South Nepean Town Centre (Area 7)
[Amendment 44, June 28, 2006]
Section 1.0 – Introduction
1.1 Secondary Plan Area
The South Nepean Town Centre is an area of approximately 165 hectares in size located in the southern portion of the City of Ottawa’s urban area. The Town Centre’s northern boundary is Strandherd Drive, its western boundary is the Kennedy-Burnett Stormwater Management Facility, its eastern boundary is the future extension of Longfields Drive, and its southern boundary is the Jock River. The established residential communities of Barrhaven and Longfields surround the Town Centre to the north; the partially developed Chapman Mills community and established Heart’s Desire community is adjacent to the east; the existing Stonebridge community is to the southeast; the proposed Barrhaven South community is to the southwest; and the undeveloped “Area 8” lands are to the west.
The large majority of the study area is currently undeveloped. The Barrhaven Town Centre and RioCan Marketplace, large-format retail projects to the west and east of Greenbank Road, respectively, have been substantially completed along Strandherd Drive and St. Joseph Secondary School was recently constructed along Greenbank Road. There are existing residences along Greenbank Road, both in the centre of the Town Centre and further south adjacent to the Jock River. Existing farm operations and commercial businesses make up the remainder of land uses within the Town Centre. The study area is largely comprised of unwooded field areas, with the exception of wooded areas immediately surrounding the Jock River.
1.2 Background
The former City of Nepean initiated a detailed visioning exercise for the Town Centre in the early 1990s. Resulting from this exercise, Nepean City Council endorsed the Nepean South Urban Activity Centre Concept Design Report in 1994 as the vision for the Town Centre’s future development. Subsequently, Nepean undertook an integrated planning program, including transportation, servicing, environmental, and land use planning studies that resulted in the adoption of the Area 7 Secondary Plan by Nepean City Council in 1997. The Secondary Plan established land use policies, residential densities, built form requirements and urban design guidelines. The Area 7 Secondary Plan has remained as the statutory planning document guiding development within the Town Centre since its approval in 1997, after being readopted by the City of Ottawa in 2002 and reconfirmed in the Official Plan (May 2003), Volume 2A.
However much has changed since the approval of the Area 7 Secondary Plan in 1997. Several significant large-format retail projects have been constructed along Strandherd Drive, a new land use policy direction was established in the Official Plan with a particular emphasis on urban design, and new strategic directions for rapid transit routes have been established for the Town Centre. The emergence of these issues necessitated the preparation of an updated land use and design vision for the Town Centre.
The South Nepean Town Centre Urban Design Strategy was initiated in 2004 to provide this updated vision. The Urban Design Strategy outlines the goals and objectives, describes the land use structure plan and its structuring elements, identifies a series of urban design principles to follow, and provides direction for implementation. The Urban Design Strategy was completed in 2005 and was the visioning document that guided the preparation of the South Nepean Town Centre Community Design Plan (CDP). The Urban Design Strategy is not considered planning policy.
The Town Centre CDP was prepared based on the recommendations of the Urban Design Strategy. As part of the Town Centre CDP process, some modifications to the Strategy’s land use vision were required to account for new street and transit alignments that were provided by several Environmental Assessment (EA) studies after the completion of the Strategy. These EA studies provided more detailed direction for Chapman Mills Drive (North-South Light Rail EA), Greenbank Road (Greenbank Road EA), Longfields Drive (Jockvale-Longfields Extension EA), and the Southwest Transitway corridor (Southwest Transitway Extension EA). These modifications to the Town Centre structure were made in keeping with the overall vision presented by the Urban Design Strategy.
The South Nepean Town Centre Secondary Plan is based entirely on the key components of the South Nepean Town Centre Community Design Plan. All goals, objectives, policies and schedules are the same in both documents. The Community Design Plan contains non-statutory components such as urban design guidelines.
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