The National Capital Commission has entered into a lease agreement with Ottawa Community Housing and non-profit real estate developer Nesting Ground for the vacant lot at 1460 Riverside Dr., clearing one entry off the list of properties the federal government has earmarked for affordable housing.
The lease agreement for the Riverside lot was approved for a 99-year period earlier this month.
The lease marks the first completed transaction of a federal property in the National Capital Region listed on the Canada Public Land Bank. The list contains dozens of federal properties across the country, which the government is looking to develop into housing.
When the federal government launched the land bank in August 2024, 22 of the properties were located in Ottawa-Gatineau. That total has since climbed to 36, and until the lease agreement at 1460 Riverside Dr., none of the properties had been checked off the list.
The property is currently a vacant, grassy lot at the intersection of Riverside Drive and Industrial Avenue, located less than a kilometre down the road from the Train Yards shopping centre.
An NCC webpage touts the 0.89 hectare plot of land as having a “strategic location near the downtown core” in close proximity to public transit, retail, hospitals and green space along the Rideau River. The parcel of land is about 600 metres from Hurdman Station.
“The NCC is committed to supporting the Government of Canada’s efforts to identify underutilized land that can be developed to increase housing availability, including affordable housing, in the National Capital Region,” the webpage reads.
A government registry lists the Ottawa Community Housing Corporation and Nesting Ground as co-tenants on the property. The proposed project will include at least 220 residential housing units, of which at least 30 per cent will be offered at below-market rates (less than 80 per cent of Ottawa’s median market rent), according to the registry.
An NCC spokesperson referred questions about the lease agreement to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). CMCH did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Ottawa Citizen also reached out to Ottawa Community Housing and Nesting Ground but did not immediately hear back.
Nesting Ground’s president Graeme Hussey previously told the Ottawa Citizen the government “can’t move fast enough” in its efforts to turn federal properties on the land bank into much-needed housing.
“In all levels of government, we recognize that we’re in a housing crisis—period,” he said in January.
“And to be honest, we’re not doing enough. There’s not enough properties on that list. They’re not moving fast enough.”
At the time, Jason Burggraaf, executive director of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association, said some of the properties on the list have been slow to generate interest because they just aren’t that appealing to developers.
In some cases, he said, the government has tried to offload the properties in the past, without success.
Public Services and Procurement Canada, the federal government’s central purchaser and property manager, is a major seller on the land bank.
The department is listing 10 buildings for disposal in Ottawa-Gatineau, though it has recently signalled a reversal of its goal to unload office space due to the government’s push to bring public servants back into the office.
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