City Hall and residents clash over NCC plan to rezone southern greenspace for housing

On a mid-December afternoon near Riverwood Park, Mireille Trent walks the same path she has followed for nearly two decades; a narrow, off-beat trail through trees and brush that leads toward the Rideau River.

Despite its subtlety, it’s well-used by locals; there are cross-country tracks through freshly fallen snow. Paw prints from dogs and boot prints from their owners. The gridlock of traffic is only a stone’s throw away at Hunt Club and Riverside, but here, there would be silence if it weren’t for the chirping of birds.

It was this patch of urban greenspace that made Trent and her family settle in the Hunt Club Woods area almost two decades ago.

“All three of my kids have grown up walking through the nearby McCarthy Woods and Meadows. We’d walk our dog through here during the COVID pandemic. My kids enjoyed walking along the river,” Trent told the Lookout. “We probably walk through the NCC-owned lands and enjoy the nature and the native plants and flowers and trees at least once a week. It’s a rare jewel in the heart of the city.”

That rarity is precisely what residents now fear losing.

McCarthy Woods is a forested block of NCC-owned land situated between Hunt Club Road, Riverside Drive and the Airport Parkway. Covering several dozen hectares, it forms one of the largest continuous wooded areas remaining in Ottawa’s south end outside the Greenbelt. The site includes mature deciduous tree stands, meadow clearings and low-lying areas that connect toward the Rideau River floodplain.

The woods sit at the centre of the Southern Corridor — a stretch of federal land that runs east-west across River Ward — and have long functioned as an informal trail network used for walking, cycling and cross-country skiing. Because the forest links neighbourhood streets directly to the Rideau River pathway system, it serves as a key access point to waterfront trails without requiring travel by car.

Local stewardship groups have carried out invasive-species removal and native-plant restoration projects in sections of the woods in recent years, in partnership with the NCC and community associations. City natural-area mapping studies have previously identified McCarthy Woods and adjacent meadowlands as part of a broader wildlife movement corridor between the Rideau River and the Greenbelt.

But what began as a technical planning change quietly moving through City Hall has since grown into a flashpoint for community concern. Under the proposed rezoning, large portions of NCC-owned greenspace near Hunt Club Woods — including the wooded corridor linking Riverwood Park to the Rideau River — would be redesignated to permit future residential development.

River Ward Coun. Riley Brockington, whose ward includes much of the Southern Corridor, said the lands form a continuous stretch of federal green space that residents have long thought to be protected.

He said the concern stems from the NCC using the city’s comprehensive zoning bylaw review to quietly shift long-standing green space zoning toward development reserve.

“They’re using a backdoor process through the city to avoid the public, let alone their own locally elected members, and that’s not going over well,” Brockington said.

Brockington said development-reserve zoning does not itself approve construction — but it removes the comfort residents have had from green space and passive-recreation designations.

“Keep the zoning as is, as green space, passive recreation. And when the time actually comes, you have to go through the process anyway,” he said. “Why cause unnecessary anxiety and concern if you have no immediate plans?”

At the Dec. 17 joint meeting of the city’s Planning and Housing and Agricultural and Rural Affairs committees, Brockington moved a zoning amendment that would revert the NCC parcels in the Southern Corridor and McCarthy Woods back to the uses shown in an earlier draft of the new zoning bylaw, instead of the “development reserve” designation the NCC had requested.

The motion passed on an 11–4 vote and will go before council later this month.

In a statement to the Ottawa Lookout, Benoît Desjardins, a communications advisor for the NCC, said the lands in question were acquired decades ago for a transportation corridor that never materialized.

“Today, in light of the housing crisis, the NCC is identifying underutilized public lands that can be developed to increase the housing stock, including affordable housing, in the National Capital Region, in line with the Government of Canada’s direction,” he said.

Desjardins added that “the existing zoning, which includes two large tracts that are zoned light-industrial, would, if unchanged, leave permissions that are not compatible with an area that is neighbourhood-designated in the City of Ottawa’s 2022 Official Plan, and therefore contravene the Ontario Planning Act.”

The NCC also said portions of the Lower Rivergate Corridor — including significant natural heritage features and greenspace encompassing the forest and riverfront — are intended for ongoing protection.

But Brockington said any change to existing zoning — even without an active development plan — risks eroding public trust.

“Anything that changes from the current zoning designations causes concern, causes alarm for some people, even if there’s no plan in place,” he said. “As I said to them today, why cause unnecessary anxiety and concern if you have no immediate plans?”

While the NCC has emphasized that environmentally sensitive sections of the corridor will remain protected, that reassurance has done little to ease anxiety among nearby residents.

The concern, Trent said, is not only about what is explicitly proposed today, but what future councils, governments, or developers might pursue once zoning permissions change.

“Once you open the door, it’s open,” she said. “This is one of the last continuous green corridors in the south end of the city. You can’t just replace that once it’s gone.”

Trent, who describes herself as an environmental economist and a Butterflyway Ranger, has spent years advocating for urban biodiversity and native-plant restoration.

She says spaces like McCarthy Woods and the riverfront corridor are more than recreational amenities — they are living ecological systems that support pollinators, birds, and small wildlife in an increasingly dense urban landscape.

Other community groups are concerned about how zoning changes would impact the Poets’ Pathway, a loop in the middle of a 37-kilometre trail stretching from Britannia Beach to Beechwood Cemetery.

The Poets’ Pathway, which is described as a “green necklace” in the middle of the Greenbelt, was officially opened in 2017, but its foundation started about 20 years prior when naturalist Bill Royds was snowshoeing through McCarthy Woods. If zoning changed, the volunteer-run organization said that “necklace” could be destroyed.

