Aging OCH rowhouses to make way for new tower
Ottawa Community Housing (OCH) is tearing down 32 rowhouses in west Centretown this week to make room for a new social housing development that's more energy efficient than most modern houses.
The Rochester Heights community, between Booth and Rochester streets close to Chinatown and Little Italy, dates back to 1966.
The city's arm's length housing operator moved out tenants on the north side of Gladstone to make room for its first foray into what's known as net-zero building. A bank of solar panels and well-insulated walls should allow the $34-million building to create more power than it uses.
"We think it's the right thing to do. We know that we're going to be dealing with the next 60 years of operating costs so it's a good investment," said Cliff Youdale, Ottawa Community Housing's vice-president of asset management.
"Maintaining a portfolio of 15,000 units that were not built green makes you fully appreciate that there are challenges in doing that," he added.
It's not the first social housing development in Ottawa to go green. Ottawa Salus Corp. opened Karen's House — which it built to the highly efficient "passive house" standard — on Clementine Boulevard in 2016.
And OCH has a second passive solar project taking shape on Merivale Road. It's working with the Carlington Community Health and Resource Centre on a health hub and affordable seniors' apartment building.
'Everyone has found a new home'
When it's finished, the new Rochester Heights building will have four times more housing than the old brick rowhouses it replaces. The city's housing operator is still finalizing designs but expects to build about 140 units, including bachelors, singles and townhouses.
In the meantime, all the families who lived in the rowhouses — many of them single-parent families — had to move out.
Elsewhere, in the south end of the city, the private company Timbercreek Communities has been under fire ever since it handed out eviction notices to the residents of 105 low-rent townhomes. Some Heron Gate residents are fighting the demolition of their community and are struggling to find alternative affordable housing.
But Youdale said the residents of the 32 rowhouses in Rochester Heights are satisfied and have found new homes in other OCH buildings.
"It was a priority to make sure they were all properly housed," he said. "I think they're all quite happy, and they understood. We had really great meetings with the community and they knew it was time."
OCH expects to break ground on the new Rochester Heights development next spring and finish construction within a year and a half. The lookalike rowhouses on the south side of Gladstone Avenue are due for redevelopment after the first phase is complete.