporate the protection of local heritage in its policies and practices, as well as its approaches to development.

Ottawa needs a more European approach to development which begins and ends with the premise that destroying or negatively altering a sound or reasonably salvageable heritage structure (for redevelopment or change of use) is anathema to our collective thinking. Each time we destroy a part of our physical heritage, we lose a part of our identity and a part of ourselves, never to be regained. We also back another opportunity for Ottawa to move toward becoming a more mature and interesting city, and lock ourselves into a cycle of constant regeneration.

Heritage Ottawa is pleased that Ottawa 2020 endorses compact urban development which focuses most growth within the "current urban boundary". We support this strategy since it maximizes existing infrastructure and reduces sprawl, but would emphasize that such an approach requires strengthened policy statements and a carry-through commitment by both staff and City Council to not only protect local heritage within these boundaries, but to ensure compatible and sensitive new development which respects both the scale and character of nearby heritage resources. The challenges involved in ensuring sensitive, compact infill have recently been demonstrated with new intensive development proposals within Centretown's heritage district.

With respect to the proposed Arts & Heritage Master Plan, although the intent is laudable, the purpose of this proposed plan is not clear. We recommend that the Heritage component of any such Plan be a detailed land-use plan. Policy in the existing regional official plan called for the preparation of a more detailed cultural heritage strategy. The latter was only accomplished in part, through documentation of an archaeological database. The development of a comprehensive built and landscape heritage features database, as also called for by the regional official plan, has yet to be achieved. The need for the latter, involving identification and documentation of built and cultural landscape heritage resources, has gained new importance within the enlarged boundaries of the amalgamated City of Ottawa. Existing designated heritage buildings and heritage districts are largely contained with the inner core of the previous City of Ottawa.

We support the strategy identified in Ottawa 2020 for the proposed Cultural Precinct. Heritage Ottawa also generally supports the concept of a new civic cultural complex, while emphasizing that appropriate space for the municipal archives has particular importance.

Heritage Ottawa also concurs with the proposed shift in the new official plan to an increased role in the use of design guidelines, along with a decreased role in the use of zoning by-laws, to achieve greater diversity, as well as improved community and urban design. We agree that the City should lead by example as one means to promote these goals in the City as a whole. To assist in this shift, and to aid in the implementation of these objectives, we advocate the return of the Design Committee and a small urban design group in the Development Services Department, both of which were unfortunately eliminated a few years ago.

Finally, we echo the need to integrate the principles of the five distinct planning documents being created by the City (as previously set out in CHOO's submission) so that whichever planning and development principles coming out of this process that are still standing on the date the plans become binding, are not lost in the exercise of priorizing and implementing the plans themselves. In other words, important principles such as the preservation Ottawa's heritage must emanate forcibly from the plans as an overriding strategy.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the excellent Ottawa 2020 document. We look forward to further contributing to the broad direction of the new official plan as the City takes further steps in this process.

Body Copy