What could be the tallest building in Ottawa may one day tower over the Little Italy arch.
Developers are proposing a housing-height record with a 35-storey condominium plan at 500 Preston St. The design is about as tall as Place de Ville Tower C, a 29-storey office tower on Albert Street and Ottawa's reigning height champion.
The proposed building, called “Soho Italia,” would sit just north of Carling Avenue and overlook Dow's Lake.
It would house about 220 residential units above an Italian-Canadian heritage museum on the ground floor.
Right now, the area is used as a parking lot.
Toronto-based Mastercraft Starwood Group has already pitched the idea to Mayor Jim Watson, Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes and planning committee chairman Coun. Peter Hume. Currently, it's meeting with community groups.
The developers haven't yet asked the city to re-zone the site from its current 19-storey limit, which was set in 2006.
Holmes says the lot is rather small so there's no room for the developers to build structures at the tower's base.
Without those, she says, the building will be like a wall rising from the sidewalk.
“It's excessive,” she says.
Eric Darwin, community activist and blogger, shares her concern after seeing the design, which looks like a rectangular stack of undulating plates.
“There's not a tree, there's not a shrub, there's nothing,” he says. “Basically, there's a sidewalk right up to the edge of the building.”