An Aug. 10 open house for a sprawling new civic centre and library branch in Barrhaven gave local residents a chance to see plans for the community complex and give feedback directly to municipal staff and city councillors.
The open house for the civic complex was held at the Minto Recreation Centre with Barrhaven East and West councillors Wilson Lo and David Hill in attendance. The new facility would be located about one kilometre north of the Minto centre on Riocan Avenue.
A joint venture between the Ottawa Public Library and the city’s Recreation and Culture department, half of the proposed 5,000-square-metre building would be dedicated to a new branch of the Ottawa Public Library. The library would rise two storeys, while the other, single-storey half of the building would be dedicated to open spaces for multicultural activities and a dedicated senior’s space, complete with a full kitchen.
Hill said the lack of civic amenities in Barrhaven at a time of rapid population growth has been a percolating issue since well before he was elected to city council in 2022.
“We’ve seen so many new Canadians come to this area over the last 15-20 years, (so) we needed something,” said Hill, noting how ethnic communities have been travelling well beyond Barrhaven to host cultural events at public spaces in Britannia or Greely. “They all have to leave to go do those things.”
Members of the Barrhaven Seniors’ Council found flaws in the proposed complex. Hilary Robinson, a member of the council, said the area planned for a dedicated senior’s space is smaller than expected.
“We are supposed to have 3,000 square feet dedicated space. We don’t want dedicated space scattered around the centre,” said Robinson, referring to a proposal for the group to use portions of the multicultural space when it’s not already in use.
Robinson also said the proposed kitchen was unnecessary as they already have one in their clubhouse in Ken Ross Park.
‘We’re in very early stages, and there’s lots of opportunity for us to modify the design.’
— Bruce Kenny, director of infrastructure special projects, City of Ottawa
“We just want a coffee counter with a sink and coffee maker — what we’ve got now. Otherwise, the other people will use the kitchen, and we’ll be booking spaces elsewhere. That’s not what we want to do,” she said.
“They’ve been operating out of Ken Ross Park for a long time, and it is way too small for their needs,” said Hill, explaining that collaboration with the Senior’s Council has been ongoing throughout the project.
Bruce Kenny, the city’s director of infrastructure special projects, said he welcomed the feedback.
“We’re in very early stages, and there’s lots of opportunity for us to modify the design,” said, adding that another, more formal public information session will be held in early 2027.
Adding a library has been an idea since the 2010s, Hill said, because the Ruth E. Dickinson branch — Barrhaven’s only library branch currently — has become “oversubscribed.”
Craig Ginther, the OPL’s division manager of facility and technology services, referred to the library’s presence in the older suburban community as filling a gap in a “legacy” neighbourhood.
“Ruth E. Dickinson Branch is one of our busiest branches,” said Ginther. “I think it’s the second or third busiest in our whole system. When the library board approved this project, they did it with the approval to close Dickinson. This was intended to be a replacement.”
However, because of growth projections for Barrhaven — and with a healthy 24.4 per cent of Ottawans carrying an active library card as of 2025 — circumstances have since prompted OPL to reconsider the Dickinson closure.
“We need to rethink this because . . . if we open this building and close Dickinson,” said Ginther, “we are filling a gap, but we’re creating a new one.”
After amalgamation of 11 former municipalities into the present City of Ottawa in 2001, the merged municipality’s branches were suddenly found to be unevenly spread across communities, with some areas containing clusters of branches and others none. OPL uses a neighbourhood density metric that requires a library branch to be located within three kilometres of the centre of the densest part of a neighbourhood. According to Ginther, OPL hasn’t opened a new, non-replacement branch in 25 years.
Barrhaven technically has five neighbourhoods, Ginther said, all of which are served solely by the Dickinson branch, which is located behind the Walter Baker Centre in Old Barrhaven.
“There should be at least three branches in Barrhaven, according to that three-kilometre radius between neighborhoods,” Ginther said. “It’s going to be very difficult to make the case to close Dickinson and open this one.”
Barrhaven East Coun. Wilson Lo said that eventual pressure on the future library due to growth projections will be offset by nearby amenities.
“There’s (a branch) that’s going up in Riverside South, and even though that doesn’t serve Barrhaven, that takes pressure off of our local facilities.”
The civic centre will also host an outdoor civic square and urban park that includes gathering, event and performance space, pathways and shaded sitting areas. The square, according to Hill, is integral for the longevity of the centre, citing 75 years as a life-cycle goal.
“We need to make sure that we preserve that space so that we can have an outdoor festival for ‘fill-in-the-blank’ here and there, because if we don’t preserve enough space for the plaza, then this whole thing, in my opinion, doesn’t meet the mark,” he said.
The centre will be situated south of the Chapman Mills Marketplace mall at 180 Riocan Avenue, adjacent to the transitway. As part of the Barrhaven Downtown Secondary Plan, the centre will be served by the planned transit hub of bus rapid transit, LRT, and bike paths.
“You will in the future have an east-west Chapman Mills line,” Hill said. “Hopefully, this (centre) will provide an impetus to our transportation planners to work with stakeholders and such in order to accelerate the work being done on that line, because this has the possibility of being a textbook example of a transportation-friendly public realm space.”
The project will go through a second public consultation early in 2027, followed by a detailed design phase. Construction is projected to begin in 2028 for an opening date of 2030. A budget of $54.6 million has been earmarked for the project, with $28 million coming from the federal Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program and the remainder from city and OPL coffers.
