The RA Centre wants to replace its aging facility on Riverside Drive with a new building that would include affordable housing as part of a $100-million redevelopment project, its chief executive says. The original RA Centre opened in 1941 as a volunteer-run recreation centre for federal public servants on land where Carleton University is now […]
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The RA Centre wants to replace its aging facility on Riverside Drive with a new building that would include affordable housing as part of a $100-million redevelopment project, its chief executive says.
The original RA Centre opened in 1941 as a volunteer-run recreation centre for federal public servants on land where Carleton University is now located.
By the early 1950s, the facility needed a new home to accommodate its growing membership. In 1953, the organization’s board of directors signed a 100-year lease on federal land on Riverside Drive, where the RA Centre’s current home was built and opened in 1958.
However, the building is quickly becoming obsolete, RA Centre chief executive Ian Fraser told OBJ this week.
“We are this large facility that serves about 25,000 people on a regular basis, plunked in the middle of the city of Ottawa,” he said. “Parts of it are 70 years old, and it really is at end of life.”
Fraser said the RA Centre is “in the early stages of planning to build a new facility on the same site.”
The new 200,000-square-foot facility would be built on the northeast corner of the RA Centre’s current property, he said. It would include amenities such as a lifestyle medicine hub, flexible gym spaces, multi-purpose community rooms, and courts for basketball, volleyball and racket sports.
“It would be a stacked design, so it would be multi-floored,” Fraser explained, adding the facility will continue to offer “all of the amazing things that we are currently successful at.”
In addition, the RA Centre’s proposal includes a 16-storey tower with affordable housing units.
“Our initial planning would have it right above and attached to the build that we’re planning to do,” Fraser said. “We’ve felt that we sit on a really valuable piece of property here and we think that, given the real need for good affordable housing in our community and the city’s approach to building more of that, we can really help add to that whole process. We’re certainly open to looking at ideas for facilitating more affordable housing on-site, and it’s a big part of our go-forward strategy.”
He said initial estimates peg the project’s total price tag at more than $100 million.
The new RA Centre is an “integral part” of the Confederation Heights redevelopment project, Fraser added, describing it as the “nexus point of what that community will ultimately need.”
Fraser said the RA Centre has worked “very closely” on its proposal with Canada Lands Company, the federal Crown corporation that was originally responsible for overseeing the redevelopment of Confederation Heights. The redevelopment process was recently turned over to Build Canada Homes, a new Crown corporation.
“We think we’re the perfect inclusion into that project because a development of that size is going to have to have community space,” he said. “We’re already here, and as a bonus, we want to add that value of bringing more affordable housing to the city and having that as an integral part of how we build out.
“We have been in lockstep with CLC and BCH all the way through the secondary planning process around Confederation Heights … We hope that we are the catalyst that brings that whole project to fruition,” he added.
Fraser said the project will strengthen the RA Centre’s relationship with the city by providing much-needed new recreation facilities and housing for residents.
“We know that the city is in desperate need of basketball and volleyball court space. We don’t have the inventory here that we need … So we feel through our partnership with the city that we can add value to the community in places where there isn’t city infrastructure currently.”
He said the new facility will also offer more opportunities to attract sporting events to Ottawa.
“We have a longstanding partner in Ottawa Tourism, and we have looked at how to facilitate and host any kind of sport-related tourism event that we could here,” Fraser said. “We know that the constraints of the space that we currently have make that difficult sometimes. I know the team at Ottawa Tourism is always trying to drive that kind of business to our region, and we see this (new facility) as an opportunity to be able to host more events and add value from an economic perspective.”
Fraser said he isn’t sure what the timeline for the project will be, but he’s hoping construction will begin as soon as possible.
“There are a number of pieces that are sort of out of our control around how the site plan is designed and how the secondary plan goes through the City of Ottawa process. We know there’s a big push to move this project along.”
Meanwhile, Fraser said the plan is to keep the current facility open while the new RA Centre is being built.
“We know that there will be nuances around how that works, but what’s really important to us is that we keep our facility and all our programming running while the new build happens. In a perfect world, we would move bankers’ boxes over on a Friday and open the new facility on the Monday,” he said, adding that Ottawa Rapid FC will be able to continue practising out of the facility for the foreseeable future.
Once the redevelopment is complete, Fraser said, it will be business as usual at the new RA Centre, but in a more modern facility that will accommodate activities for future generations.
“I see community groups and organizations using the meeting room spaces that we have. I see beautiful open spaces where people can create those social connections that we know are a real issue, certainly for some of our older residents. As Tuesday afternoon turns to 5 o’clock, I see all of our racket sport programs being filled with kids under the age of 18 … We want to be there for the residents of Ottawa.”