What your city hall just let someone build

Bonjour, everyone. Simone Okafor-Bouchard here, with your Morning Wire dispatch from City Hall. Le vrai scoop, as always, is never on the Hill – it’s always just off it.

So, while you were probably hitting snooze, or maybe trying to find a parking spot near the ByWard Market, City Hall was busy issuing building permits. And one of them, for a single-storey detached dwelling at 56 Inglewood Drive in Ward 1, caught my eye. The price tag? A cool $1,910,124.

Oui, you heard that right. Almost two million dollars for a *single-storey* house. This isn’t a typo, I triple-checked the permit record for BP 9NEW 25-9888 myself. While other permits were for rooftop solar or an addition over a garage, this one really stands out. It's a vivid reminder of the kind of development happening right now in our city, particularly in certain neighbourhoods. It makes you wonder, who is this house for? And how will it blend into the existing streetscape in Inglewood?

We’re also keeping an eye on that active development application for a residential apartment building at 1970 and 1980 Fowler Drive in Ward 8. With housing affordability being… a conversation, to put it mildly, these apartment projects are always significant.

What does this mean for you? It means the face of our city is changing, quickly, block by block. Keep watching to see how these big-ticket permits and apartment builds shape Ottawa’s future.

Simone Okafor-Bouchard, out.

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