The city’s planning committee approved Tuesday a deal allowing the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board to swap its playing fields at the site of the former Ottawa Technical High School for increased building height.
The school will get an increase from 18 and 23 storeys to 22 and 27 storeys for the two buildings that sit on the 440 Albert St. property, according to a city staff report. Twenty-seven storeys is the maximum recently approved in the Centretown Community Design Plan.
The 0.85-hectare park will be one of downtown’s largest new open public spaces.
A pathway will also be constructed through the site, connecting the Laurier Avenue bike lanes to the existing multi-use pathways to the west.
The Centretown Citizens Community Association supports the trade, according to the report.
The board, says the report, has not decided "when all or part of their property will be declared surplus and the future park portion transferred to the city."