“The Confederation poets were rockstars of their time, esteemed, published and well-known journalists known in the States, France and England. They lived and played here,” said Poets’ Pathway chair Jane Moore.

Concerns were also raised about NCC-owned lands in the Merivale–Woodroffe section of the corridor. It has already been placed in the Canada Public Lands Bank and was the site of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “Build Canada Homes” announcement in the fall.

Any zoning change now would pre-empt consultations that are underway through the Baseline–Merivale Secondary Plan that will be fully tabled in spring 2027.

Lynne Patenaude, a volunteer with several organizations focused on native plants and urban green space, including the Ottawa South Eco-Action Network and Les Amis francophones des espaces verts du parc Riverview, said the committee’s vote was an important first step — but far from the end of the story.

“We were very, very happy with the support that we received to put forward a motion to reject the proposed development-preservation zoning for the lands adjacent to McCarthy Woods and along the river corridor,” she said. “At minimum, we ended up getting a reversion to the existing zoning, so the NCC needs to come through the regular process of rezoning land.”

Patenaude said community groups are not opposed to housing or increased density — pointing to ongoing redevelopment plans on other nearby federal lands — but object to placing intact green space into a development land bank without first evaluating its environmental value.

“We are supportive of housing and increasing density within the city and within the Greenbelt,” she said. “But what we are disputing is starting development for housing on land that is green space, has mature trees, and plays a role as an ecological corridor with woodlands and meadow spaces.”

Andrei Grushman, planning director at the Hunt Club Community Association, pointed to how the neighbourhood supported a controversial housing development proposed at Riverside Drive near Hunt Club Road, which includes 660 units — ranging from single and semi-detached homes to four mid- to high-rise buildings between nine and 17 floors.

The airport opposed the project, citing concerns that it was too close to the flight path and that the noise would adversely impact residents. Grushman and others argued that housing is already located there, and residents bought into the area, aware that it was close to the airport.

“I understand there are about 8,000 units that have been approved by the city, but are not under construction yet. The new by-law will increase development along Riverside Drive and Walkley, which are minor corridors, and within the neighbourhoods,” he told the Lookout.

“This large green space is not close to an LRT station. It’s not underutilized or vacant land. It’s basically an informal linear park,” Grushman added.

Grushman said the city’s own planning framework has long recognized McCarthy Woods as environmentally significant.

“The city itself has zoned McCarthy Woods as environmental protection. Its own studies in the past have shown that the surrounding land performs an essential support function to McCarthy Woods,” he said.

He also pointed to how other cities integrate large natural corridors into urban neighbourhoods, citing Toronto’s ravine system as an example of how forested landscapes can remain protected while surrounding areas densify.

The Hunt Club Community Association noted other residential units being built in surrounding neighbourhoods; Sun Life intends to build four mixed-use highrises ranging from 25 to 40 storeys on the south end of Bank Street near Walkley in a multi-phased plan that would see nearly 1,500 new housing units added to the neighbourhood. Upwards of 25,000 units could also be built in the future at the federally owned Confederation Heights lands.

Patenaude also challenged the NCC’s characterization of the area as underutilized public land, saying the criteria used to reach that conclusion remain unclear.

“We’re interested to know what criteria the NCC used when they called this underutilized public space. It isn’t clear at all,” she said. “It would be hard to see that they wouldn’t recognize the huge value of McCarthy Woods.”

Looking ahead to council’s final vote, Patenaude said residents will continue outreach to councillors and push for a shift in how federal lands are prioritized for housing.

“Lands that are mown fields, that don’t have trees, that have existing buildings and parking lots — those lands should be prioritized for development over land that has strong ecological value,” she said.

When the matter went before the joint planning committee, Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper, who is also the city’s planning chair, urged colleagues to support the development-reserve zoning requested by the NCC.

Leiper said the change to development-reserve zoning was introduced in the third draft of the new comprehensive zoning bylaw at the request of the NCC, which has indicated its intent to develop the lands for housing in keeping with federal priorities.

“Development reserve is a zone that we use for lands that still need to go through a bunch of planning, but are intended to be developed with a mix of uses,” Leiper told the Lookout. “The NCC has been fairly transparent that they intend to develop those parcels with residential development in keeping with the federal government’s priority.”

He said development-reserve zoning is used as a placeholder to signal lands identified for future neighbourhood development in the city’s official plan, while further planning determines what portions remain green space, natural areas, and public amenities.

“Development reserve is the appropriate zoning for lands that are intended for future residential development,” he said. “It’s also the most transparent way to signal that these lands are going to be developed with housing.”

Leiper opposed Brockington’s motion to revert the zoning to earlier draft designations, saying it risked creating the expectation that council could block housing on federal lands — something the city does not ultimately control.

“If the federal government chooses to develop the land with housing, they can, no matter what the city has to say about it,” he said. “We’re not at that point where the city is trying to block housing, but I think we’ve set up an expectation in residents’ minds that this is the role the city is going to play. I don’t think that’s a transparent way to proceed.”

Council is expected to vote on the full comprehensive zoning bylaw later this month. If council upholds Brockington’s motion, Leiper said the NCC will need to decide whether to continue planning future neighbourhood development in partnership with the city or pursue its own federal process — though he does not expect unilateral action.

The Ottawa South Eco-Action Network and Hunt Club Community Association are planning an open house for Saturday, Jan. 17, to educate residents on the McCarthy Forest, Meadows and Southern Corridor. It will begin at the Hunt Club Community Association, 3320 Paul Anka Dr., at 1 p.m. A guided sunset river walk will then take place across from 3700 Rivergate Way at 3:15 p.m.