You’re On Your Own Orleans: DAN STANKOVIC

Orleans West-Innes Councillor Laura Dudas was wrong when she wrote in the Ottawa Citizen about the “countless new possibilities” that will be created for Orléans by its upcoming LRT.

Dudas cited new businesses, employment and tourism arriving as a result of the soon-to-be-completed Confederation Line LRT extension to Trim Road.

Actually, the councillor’s misplaced optimism is not new. Back in 2017, several public officials viewed the new LRT as being the needed catalyst to spur economic growth, attract skilled workers and bring advanced technology firms to the eastern suburbs of Ottawa.

The reality today is that Orléans will likely remain a commuter community even after the completion of the Confederation Line extension. 

The biggest obstacle in the way of the LRT changing Orléans is that it was designed to be primarily a commuter line, not an investment in community building or economic development. If the city had these goals in mind when it designed the LRT system in the beginning, the LRT would not have been built in the middle of a four-lane highway and have stations like the one at Trim surrounded by a huge Park ‘n’ Ride lot. 

Sure, Brigil will continue to build high-rise residential towers near the station and the new rental tenants and condo owners will add to the consumer base for serving businesses such as big-box stores, fast-food and take-out restaurants, dentist offices, hair-cutters and day-care centres. But these jobs will not diminish the flow of commuters downtown.

Meanwhile, Ottawa’s planners have done little to encourage a broader distribution of jobs in Orléans even though the municipal Official Plan states, as one of its policy goals, that the city support “a broad distribution of employment so that people have the choice to work closer to where they live”. For one, the Official Plan includes special districts that are “unique parts of the city” requiring particular policies because of their importance as “cultural and economic generators”. There are seven such special districts designated in the plan including the Kanata North Economic District – Business Park and the Ottawa International Airport. However none in Orléans. The special district designations, in effect, reinforce the status quo as to how jobs and technology companies are distributed in the city.

The recently approved Orleans Corridor Secondary Plan was also supposed to provide the policy framework for guiding future development along with the revamped Integrated Orléans Community Improvement Plan (CIP) which provides property-tax grants to incentivize business expansion. However, the secondary plan does not include the Special Economic Opportunity District promised by planners during their Official Plan public engagements. The report also stated that the “secondary plan will establish policies that will unlock the development and redevelopment potential on lands around and leading up to the LRT stations.” The first and only development approved to date under the CIP and within the Orléans corridor was a nondescript, typical suburban-strip commercial mall. The previous CIP, which was targeted specifically at attracting knowledge jobs, was a total failure.

Invest Ottawa, the city’s lead economic development agency, is virtually absent when it comes to Orléans. The agency’s main economic priorities are on technology clusters and entrepreneurs focusing on other areas. It is also heading the creation of an innovation district in the central business core. Interestingly, there have been several recent announcements related to new capital investments and job growth in Kanata’s technology cluster despite not having an LRT link and possibly not having one in the foreseeable future. 

The Ottawa Board of Trade and Invest Ottawa have also joined forces together with Ottawa Tourism under the banner of Unlimited Ottawa described as being the beginning of a “new era of radical collaboration for economic growth and global competitiveness”. Although Unlimited Ottawa projects itself as being a city-wide economic development partnership, given the priority areas of the three organizations in terms of downtown revitalization, tourism and technology clusters, it is difficult to see what positive economic spillovers the new collaboration will have on Orléans.

In short, Orléans is effectively on its own when it comes to future economic development in the community.

So, are there other things that can be done to encourage a more balanced community in Orléans if the LRT cannot? Here are a few very preliminary ideas below:

• Re-do the Community Improvement Plan by applying incentives to encourage co-working and incubator-entrepreneur facilities and focusing on supporting the development of the Place d’ Orléans-Centrum LRT station as a dynamic, diversified Town Centre (15-minute community if you like) and on revitalizing the traditional St. Joseph Main Street;
• Look into how the Community Planning Permit System could be used to encourage economic development in the Town Centre and possibly the Orléans Corridor similar to the pilot currently underway in the Kanata North Economic District;
• Encourage the federal government to establish satellite offices on a permanent basis in Orléans and the Town Centre;
• Research the potential spin-off economic effects of the federal government’s $1-billion TerraCanada National Capital Area and the $600-million Transportation Safety and Technology Science facilities investments at the east end campus of the National Research Council.
• Prepare Orléans specific economic development and tourism strategies including how the role of the Heart of Orléans Business Improvement Area can be enhanced.

Dan Stankovic is an Ottawa consultant and former municipal public servant in economic development and housing.

For You:

City It’s Cold Outside: PATTON

The Sound And Fury Of Tuesday’s Live Transit Chat

Overcoming Online Echo Chambers

Forget Renoviction, Build More Units: PATTON

The Ottawa Sports Event Nobody Knows: PATTON

Bookmark The Bulldog, click here