A city-owned parking lot at one of the busiest gateways into the Glebe could soon be transformed into affordable housing, bringing up to 90 new homes to one of Ottawa’s least affordable neighbourhoods.
Ottawa City Council has approved the transfer of a city-owned parking lot at 574 Bank St. to Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation (CCOC), one of the city’s largest non-profit housing providers, moving a long-planned affordable housing project one step closer to reality.
The move is part of the city’s Municipal Land Strategy, which aims to make surplus public lands available for affordable housing projects.
The 690-square-metre property, located at the corner of Bank Street and Chamberlain Avenue near Highway 417, is currently used as a 16-space municipal parking lot. City staff estimate the land is worth approximately $3.3 million, but council has now approved transferring the site to CCOC for a nominal amount.
Under the proposal, CCOC would partner with McDonald Brothers Construction and the owner of the adjacent property at 578 Bank St. to build a nine-storey mixed-use development featuring ground-floor commercial space and approximately 80 to 90 residential units. Roughly 30 per cent of those units are expected to be offered below market rates.
For Capital Ward Coun. Shawn Menard, council’s approval represents years of planning finally coming together.
“It’s a not-for-profit development with commercial on the ground floor, which is exactly what we’re hoping to see more of in the city,” he told the Lookout. “It would be replacing a 16-space parking lot, an existing city parking lot, to build a nine-storey building for not-for-profit housing. It would be a great addition to the Glebe.”
The project traces its roots back to the Bank Street Height and Character Study, a planning exercise completed several years ago that established development guidelines for the corridor and identified the parking lot as a potential affordable housing site.
“We had been planning this for a long time through the Bank Street Height and Character Study that was done back in 2021,” said Menard. “This was part of the plans then. So it’s taken a few years to come to fruition.”
While council’s approval clears a significant hurdle, several steps remain before construction can begin. Detailed designs have yet to be finalized, additional consultation will be required, and CCOC must still secure financing for the project. Supporters say the land transfer marks an important milestone toward bringing affordable housing to a neighbourhood where rents and home prices have steadily climbed.
“It would be new housing built on parking lot land. Parking lot land is pretty inefficient,” said Menard. “This would be affordable housing in an area that is not always traditionally affordable.”
While many people associate the Glebe with large heritage homes and high property values, local community leaders say the neighbourhood has long included a mix of housing types and income levels.
“Through the course of that study, they earmarked that property, which is a city-owned parking lot, as a potential and hopeful site for an affordable housing project, given that it was city land, with the idea that the city would hopefully transfer it to a non-profit,” said Carolyn Mackenzie of the Glebe Community Association.
The association has supported the concept for years and worked alongside city staff and Menard’s office as plans advanced.
“We need more housing in general and certainly more affordable housing,” Mackenzie said. “I think it’s going to be a great addition to the neighbourhood.”
The project would not only add housing, but also help reshape a section of Bank Street currently dominated by surface parking.
“The city’s vision for our main streets is certainly not to have surface parking lots on our main streets,” Mackenzie said. “It’s good to see a project that will replace that.”
She noted the development’s location near Highway 417 could also help strengthen connections between the Glebe and adjacent neighbourhoods.
“The residential at the top and the commercial at grade will help complete the street and make it that much more walkable,” she said.
Mackenzie believes projects like this are increasingly important as older, lower-cost rental housing disappears from the neighbourhood.
“There are a lot of rentals in the neighbourhood, houses that were converted from single-family homes to rentals decades ago that remain there,” she said. “But we are losing a lot of those as well. So this project is important to add back to the neighbourhood.”
The proposal comes as Ottawa continues to grapple with a housing affordability crisis and increasing pressure to build more homes in established urban neighbourhoods close to jobs, transit and services.
For Menard, the Glebe’s affordability challenges make the project even more important.
“To be able to get some not-for-profit housing in there, especially with a new build, this is the type of thing we need to see more of so that the options are made available for people with different types of income, not just high-income earners,” he said.
The Glebe Community Association is also exploring ways residents can help support the project financially.
Mackenzie said the community group is working with CCOC and the Ottawa Community Land Trust on a potential Housing Forever Bonds campaign that would allow residents to invest in the project during its early planning stages.
“It’ll cost them between a million and a million and a half dollars to get from where they were a few months ago to when they’re shovel-ready for the project,” she said. “We’re hoping to push that through much more quickly by encouraging people to invest in the community by investing in these bonds.”
More details on that initiative are expected later this summer.
With council’s approval now secured, attention turns to designing, financing and eventually constructing the project. Supporters say it could become a model for how publicly owned land can be used to address Ottawa’s housing shortage while preserving the character and vibrancy of established neighbourhoods.
“Having homogeneous, expensive single-family homes doesn’t make for a vibrant community,” Mackenzie said. “We really need it.”
