The heritage designation hearings for the Horticulture Building within the context of a proposed OSEG-City reorganized Lansdowne Park, gave me time to pause and reflect. That's because there is a more imminent potential heritage loss of something far greater at stake - the loss of a distinctive surrounding neighbourhood, the Glebe.

The very essential public space part of the Glebe area where I have lived with my family for many years, is being squandered.

I'll never then have a chance to enjoy a greatly enhanced public space at Lansdowne. Instead, I may choose to go to a neighbourhood strip mall with condos and a food store and cinema in that former public space.

If that is not enough, the City bumped up starting road work on a super 4-lane highway down Bank Street that cuts through the mid-way heart of the Glebe. It will make the street more like Bronson Avenue without any imposed limits on future downtown car traffic.

As well, the cluttered pedestrian sidewalk strip proposed from the Bank Street bridge to the Queensway is hardly going to encourage a village atmosphere. Where are the widened sidewalks and colourful Bhat Boy type outdoor paintings, banners, furniture and lampposts that entice people movement and slow down traffic?

The reconstituted Lansdowne Park and a redone Bank Street through the Glebe are reminiscent of the urban renewal development in the 1970's that created the Place Portage complex and the Portage Bridge. The result destroyed forever downtown Hull and the surrounding neighbourhood.

Against such a double whammy of bringing a denser built up Glebe area with less open space and a freeway through the Glebe, the heritage survival chances of the Glebe neighbourhood are next to nil. Four OSEG partners and four lanes make for a less viable Glebe.

The Glebe as a distinct area, you might say, is decisively being buried (but not its Bank Street hydro wires). The only relief in sight is if the Friends of Lansdowne Park, to whom I have supplied some assistance, wins its legal challenge.

I cannot entirely blame community groups who gave up their heritage for $30,000 in funds, or the local city-created BIA who gave up many Bank Street businesses' future for a mere $300,000. That's only $15,000 and $150,000 from OSEG and the rest comes from us, the public taxpayers. I can only puzzle why community groups gave up so much for so little. They did not even get the developers to pay for burying the hydro wires along Bank Street or negotiate with the city to grant much more area park space.

The concessions made by OSEG and the City that were fought for by the community on building heights, air rights and minor vehicular access are not game changers and are themselves changeable should the project area ever prove very profitable.

Nor can I totally lay blame with the local media for their short-sighted boosterism in place of investigative reporting and a community dialogue in these days of “enhanced” business deals. The  

mentality for a giant mega in-fill project is so Ottawa. This is home to a federal government where “modernization” means not always well thought out infrastructure renewal plans carried out via sole-source public-private partnerships. Rename Lansdowne Park, if you will, Place F-35.

The OSEG-City project reminds me of the then provincial Skydome crown corporation sweet-heart partnership deals in the 1980's with various large companies like Coca Cola and MacDonald's.  Early on, those deals that I obtained were hardly analyzed because the main local newspapers all supported the plans for Skydome, and the Sun media chain was even one of those Skydome partners.

With more legislative questioning and investigative reporting, a truer picture eventually out came. The realities were of a space where the public debts were in the many millions. The privatized Skydome, now renamed the Rogers Center, has become just one more downtown entertainment destination.

As well, I can remember in 1973-1974, over three and a half decades ago, organizing with others in Ottawa South, Ottawa East and the Glebe opposition to the David Loeb's real estate version for a revitalized Lansdowne Park. Those plans called for a hotel, parking garage and commercial and residential towers. The opposition to the Loeb plan lead to a OMB hearing on the building of the south seat stadium expansion for his Ottawa Rough Riders football team.

We lost and the new seats were built at public expense. But at least, the OMB hearing was held without resorting to secretive mediation sessions. The Loeb real estate plans, that were not tied to a formal sole-sourced public-private partnership with the city, or with the city holding the ultimate debt, did not proceed as a realistically viable project.

All of that is nothing compared to the impact the OSEG-City project and roadway plans will now have on the Glebe.

I'm left now with the distinct possibility of the death of a distinctive neighbourhood and a degraded sense of community. It is not just that a great downtown public space is close to being ripped out, it's that one more village and its heritage within Ottawa is very close to being sacrificed and obliterated.

Ken Rubin, a Glebe resident, is an Ottawa-based public interest researcher and an independent commentator. He can be reached at kenrubin.ca.