By Michelle French
It was business as usual for Cecil Stanley when his development company got the green light from the transition board to develop 48 hectares of his land in two parcels west and south of Greely.
He assumed Cecil Stanley Enterprises would do what it usually does build residences in the village.
But now, two and a half years after Ottawa’s amalgamation, his property is caught in noman’s land.
Now undergoing public consultations, the city’s draft official plan has frozen village boundaries. City planners want denser communities, undercutting Greely’s attempt to expand its boundaries to include Stanley’s and other developers’ land.
Stanley’s land is zoned general rural — unsuitable for agriculture. Under the Ottawa-Carleton region’s 1997 official plan, general rural land could be developed for residential purposes.
The single-city plan shifts 180 degrees. Landowners cannot sever or sell general rural land as single lots or country estates — clustered lots — for residential purposes.
Larger lots are no longer in the rural home buyer’s market.
Stanley says this hurts developers and village businesses.
After the new plan was released last June, Greely developers Stanley, Joe Princiotta and Dan Anderson stated their concerns to Osgoode Coun. Doug Thompson.
On Aug. 28, the city placed a moratorium on the freeze, but held steady on village boundaries.
Council is expected to review the second draft official plan in March 2003.
City insiders say residential development applications have not increased noticeably since the moratorium.
“They’ve given us a bit of breathing room,” says Princiotta. His own 80-hectare rural development, Orchard View Estates, caters to the middle and upper-middle class and boasts a 14-hectare wildlife sanctuary.
But Anderson, a lawyer and developer of Sunset Lakes South Village, says applications are unlikely to flood in because development in the rural areas is slowed by lengthy soil, hydro-geological, septic and water studies.
His own application and development efforts for South Village, just outside Greely, continue after two years.
Steven Boyle, a city of Ottawa planner, says that research for the draft plan revealed that many rural vacant lots were available for residential growth without creating new ones.
Building where infrastructure exists will keep costs down, reduce the environmental impact on the soil and water supply and loosen the pressure on the city to deliver services.
Ned Lathrop, director and general manager of the city’s development services, says country-lot developers’ customers are “basically suburban transplants” commuting to the city and suburbs for work and shopping, “consum(ing) a high quantity of resources for the area they take up.”
In the last 75 years, Ottawa’s population has grown to 800, 000. Growth is predicted to reach 1.2 million by 2020.
“Where are we going to place our new population if we are consuming our marginal land for low density development?” Lathrop asks, noting the importance of safeguarding agricultural land.
But Terry Otto, president of the Ottawa Federation of Agriculture, doubts that imposing a ban on general rural development will save agriculture.
He’s watched development expand on good agricultural land past the Queensway into Orleans and into the east of Ottawa over the last 30 years.
“If the powers that be were doing their job correctly, how did all those homes get there?” he asks.
When residential developments occur near farmland, farmers’ property values shoot up, forcing them off the land, he says.
Otto says that’s why his organization is “leaning towards supporting the city’s decision,” but then added, “You can’t stop the development, you have to manage it in the best way possible and be realistic at the same time.”
Whether the final official plan will uphold rural densification and residential restrictions on development is unclear.
Coun. Thompson says that restricting development will narrow the field of developers to those few who own land in the village, hurting business.
Responding to notions of communal development, he adds, “Don’t apply your rules to us. We don’t want urban sprawl. We have a quiet rural setting, with big lots even in the villages.”