INSIGHT: Residents should be consulted during LeBreton Flats negotiations
By Karen-Luz Sison
A vast section of LeBreton Flats should soon be barren no more, thanks to a newly announced preliminary deal between the National Capital Commission and Ottawa Senators-backed development group RendezVous LeBreton. 
If you search up the group’s plans for the land, you’ll find a flashy video envisioning a new arena for the Sens, a public-use sports centre, fancy new condos, a walkway lined with shops, and public squares with museum displays — all accessible by Ottawa’s LRT line.
It’s an impressive and ambitious vision for the Flats. And if further talks between the NCC and RendezVous LeBreton go well in the coming months, it’ll be a vision that puts shovels in the ground by 2019 or 2020.
The agreement so far outlines construction in two phases: the first for key public-use elements and the second for housing plans.
The deal with RendezVous LeBreton is especially historic for Ottawa because it was so long overdue: it’s been more than 50 years since the NCC kicked out the approximately 2,800 residents who lived at LeBreton Flats ahead of a controversial 1962 expropriation of the land by the federal agency.
Since the last house was razed in 1966, the NCC has had various plans for the Flats drawn up and discarded, including one that envisioned a new headquarters for the Department of National Defence.
This new agreement with RendezVous LeBreton signifies that significant change is on the horizon for the Flats.
While the NCC and RendezVous LeBreton have hyped the proposed NHL arena at the heart of the planned development, there’s one imperative that shouldn’t be forgotten in the ongoing negotiations: supporting local residents.
It’s fair to get excited over visions of fun new public spaces in Ottawa, but let’s not forget about the decades of inaction on what was once known as Canada’s most famous vacant lot. This new deal with RendezVous LeBreton is a chance for the NCC and the City of Ottawa to push for more concrete ways to integrate the coming commercial and civic components of the development with the existing residential community in the area — as well as to prioritize the interests of the thousands of tenants and condo-dwellers who will eventually share their local living space with the rest of the occupants of LeBreton Flats.
With talks set to take anywhere from 12 to 18 months, there’s ample time for discussing ways to make the new developments people-friendly. A good starting place would be for the developers to propose specific, achievable affordable housing plans. And the builders should tap area residents and local entrepreneurs for ideas about how to plan and fill the retail spaces envisioned at the Flats.
Flashy commercial areas are nice for those who can afford to live and shop there. More often than not, however, land revitalization can mean unintentionally excluding people of lower incomes from excessively “gentrified” neighbourhoods.
Yes, the planned LeBreton developments are bound to attract visitors from all over Canada and maybe even the world, but the people who are going to have to deal most with the positive and negative attributes of the developments are current Ottawa residents, specifically those located in Somerset ward.
They’ll be the ones directly affected by the soil remediation, the construction and, much later, the traffic brought in once developments are finished.
And so, these residents should be repeatedly consulted and their views taken seriously as negotiations between the NCC and RendezVous LeBreton unfold.
With the City of Ottawa being involved in the planning, too, Mayor Jim Watson needs to prioritize local residents’ concerns, making sure negative impacts are mitigated and opportunities for community enhancement are seized upon.
Watson has already expressed his support for the overall vision of the development; the pressure is on him to make sure Centretown residents — those already living in the area and those who will soon move in — aren’t left out of the process.
Anyone not blinded by the flashiness of RendezVous LeBreton’s plans, can see that there’s a lot of ambiguity surrounding the details of the final design and various outstanding issues — most notably, project financing, consultations with Ottawa’s Algonquin community, and LeBreton’s soil contamination problem.
With all of these details still being discussed behind closed doors, largely out of public view, the negotiations may take longer than the anticipated year and a half proposed by the NCC. And completion of the project will definitely take longer than expected if local concerns aren’t taken into account from the outset.