A new park for City View comes with leasing challenges

There are many perks to living in an older community like City View. The side streets are quiet, the lot depths are larger, and the homes hold history and character from decades gone by. But one of the amenities the community is lacking is greenspace. 

Because the community is already built up, it's not like the city can find new land to put in a new park. So instead, the City View Community Association worked 27 years ago with the City of Nepean to lease a small patch of greenspace from Hydro Ottawa.

“We were given permission to put in pollinator gardens. It is 200 feet by 50 feet – 9,000 total square feet. We drew plans all down Bassano Street and it was going to be called Bassano Park,” said City View Community Association co-president Jill Prot.

But then, after amalgamation, someone at the city forgot to renew the lease. The community association was then given a cease and desist and told they had to remove everything from the property, including a small garden shed where they stored tools. 

College Ward Coun. Laine Johnson said the issue predates her and that she's been working with Hydro Ottawa since she was elected in 2022 to find a solution. There was also a previous commitment to use cash-in-lieu funds to put in a pathway and bench, but that work has also been stalled. 

“It has been challenging to work out the permissions under the hydro corridor to make those investments. But the City of Ottawa has worked very diligently to get those agreements in place and I do anticipate that we should be able to get those investments in for hopefully the end of this year,” Johnson told the Ottawa Lookout.

With a lease now signed, Prot is optimistic the parkland can soon be used again. But in the meantime, they need to notify Hydro Ottawa anytime they plan to step on the land, which has not always been easy. 

The City View Community Association has also received a grant to build a new butterfly garden on the site. 

The difficulty of finding new parkland in a developed community 

Work is underway on the Baseline-Merivale Secondary Plan, which will essentially draw a roadmap for what kinds of new development will be permitted in the aging suburb. But part of the exercise is also to identify new spots for greenspace when existing buildings are torn down for new ones. 

Completion of the plan is still a few years away, but Johnson is eager to find some space now. She has floated the idea of doing a de-paving project on a small patch of road between Starwood Road and St Claire Avenue, located behind the Bleeker Mall.

“I put out a survey last year because it is true we need more greenspace and it's not happening. I asked if they would rather us put more money into your existing parks with more recreational equipment, if they would rather take the time and do this sort of complicated, unknown de-paving,” said Johnson. “Residents overwhelmingly said do that, but we first need to do an environmental assessment of the ground and things like that.”

Johnson said one of the current frustrations she hears from residents is that they often need to cross busy, multilane roads to access parklands. On her side of Merivale, Ainsley Park is located on the other side of Baseline Road, or there is the Doug Frobel Park next to the Nepean Museum. 

Neighbouring Parkwood Hills has some bigger park amenities nearby including Gilby Park, General Burns Park, or Red Pine Park, but each would take 20-30 minutes to walk to. 

In other parts of Ottawa, some city councillors have used their wards’ cash in lieu of park funds from the city to purchase residential properties and tear them down to create new public greenspace. In 2023, Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper purchased 115 Spencer St., which is on a corner lot, and 22 Ladouceur, which was used to expand the existing Armstrong Park. 

The new “pocket park” on Spencer Street was highly welcomed by the community. 

“It will mean that residents no longer have to cross a busy, trafficked street to get to a park,” Wellington Village community association member Tara Ouchterlony, told the Kitchissippi Times. “Since the loss of the tiny park on Grange Street in the late 1990s, we’ve been entirely without green space in this area. I think it will be appreciated.” 

But the reason Kitchissippi Ward could do that was due to its surge in new development. When a developer builds a project that results in growth, the developer must allot a piece of land for public green space. When that’s impossible because there’s no space available, as is often the case in urban areas, the developer pays cash instead — around 10 per cent of the land’s worth. 

Johnson in College Ward said their pot of funds isn't as much. 

“They get cash more often than anything else just because the land is so limited in the downtown area. For us, we're still working to negotiate, so I am not in a place right now where I can do that. But it's another creative solution to what is a problem,” she said.