From cow path to corridor: what the future holds for the Baseline-Merivale Corridor

When Nancy Wilson was in middle school, Merivale Road was still a dirt road.

There were cow pastures where plazas now stand. Merivale Road's first shopping centre, the Lancaster Shopping Centre, had just opened with an IGA grocery store and pharmacy. Houses lined sections of the street before they were gradually relocated deeper into St. Claire Gardens, and development began to take over.

“It was a neighbourhood road,” said Wilson, who is co-president of the City View Community Association. “People lived along it. There were homes all along their. It was a working-class neighbourhood.”

Over time, that began to change. Farms were sold to developers. Minto began building Parkwood Hills. Miracle Mart and Pascal’s Hardware opened in the Meadowlands Mall.  Restaurants appeared and disappeared. Parking lots replaced fields. What had once been envisioned as a residential corridor slowly evolved into one of Ottawa’s busiest commercial strips — but without the kind of long-term planning framework newer suburban centres typically receive.

Back then, said Wilson, Merivale functioned as more than a shopping destination. It was somewhere people gathered, took classes and ran into neighbours. But after decades, it needs a do-over. 

Through the Baseline–Merivale Secondary Plan process — launched in 2025 and expected to conclude around spring 2027 — Ottawa planners are mapping out how growth should unfold along two interconnected but very different corridors that are expected to absorb significant redevelopment over the coming decades. 

Secondary plans are one of the most detailed tools available to municipalities shaping urban change.

While Ottawa’s Official Plan sets citywide policies — such as directing more housing toward existing urban areas rather than expanding outward — secondary plans determine how those policies translate on the ground. It will state what can be built where, how tall towers can be, and create guidelines for green spaces, retail and other infrastructure. 

City planners say the Baseline-Merivale corridor is anticipated to see “significant growth in the coming decades,” with the secondary plan intended to coordinate both private redevelopment and public infrastructure investments while advancing municipal goals related to housing, climate, mobility and economic development.

For residents in the City View neighbourhood, which sits closest to Merivale Road, that planning work feels especially important. But community volunteers note that a significant portion of City View itself falls outside the current secondary plan boundary, even though redevelopment along both Baseline and Merivale will still affect the area.

“There’s a large part of City View that isn’t included,” Wilson said.

City View volunteer Jill Prot said that creates uncertainty about how the city’s Official Plan intensification policies will apply in those areas just beyond the study limits.

“We’re still going to see change,” she said. “We just won’t necessarily have the same level of detailed planning guiding it.”

When talk first began of creating a secondary plan, Wilson said the community advocated for City View to have its own. She argued that many of the older houses in the neighbourhood have been torn down and replaced with multiple-unit buildings. 

That trend has continued, as recent zoning changes have allowed up to three-storey buildings to be constructed where single-family homes once stood.  

“Developers can put many units on small lots,” she said, pointing to one proposal she said would bring 18 units onto a 50-foot-wide property nearby.

Wilson said residents are not opposed to intensification, but worry infrastructure and drainage systems designed for lower-density neighbourhoods may struggle to keep up with rapid change. 

“You’re going from one bathroom to many occupants,” she said. “The infrastructure wasn’t designed for that. When you’re outside the boundary of the secondary plan, you don’t necessarily get the same level of detailed planning. But the change is still happening.”

The city has already begun work on a long-term effort to rehabilitate City View’s aging drainage system by upgrading the community's ditches. 

The area was originally built in the 1960s using a ditch-and-culvert stormwater system rather than underground pipes, and decades of infill, sediment buildup and altered grading have reduced its effectiveness. 

City studies concluded that replacing the ditch network with a full storm sewer system would be considered an infrastructure upgrade rather than a renewal of an existing asset — meaning costs would fall largely on local property owners through the municipal local-improvement process, making it far less feasible than restoring the existing drainage system. 

Wilson said she also believes Merivale should not be lumped in with Baseline because they serve two different purposes. 

“Merivale is a destination shopping road,” Wilson said. “Baseline is a transit road.”

Just north of Baseline, residents in the Bel Air neighbourhood are watching the process from a different angle. 

Because their community sits immediately off Baseline, Bel Air Community Association board member Harry Fisher said many residents there are paying close attention to how future rapid transit investment and intensification along that corridor could reshape travel patterns, sidewalks and nearby development.

“Baseline is going to change whether people are ready for it or not,” Fisher said. “The question is whether it becomes something people can actually live beside comfortably. And right now, especially along Merivale, you still see a corridor where you park in a huge asphalt oven, go into the store, and leave. It’s not a place people stay.”

The Baseline corridor has been studied for more than a decade as part of a future bus rapid transit route that would introduce dedicated centre-running transit lanes, new stations at major intersections and improved sidewalks and cycling infrastructure along the route. 

Once fully built out, it will travel from Bayshore to Herongate. College Ward Coun. Laine Johnson said she expects a positive update on that project later this year. 

“The LRT is north of the Queensway,” College Ward Coun. Laine Johnson said. “Baseline helps connect the east and west sides of the city on the south side. It’s a critical piece.”

Route 88 — already one of the city’s busiest bus routes — runs along the corridor today and provides a preview of what that transit spine could become.

Unlike newer suburban districts planned from the ground up, Merivale evolved incrementally into a patchwork of communities. Roads took priority over sidewalks, and bike infrastructure wasn’t even a thought. 

