This page contains links to the information available about the Old Ottawa East Community Design Plan (CDP).
April 2009 Status Update:
The OOECA Invites Your Feedback
E-mail Stephen Pope with your feedback on the following:
The City is now in the final stage of development of the Old Ottawa East (OOE) Community Design Plan (CDP) and the OECA continues to play a role in representing the vision and goals expressed by our community.
The CDP is focused on Main Street but necessarily covers the Old Ottawa East community as a whole. The CDP is meant to provide a broad and integrated 20 year vision and guidance for the growth of the community. In its broadest sense, the CDP is meant to provide a strategy and guidelines from which the enabling conditions for sustainable development will emerge in OOE.
The City’s Community Planning and Design Division is responsible for the CDP development and hopes to submit the final version to the Planning and Environment Committee later this spring with the aim to have it approved by City Council before summer. Therefore, at this most critical stage, it’s highly important for all residents to examine the work done to date, as well as the key substantive issues that the OECA believes have to be addressed before it can recommend support of the final Plan.
This page provides a link to the draft CDP documentation. To help refresh your memory, we also provide a short recap of the CDP process, activities to date and the major themes that comprise the community’s vision for OOE. Finally, we provide the Ottawa East Community Association (OECA)’s current position on key issues pertaining to the draft CDP.
The OECA invites your feedback, comments etc.
- What are your general and specific queries or concerns with the draft CDP?
- What’s missing?
- Do you agree with the OECA concerns, as expressed below?
The Draft CDP document prepared by the City is available at:
http://ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/old_ottawa_east/index_en.html
On the City website, there two new sections from the draft CDP, including "Land Use and Design Strategies" and "Implementation Strategy". These new sections are intended to respond to the comments received to date.RECAP OF THE CDP PROCESS AND ACTIVITIES TO DATE
The Process
There are three ways by which residents have been voicing their opinions etc on the CDP development:
- A Public Advisory Committee (PAC), made up of representatives of the OOECA, Capital Ward Councillor Clive Doucet, Saint Paul University, local business and city planner Charles Lanktree;
- An OOECA Working Group comprised of volunteers from the community and
- Ongoing, direct comments from residents to city planner Charles Langtree.
The decision by the City to proceed with a CDP was driven by several community initiatives, including a community survey and the formation of the OOECA Working Group which organized a visioning workshop (October 2005) and an open house (November 2005). From these activities, the OOECA Working Group developed a Long Term sustainable community vision document, which together with the City’s 20/20 principles and its Official Plan, has guided the work on the Community Design Plan.
About the CDP: Why it is Important
The CDP is hugely important to the future of OOE because of its standing under the Provincial Planning Act. The CDP must be of sufficient detail to guide change in both the public and the private realms, as implemented through urban design guidelines and Zoning Bylaw provisions.
It’s expected that a version of the CDP will be presented to Planning Committee as a “secondary plan” to be included as an amendment to the Official Plan (OP), therefore, giving it greater weight in consideration of planning issues such as zoning, development review, or matters before the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB).Major Themes Guiding the Community’s Vision for OOE
The documentation produced by the OECA Working Group captures the community’s aspirations with regard to growth of a vibrant, sustainable community over the longer-term. During this process, a longer list of community “themes” have been narrowed down to the following:
Theme 1 Environmental sustainability: This includes maintaining and enhancing green spaces, protecting biodiversity, greening of unused land, improving green linkages and pathways between neighbourhoods and to adjacent communities, and encouraging cycling options.
Theme 2 Maintain and enhance the distinct character of Old Ottaw East: This includes enhancing of key characteristics such as the canal and river frontages; developing Main Street as the ‘central spine’ of the community; identifying of ‘gateway’ locations that link to adjacent communities; exploring potential for a new pedestrian and cycling bridge across the canal; and incorporating a broad mix of compatible land uses, including opportunities for shops and services.
Theme 3 Revitalize and improve commercial Main Street: This theme includes key points such as Traditional Main Street designation on Main north of Clegg to the canal and upgrading the street environment in keeping with mixed use Mainstreet (landscape and street furniture).
Theme 4 Managing growth: Includes encouraging appropriate new development on underutilized lands and concentrating development near services; facilitating ‘aging in place’ and promoting affordable housing; and supporting development of community recreation, arts and cultural facilities.
Current OOECA Position
The “lens” through which the OOECA Working Group has reviewed the draft CDP is risk. The legal authority which will be accorded to the CDP means that the themes, strategies and content will have significant implications for OOE for many years to come. The Working Group has carefully considered the risk of major omissions and the risk of strategies and guidelines that don’t presently align to or fully capture the community vision.
In March of 2008 two public meeting were held in the neighbourhood to present the first draft of the Community Design Plan. Click here for the slides for the public meetings
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Contact within the community association to give feedback or ask questions: Stephen Pope. The current documentation on the City of Ottawa's website for the CDP including the charts and maps presented at the last public open house in June 2007. Outcome of a community visioning session which was presented in November 2005. |
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Older documents written about the process and possibilities: “The Revitalization of Ottawa East” by university geography student, Kevin Ballantyne, Overview from May 2006 of Main Street Revitalization Summary of results from 2005 Main Street revitalization survey |
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