W.O. Stinson & Son Ltd., 435 Gladstone

The gas station W.O. Stinson & Son Ltd at 435 Gladstone is shutting down soon. According to the yellow sign in the window, the business is moving to 1049 Merivale Road.

Also visible in the photo is the sales centre for the condo development that will replace it--Tega Homes' Centropolis Condos. The sales centre opened this past May.

Remarkably, the proposed development is staying within the zoning, which I discussed in this post on the sites at that intersection:

The City's eMap application indicates that the area is zoned TM H(15), meaning it is a Traditional Mainstreet, which is designed to incorporate a mix of residential and commercial uses (except auto-related uses), and it has a height restriction of 15 metres. The red shading means that all four corners of this intersection have Heritage designation.

The site plan application sign on the 62 Florence Street side of the site seeks to construct a building with:

• 121 units
• 4.5 storeys (14.4 metres) on Gladstone Avenue
• 3.5 Storeys (11.0 metres) on Florence Street, and
• 126 underground parking spaces.

While the condos start at a very low price, I hear that they are ridiculously small. Many of them, I hear, were grabbed up quickly by speculators and people more likely to rent or resell them than by lower-income people who actually plan to live there.

The Ottawa Citizen's Kelly Egan had a solemn writeup of Main Garage closing in Saturday's paper (published after I'd prepared this post). He raises some other points that I'll bring up in a future post.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Edit: See this November 2010 post on URBSite on current and historical plans for this site.