Breakfast is served early at Meadows Lunch in Little Italy.
The diner sits on Preston Street near Carling in Somerset Ward’s west end. In its unaffected atmosphere, conversations flow amid the din of cutlery and dishes.
It’s as a good a place as any to take the pulse of Ottawa’s downtown ward.
Ask a patron what their biggest concern is in the coming municipal election and many will say it’s maintaining their neighbourhood in the face of development.
“There’s a feeling that development in Centretown is running a bit amok,” says Jeff Morrison, former president of the Centretown Community Health Centre and one of 11 candidates running to replace longtime councillor Diane Holmes.
The problem with the burgeoning development, said Morrison in a phone interview, lies with the lack of consultation with the community.
Much of the recent concern stems from a proposed condominium project around the corner from Meadows Lunch.
Norman Street, west of Preston, is a short block of two-storey houses and duplexes which runs along the O-Train corridor.
It’s a quiet corner of Little Italy with parking for about six cars and hardly a place that seems ripe for a new condo development.
But that’s just what city council approved in August, despite Holmes and Mayor Jim Watson speaking against the plans for the 112-unit nine-storey building.
The decision was felt across the ward.
“People were talking about it in the Golden Triangle,” says candidate Catherine McKenney. “People want predictability. They want to know we’re going to protect low-rise heritage neighbourhoods.”
But, McKenny says, nothing is simple in Ottawa’s bustling downtown ward.
Somerset is younger, more ethnically diverse and less moneyed than much of Ottawa according to Statistics Canada’s 2006 census.
Housing and services need to reflect the entire ward’s make up, McKenny says.
Edward Conway, a lawyer and economist who has also thrown his hat in the ring for Holmes’s seat, says there’s space for the type of development needed to grow the downtown core, without bulldozing the downtown’s appeal in the process.
For one, he says, build along thoroughfares such as Laurier, Elgin and Bronson, and leave heritage neighbourhoods alone.
Sandwiched between Elgin and O’Connor in the ward’s east end, Beaver Barracks is an example that Conway says was done right.
Conway lives one block from the five-building, 254-unit complex, 150 of which have rental rates that are below market or pegged to income.
“It’s a model of appropriate, essentially economical and highly efficient social housing units,” Conway says.
But development is only the biggest of many issues in the ward.
Somerset is home to Ottawa‘s city hall, courthouse and Canada’s Parliament, and some of the busiest nightlife in the city.
Its population ebbs and flows by the thousands as suburbanites commute to and from work, which puts a heavy burden on infrastructure not felt in other wards.
And though bad roads, lack of parking, and small sidewalks may take a back seat to more obvious problems, such as crumbling Somerset House and the barren LeBreton Flats, they are no less important.
Particularly for homeowners and small businesses such as Meadows Lunch.