Heritage Ottawa Press Release
Ottawa, May 27 2010 - It is the heritage of Lansdowne Park that is its value - historic, cultural and commercial. The City and OSEG, the developers, have prescribed a future Lansdowne that squanders that value to car parks, bad faith and damaged history.
The centrepiece of Lansdowne Park is the Aberdeen Pavilion and the Horticulture Building opposite its main facade. Both are designated heritage buildings. The Aberdeen Pavilion is subject to easements that severely restrict alterations to the building or interference with the site lines that lend distinction to Lansdowne Park and make a landmark from vantage points around the city.
Nonetheless, the developers propose to flout heritage principles and move the Horticulture Building. The City has fully backed the OSEG plan, reneging on its commitment to consider those options that would leave the Horticulture Building in place as well as options that would move it elsewhere in Lansdowne Park.
In the midst of the design competition for the non-commercial zone of Lansdowne, the City reversed its earlier instructions, and ordered the five candidate design firms not to submit plans that leave the Horticulture building in situ. With the City’s endorsement in hand, the OSEG design for the commercial zone, which was released today, duly displaces the Francis Sullivan building inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, to build a parking garage.
"Heritage Ottawa has never tried to stymie the Lansdowne development," said past President David Flemming. "We have constantly worked to integrate heritage priorities into the OSEG plans because that would produce the richest and most attractive design. But the City has acted in bad faith. While telling the public that heritage concerns were being considered, the City was telling the design candidates to accommodate only OSEG's demands."
In the unveiling of designs for the “urban park”, or non-commercial, area of Lansdowne where the historic buildings are located, five concepts showed varying degrees of respect for heritage. Heritage Ottawa commends the teams that resisted the City’s edict and persevered with plans for an in-place Horticulture Building and an Aberdeen Pavilion that is preserved in its current glory.
Design A (in the anonymously labeled proposals) keeps the Horticulture building in place, with extensive restoration to renew its windows and facades, creating an attractive renovated home for a farmers market.
Design B also prefers to keep the building in place. Design C states that: ”Once moved, it will have lost much of its heritage integrity.” Design D says, "If moving the Horticulture Building and constructing the overlap area were not so heavily favoured by the City of Ottawa and the Design Review Panel, we would retain the building in situ."
According to Design A, "Much of a site or structure's 'meaning of place' is derived from its physical location and context. This is certainly true of the Horticulture Building - a central piece of Lansdowne Park."
Design A quotes Park Canada's standards: "Conserve the heritage value of a historic place. Do not remove, replace, or substantially alter its intact or repairable character-defining elements. Do not move a part of a historic place if its current location is a character-defining element." Design A notes that moving the Horticulture Building is not consistent with this standard, and adds that moving a large masonry structure such as the Horticulture Building would "inevitably compromise the historic fabric of the building and significantly diminish its material integrity."
Three designs for the park area of Lansdowne use water from the Rideau Canal to create inlets or ponds. While water in the Park is superficially attractive, it is unlikely that breach of the Canal walls and potential change of the lines of the Canal would be acceptable. The Rideau Canal is a World Heritage Site, a designation that carries rigorous stipulations about the preservation of the site.
Equally, it is not clear that building of bridges over the Canal, as proposed in several design concepts, would pass the test of UNESCO heritage designation. There were also some significant abuses of heritage, for example in Design E, which proposes major restructuring of the Aberdeen Pavilion by using pieces of its facade in a movable glass and steel greenhouse-like design. Design C reduces the Horticulture Building to a "remnant" consisting of a piece of the current building, moved to another site.
Heritage Ottawa has not taken a position on the planned development of Lansdowne Park, arguing only that the development should respect the heritage of the Park's historic buildings, its location adjacent to the world heritage-designated Canal and its history as a public space for use as, for example, farmers markets. But neither Heritage Ottawa nor, apparently, other heritage-oriented experts and institutions, were consulted in the process.
Mr Flemming expected that Ottawa Citizens and those who care about the value of Lansdowne would feel deceived. "Many will consider that the fix was in, right from the beginning of the City's partnership with OSEG. Enlightened development uses heritage to create value. This is not enlightened development.”
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