This house on Louisa Street is in jeopardy because of a plan to add church parking spots.
After years of controversy, a Polish church’s bid to re-zone a property at the corner of Louisa and LeBreton streets looks as if it will get the city’s blessing.
In a report released last month, the city’s planning committee recommended St. Hyacinth Parish’s proposal to zone the residential lot at 27 Louisa St. for parking be approved by city council.
“(It looks like) it’s a done deal,” says Roger Furmanczyk, president of the St. Hyacinth Parish Council. “Finally, it’s over. We can move on.”
The proposal has to do with a six-vehicle parking lot on a property across the street from the parish. While the church has made parking available there since it bought the property in 1989, three years ago it was told that having any kind of public parking on the lot was a zoning violation.
The issue arose after a secretary took down a fence without the knowledge of the church and neighbours began complaining about parishioners parking in the backyard of the property, says Furmanczyk. After that, bylaw officers showed up to the lot “like paparazzi,” he says.
Despite warnings from the city, parishioners continued to park in the lot next to the white duplex on the property and the church was served a notice to appear in court.
However, then-mayor Larry O’Brien said the parishioners could continue to park there until a decision on zoning was reached.
Now that the planning committee has recommended the site be re-zoned, some members of the community are expressing concern, saying the move could set a dangerous precedent.
Eric Darwin, president of the Dalhousie Community Association, says a decision by council to approve the re-zoning of the lot could give the green light to other businesses and organizations to flatten parts of the neighbourhood to accommodate parking needs.
More immediately, he says it could be the first step in allowing the church to demolish and pave the entire property – something he claims it had originally intended to do when it purchased the land.
“We note that several other lots have already been turned into parking lots, reducing the viability of the remaining houses, and that this block is continually suffering attempts to expand parking lots,” Darwin said in an open letter on the association’s website. “We do not want to encourage block busting practices.”
Furmanczyk says the church is happy about the committee’s decision and that, because of the significant resources such a proposal requires, the church has no intention of putting in a bid to expand the lot past its current size.
John Smit, urban development review manager for the City of Ottawa, says the average re-zoning proposal in Ottawa takes about five months to process and costs around $10,000.
The church’s most recent proposal took six months and cost more than $13,000, he says.
Rev. Jaanusz Jajesniak, the church`s pastor, says that keeping those six spots is necessary for the popular church – the only one serving the 20,000-person Polish community in the city.
He says about 800 people go to the church every Sunday and that, no matter what, they will need somewhere to park.