Miss Vicky's Offhand Remarks

Breezehill Development: my comments

Today is the deadline for your comments on the proposed 28 story Claridge development at Breezehill and Somerset. Although Melanie Knight, the planner who will report and make recommendations on the development, has said she will take comments beyond the deadline, so it's not too late to get your thoughts in. Just email melanie.knight@ottawa.ca and CC our councillor (katherine.hobbs@ottawa.ca) and the community association (info@hintonburg.com).

We did have some signals from the councillor at last night's meeting that the city may not be crazy about the proposal. But the signals were a little mixed, so the more comments from the community, the better.

Here is what I sent:

I would like to express my strong opposition to this application, and in particular the proposed height of the tower. I feel that it is inappropriate to entertain a height in excess of the maximum allowable under the Wellington West Community Design Plan. Even though the portion of the property where the proposed tower would be located is not directly on the mainstreet, the fact that it is immediately behind the mainstreet (and attached to the part of the property that faces the mainstreet) violates the spirit and intent of the CDP.

This development represents, really, the first test of the new plan. To entertain a development that would exceed the maximum height by five times - an absurd excess really, especially right next to a school - would send a message that these processes have no meaningful effect on actual planning decisions. I am pretty sure the residents, business owners and city staff who spent hundreds of hours over three years in various meetings to develop the plan did not intend that everything a few metres off the mainstreet was fair game for extreme intensification.

I attended some of those CDP meetings and have attended the public meetings on this development. I feel this community strongly supports intensification - that was the whole point of the CDP, wasn't it? The process set out to establish guidelines and standards that would help the city manage intensification and growth in our neighbourhood in a way that builds and supports the kind of community we want to live in.

Many of us support intensification, but we are looking for smart growth. And there doesn't seem to be a lot that's smart about this proposal. Certainly it doesn't seem smart to set a precedent that conflicts so drastically with the intent of the CDP so soon after its adoption, particularly with so much potential development in the area. It also conflicts with what I understand are the intentions of the current approach to the Carling-Bayview CDP, which would provide a transition from lower heights in residential neighbourhoods to higher buildings around the station and right at the transitway. If this is true, approving this development would undermine that CDP process before it has even been completed.

I do have direct concerns about the impact of the tower on the junior playground of the school, which my son currently attends and which my daughter will attend starting in 2014. I have concerns about the sheer number of cars entering and exiting the parking lot via the laneway, which we cross every morning when we walk to Devonshire and every afternoon on pick-up, often with my son pedaling ahead of me on a bike. We have had many close calls elsewhere because of careless commuters, and I cannot support creating another danger zone directly in the path that many children take to and from school.

I sincerely urge the planning department to recommend rejection of this proposed development. Claridge should go back to the drawing board and come forward with a serious proposal that fits more with the character of the neighbourhood and the spirit of the CDP.
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