City council has given its support to a landmark plan to transform downtown into a formal “eco-district,” renovating office buildings, facilitating community environmental projects and creating a model for other wards to emulate in the future.
An eco-district is a neighbourhood where individual property owners, businesses and organizations come together to cut costs and reduce environmental impact by evaluating common infrastructure, says Don Grant, executive director of Ottawa Centre EcoDistrict Inc., the not-for-profit organization behind the eco-district proposal.
At a recent meeting, the city’s finance and economic development committee recommended that city council issue a letter supporting the organizations in its application for funds from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Green Building Fund.
Now that the city has given the green light, Grant says they have a better chance of getting the funding they need to put the plan in motion.
“We want to diversify the building type and just think about the street-level space, make it a more vibrant space that’s more attractive to employees, and to residents and to visitors to the city.”
Skyscrapers such as the 49-year-old MacDonald Building on Slater Street, which will be vacated by April of this year, are perfect candidates for the initiative because they could be renovated under new, eco-district standards to be more environmentally friendly, says Karen Pero, one of the volunteers with the initiative and a spokesperson for Invest Ottawa, the city’s tax-funded economic development agency.
“It allows the opportunity to make them LEED certified,” says Pero.
Leadership for Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a rating and certification system that recognizes eco-friendly building design, construction and operation.
“From the Invest Ottawa point of view,” says Pero, “the number of the kind of companies we would want to attract to Ottawa – the larger corporations or the progressive companies really – are very keen to be in green buildings.”
Companies leasing the offices are not the only ones that will reap benefits from the certification process, says Pero. Building owners will get an advantage, as well.
“The research has indicated that companies that lease green buildings usually lease for a long period of time.”
While much of the initiative is focused on big companies becoming more eco-friendly, Pero says focusing on smaller community operations is also a big part of the eco-district proposal.
“We’re hoping to be able to partner with every one from very large corporations to people that live in downtown Ottawa and the mom and pops,” says Pero. “For a number of us, it’s personal because we live in Centretown. We want to be able to do our part to help our community.”
Grant says this grassroots approach has garnered support from local community groups as well as politicians at all levels of government.
“We’re very happy to have this initiative taking place in Centretown,” says Jordan Charbonneau, president of the Centretown Citizens Community Association. “The novel thing about an eco-district (is) it recognizes how cities actually work and the organic nature of that development.”
Though it may take several years before all parties approve the proposal, Grant says it’s the right time to be starting this kind of initiative.