This week’s public-service job walkout adds to the list of challenges Ottawa faces as its economy tries to rebound from the pandemic and it looks to reimagine city space, a prominent urban planning expert says.
Already a Subscriber? Log in
Get Instant Access to This Article
Become an Ottawa Business Journal Insider and get immediate access to all of our Insider-only content and much more.
This week’s public-service job walkout adds to the list of challenges Ottawa faces as its economy tries to rebound from the pandemic and it looks to reimagine spaces like LeBreton Flats and the ByWard Market, a prominent urban planning expert says.
Mary Rowe, president and CEO of the Toronto-based Canadian Urban Institute, says the National Capital Region is already burdened with multiple layers of bureaucracy due to various levels of government in two provinces having jurisdiction over different areas.
That has resulted in spats like the current tug of war between the city and the federal government over whether to reopen Wellington Street to vehicular traffic.
Now, the Public Service Alliance of Canada strike that entered its third day Friday is another issue that could stall efforts to tackle significant problems like the need to revitalize Ottawa’s downtown core, Rowe says.
“When you’re a capital city, and on top of that you’ve got a shared transit system, a whole bunch of extra layers of complexity, you’re getting over the (Freedom Convoy) still … and then you’ve got all the chronic, persistent things that probably challenged the downtown before, now it’s just made worse by COVID,” she said in an interview with OBJ on Thursday.
“And you’ve got a big chunk of your office stock occupied by the government of Canada and now a big chunk of them are on strike. It’s like a multi-whammy.”
Rowe is a headline speaker at next Tuesday’s City Building Summit 2023, a full-day event at the Shaw Centre that will feature more than a dozen experts from government, academia, private industry, public health and other sectors.
Presented by OBJ and the Ottawa Board of Trade, the summit will include discussions on a range of topics from revitalizing the downtown core and kickstarting economic growth to improving the city’s quality of life and investing in innovative infrastructure.
The keynote speaker is Mike Moffatt, senior director of policy and innovation at the University of Ottawa’s Smart Prosperity Institute. Other panellists include Zibi Canada president Jeff Westeinde; Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group CEO Mark Goudie; Katie Paris, the director of the National Capital Commission’s LeBreton Flats project; and Ottawa’s medical officer of health, Dr. Vera Etches.
Rowe will be part of a morning discussion on revitalizing the downtown core. Other experts on the panel include former City of Ottawa chief planner Stephen Willis, who is now the senior executive for urban planning at engineering firm Stantec, and Stéphan Déry, who was previously in charge of the federal government’s real estate portfolio and recently took over as head of the Canada Lands Company, a Crown corporation that specializes in real estate development.
In his former role, Déry made headlines when he announced the federal government plans to sell off millions of square feet of office space in the capital in a bid to modernize its real estate portfolio and invest in more environmentally friendly buildings.
The thorny issue of what to do with Ottawa’s aging downtown office inventory as vacancy rates rise and hybrid work becomes entrenched is near and dear to Rowe’s heart.
Last week, her organization released a study suggesting that the nation’s capital could be fruitful territory for office-to-residential conversions.
With a record-high office vacancy rate of 13.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 and a rental housing vacancy rate of just 2.2 per cent last year, Ottawa has a growing supply of office space and a pressing need for more rental housing, the institute said in its report. The study also noted that the capital has “a significant number of high- and low-rise, mid-century buildings considered feasible for conversion.”
While acknowledging that converting office towers into residential complexes is fraught with challenges and not always economically viable, Rowe is urging developers to take a close look at the idea – and not wait for the feds to make up their minds about which buildings they plan to divest.
“You have more candidate buildings than a lot of other cities do in terms of the easiest ones to (convert),” she said. “You should just get on with this and not let yourselves be held hostage by the indecision of other sectors. If the government of Canada is slow to make decisions – which in all likelihood it will be because it’s government – what kinds of quick steps can you be taking?”
Rowe also pointed to the ByWard Market and LeBreton Flats as areas with “extraordinary opportunity and potential” to become world-class destinations for both residents and tourists.
But she said it’s going to take “some really co-ordinated, ambitious leadership” from all levels of government as well as institutions such as the city’s universities and organizations like the Board of Trade for that potential to be realized.
“You’ve got some fabulous assets there,” Rowe said. “There needs to be a kind of pulling together of all of them. You guys could cut some ground, literally and figuratively, on ways of repurposing spaces that would be really exemplary for the rest of the country.”