Retail followed the demand of the shopping centre boom of the 60s and 70s. Because the community was once considered part of rural Ottawa and then the suburbs, surface parking dominated site layouts. 

Since first being elected in 2022, Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Has said it is a vision for how Merivale Road could be transformed. He’d like to see main-street-like businesses on the ground floor, with housing above. Trees and green spaces where people can go for shade. Places for people to bike and walk. 

Currently, he says, it’s failing at many of those. 

“When you look at Merivale from Baseline to Viewmount, it’s basically a massive parking lot serving largely underused big-box retail,” said Devine.n“It’s trying to be a commercial main street and an arterial commuter corridor at the same time — and it’s failing at both.”

Devine successfully pushed to include Merivale within the Baseline secondary planning study boundary shortly after taking office, arguing the corridor required a coordinated vision similar to what is now being implemented through the Barrhaven Downtown Secondary Plan.

That plan is guiding the creation of a mixed-use town centre south of the Greenbelt that will include a new arts centre, library, shopping, residential, and space for outdoor events such as a food truck festival or a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. 

Devine said he hopes Merivale Road can become the “heart of Nepean” — but only through gradual redevelopment, with existing plazas torn down.  

Several properties are already being watched closely as potential catalysts.

There are plans to tear down the Lancaster Shopping Centre and replace it with a six-storey building containing 203 units. Current plans state that it will not include any ground-floor retail, despite being on a main road. Next door, the former Dairy Queen and a garage sit empty and lifeless, but no plans have been released for what could be built there. 

Further on, a for-sale sign sits outside of one of the last remaining Toys R Us locations, which sits in the middle of a near-empty parking lot. Devine said it’s a priority that will no doubt one day see massive intensification. Currently, two 12-storey high-rises and a seniors' residence sit next door.  

“That’s the epitome of Merivale of real estate that is not being used to its full potential — either in terms of what residents want and need, or in terms of what the city can do to maximize the value of that parcel of land,” said Devine. : If you were to look at how much property tax we collect per hectare on that parcel of land, it is minimal compared to what you would find on a smaller parcel of land that would have retail on the bottom and apartment buildings on top.” 

It’s unclear how tall towers could be constructed there, but previous height limits were set at 12 storeys. Higher limits will most likely be permitted, as the former CJOH television site up the road is zoned for upwards of 40 storeys, though Devine thinks it’s unlikely any developer would be quick to build such a large-scale project right now. 

Work is also underway on a new Merivale Road imaging Centre next to Emerald Plaza. While a key piece of infrastructure, Devine questioned its location, saying it will stick out when surrounding development occurs. If the secondary plan were in place, then it could have guided what permissions were allowed there. 

“You’re still going to have a large parking lot, and you’re going to have a two-storey imaging centre at the back of that parking lot with nothing above it,” said Devine. “In five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, that parcel of land is going to stick out like an anomaly because on either side of it you will have much, much more high-density development.”

On Johnson’s side of Merivale Road, she said development has been slower than she first thought. In 2020, the owners of Merivale Mall announced it had plans to construct a 12-storey mixed-use building and a seven-storey residential building on the site. But six years later, the idea has moved nowhere. 

At Baseline and Clyde, where a strip mall which includes a Burger King currently sits, there have been multiple iterations of a plan to construct two high-rise buildings of 18 and 28 stories, with 468 units. But that development has also been paused. 

“There have been plans and community consultations, but the developer is waiting until it makes sense for him to build,” noted Johnson. “You’re seeing a change in the market.”  

For those like Wilson and Prot who have lived on Merivale Road for decades, they still remember when it had a sense of community. 

There was once a fire station where the McDonald's at Family Brown Lane now sits. Next door was an arts centre where community programming, including pottery making, was held. There were even some decorative elements, like in 1967, when flags lined the street to promote Canada’s 100th birthday. 

It’s little details like that, Prot says, that would make a huge difference. 

“We’d love to have banners hanging on flag poles, as you see in Bells Corners or Westboro. We want flower pots and greenery. Benches where people can sit,” she said. 

Wilson said she’d like Merivale Road to take ideas from Robertson Road in Bells Corners. There is already a diverse mix of shops there, some bike infrastructure, and beautification elements, she said. But Robertson Road, for its part, is also in the midst of its own revitalization study. 

The City View Community Association would like to see a Merivale Road Business Improvement Association (BIA) created.  There was a movement to create one decades ago, but it faded due to a lack of community support. 

Devine said he and College Ward Coun. Johnson would like to see one created, but is waiting for the Baseline-Merivale Secondary Plan process to be finished first. 

“What a BIA will do, invariably, is they will use their own revenues to do programming and put in infrastructure that serves their interests — but ideally that also beautifies the road and helps attract people,” said Devine. “When you go on Greenbank or Strandherd, and you see all of those flagpoles — ‘Welcome to Barrhaven’ — that’s not paid for by the city. That’s paid for by the Barrhaven BIA.”

The Barrhaven BIA, for example, is also instrumental in decorating the town centre with Christmas lights every December. In Little Italy, the BIA is part of organizing the yearly Italian Festival. And in Wellington West, its BIA hosts the Taste of Wellington food event every fall. 

An open house was supposed to be held this winter on the Baseline-Merivale Secondary Plan, where community members could get an update on preliminary ideas and give feedback. Still, it’s been pushed to the summer. When that process is complete, an open house will be held this winter or next spring to present draft recommendations and give the public another opportunity to provide feedback. It will then go before the Planning Committee and the city council for approval.