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Colonnade BridgePort eyes 2026 start for five-tower project near Blair Station

July 25, 2025

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Colonnade BridgePort says it hopes to break ground next year on the first of what could be as many as five highrises containing about 1,200 residential units on land near the Blair LRT station. The Ottawa-based real estate firm recently filed a revised application to develop the four-acre site at 2000 City Park Dr., about 450 metres west of Blair Station and the nearby Gloucester Centre mall. Colonnade BridgePort’s plan calls for a trio of 30-storey towers on the southern portion of the property closest to Regional Road 174, with a proposed 16-storey highrise on the northeast corner of the site and a 12-storey building beside it to the west. A small public park covering about a third of an acre would be located on the northwest side of the property next to an existing five-storey office building at 1900 City Park Dr. Colonnade BridgePort’s plan would add more than 800,000 square feet of new development to the property, which is already zoned for residential and commercial uses. Under current zoning rules, the height limit for most of the property is 20 storeys, and the firm is seeking Official Plan and zoning bylaw amendments to accommodate the taller highrises. Colonnade BridgePort senior vice-president of development Kelly Rhodenizer said Friday the 16-storey tower will likely be first up on the construction docket but added the firm and its partners are still figuring out exactly how the project will proceed. She said a site plan application for the first building could be filed in the next few months in the hope of starting construction in 2026. While the first building is slated to be a rental complex, Rhodenizer said future buildings could be earmarked for other uses such as condos or seniors’ housing depending on market conditions. “It’s a lot of towers,” she explained. “This is a five- to 10- to 15-year planned buildout. We want to create a mixed community.” Other aspects of the project, including the number of parking spaces, types of amenities and potential ground-floor commercial components, have yet to be determined, Rhodenizer said, adding tenants such as restaurants and retailers could be accommodated in future buildings. “We are not far enough along to give any guidance on that, but it is a mixed-use site,” she said. Colonnade BridgePort, the city’s largest privately owned commercial property manager, partnered with an unnamed institutional investor to buy the land and an adjacent five-storey office tower at 1900 City Park Dr. from QuadReal Property Group in March 2023. The current proposal is a rejigged version of Colonnade BridgePort’s original concept for the site, which envisioned a “planned community” with more than a million square feet of residential space in five buildings of between 20 and 30 storeys that would be arranged around a central park. After consultations with the city, the park was shifted farther southwest to mitigate shadow impacts from the surrounding towers, and the original road network was downsized. Documents filed with the earlier proposal also included a long-term concept plan for 1900 City Park Dr. that called for the office building to be demolished and replaced with three highrises containing about 1,000 additional residential suites.

Office building on the market

However, Colonnade BridgePort executives said in 2023 those plans were not set in stone, and the firm has removed 1900 City Park Dr. from its updated development proposal. In its revised master plan, the company said the office building is an “income-producing property with no immediate development plans anticipated,” adding it has “10-15 years in the life of the asset and potential for future dispositions.” Colonnade BridgePort and its partner have now put the 93,200-square-foot building, which is more than 30 years old, up for sale. Avison Young, which is marketing the property, said in a recent LinkedIn post the building is 81 per cent leased to a “diverse and stable tenant base” and “generates strong in-place cash flow, with near-term upside potential through additional lease-up.” Meanwhile, Colonnade BridgePort is ramping up another major mixed-use project in the city’s east end at 25 Pickering Pl., just east of the Via Rail terminal and the Tremblay LRT station. The company, which partnered with Toronto-based investment firm Fiera Real Estate to acquire the site in 2020, says it is finalizing subdivision approvals with the city and hopes to break ground on the first phase of the development later this year. The initial stage includes two towers of 14 and 28 storeys that will contain a total of 483 residential suites along with “associated underground parking” and ground-floor commercial space. Long-term plans call for the five-acre former industrial site to be turned into a “mixed-use, high-density community hub” that will eventually include up to 1,200 residential units in a mix of rental apartment highrises, condos and retirement residences, as well as retail space, parkland and possibly a hotel. Rhodenizer said Friday she expects construction at the site to continue for years to come as developers look to add more residential and retail density near transit hubs such as Tremblay station. “Our hope is that eventually we’ll be able to build more (at the site), for sure.”