A proposed bylaw to expand the amount of green space in Ottawa has downtown developers seeing red.
The bylaw, recommended to city council last week by the agriculture and rural affairs committee, would require five to 10 per cent of the area of any new residential development to be set aside as recreational parkland.
Currently, downtown residential developments are exempt from parkland provision requirements.
Rick Morris, vice-president of operations for Domicile Developments, says that if passed, the proposed bylaw would cause a significant increase in the cost of residential building in Centretown.
“If a property costs $1 million, then it will cost an extra $50,000, at least,” he says. “In a 50-unit building, that’s an extra $1,000 per door.”
The city still uses a combination of parkland provision bylaws that were created before Ottawa’s amalgamation. These bylaws were designed to serve the needs of the former municipalities, suburban and urban communities alike.
According to city planner Karen Currie, these disparate requirements can create inequities in the city-wide provision of parks.
She says the bylaw won’t raise costs, but will level them.
“It will cost more to develop in Centretown, but in Orleans it will certainly cost less,” she says. “If you’re doing high-density development in Orleans today, the amount of land required for dedication can sometimes exceed the size of the land you’re developing on.”
Currie says the proposed bylaw was created to accommodate developers, since it limits the amount of land they must set aside for green space in their projects, to 10 per cent.
The bylaw also would allow developers to pay the city cash-in-lieu of land in situations where dedication isn’t possible or useful.
Lawyer Doug Kelly, who represents Urbandale Construction in its lobby against the bylaw, says that either way, the cost of parkland dedication will ultimately be passed on to consumers.
Morris says he wonders if the average consumer will be able to shoulder that burden.
“There’s already an affordability issue downtown and the parkland fees are just one item on the list of everything else that’s going up,” he says. “Increased development charges, planning application fees, and worker wages all add up.”
For Centretown resident Jan Teevan, it’s a price worth paying.
“I need to breathe, to have space, to rest my soul,” she says. “City living can be stressful, but parkland is sanity-enhancing.”
According to Christina Marchant, manager of community health promotion at the Centretown Community Health Centre, access to parkland in urban communities produces a host of benefits.
“Green space encourages people to engage in physical activity, which reduces risk for chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes and heart disease,” she said. “It’s also one of the few remaining spaces in a city where people can gather for free, and reduce stress and isolation.”
Currently, there are over 870 pieces of land making up the city’s inventory of parks for recreation.
The proposed parkland dedication bylaw will be considered by city council in February.