Heritage Ottawa opens doors to ideas for future of Lansdowne Park

OTTAWA, June 7 2010 – From farmers market to fancy dress period balls and big band concerts, art and artisans to music festivals and Oktoberfest, people of Ottawa have plenty of ideas of how to use the space and grandeur of the Aberdeen Pavilion. There are lots of creative proposals, too, for the neighbouring Horticulture Building, and most of them include the plea to save it, restore it and leave it where it is in Lansdowne Park.

Heritage Ottawa hosted more than 1000 visitors to the two centerpiece heritage buildings of Lansdowne Park during this year’s Doors Open Ottawa. Visitors were invited to offer ideas on the future of the 1898 Aberdeen Pavilion and the 1914 Prairie Style Horticulture Building.

Both are heritage gems whose fate will be determined by plans to redevelop Lansdowne Park. The Horticulture Building is threatened with relocation so that the developers can expand commercial space and build a parking garage on the site where the building now stands.

People of Ottawa see things differently. They want to restore the Horticulture Building to its original vocation as a curling rink in winter and flower exhibitions in summer; or use it as a concert hall; for peewee hockey; weddings, receptions and conferences; or, many people endorsed the much-touted idea of using it as the indoor part of a year-round farmers market. The group representing local farmers agrees that would be a fine solution, but only if the building stays where it is, at the heart of the park.

The most frequent comments urged restoration of the building, in situ. “Anyone granted rights to develop Lansdowne must, as a donation, restore this building,” wrote one visitor. “Keep it a heritage site, 100 %,” said another. Multiple other visitors wrote simply, “Don’t move it.”

The fate of the Aberdeen Pavilion seems less precarious. A City Council vote 20 years ago to demolish it was reversed, and in 1994 the “Cattle Castle” was restored to its original state. Now it’s future use must be determined. Heritage Ottawa sees creative use of the building as fundamental to the commercial success of Lansdowne Park as well as to the sustainable preservation of a heritage treasure.

Consensus of the many visitors who commented seems to strongly favour multiple uses of the Aberdeen Pavilion: a Granville Island-like centre for crafts, produce and performance; horseshows; music and arts festivals; dance hall; dramatic arts centre; antiques fairs; eco-fairs… Many preferred rotating, seasonal and varied uses of the building through the year, and strongly endorsed its use as a public place that highlights the splendour of the 3000 square metres of uninterrupted space and Victorian light and frivolity of design.

Kids went for a petting farm, dinosaurs, ice cream stores and racing bunnies; other visitors tossed around roller derbies, studios for starving artists or tennis courts. There was great enthusiasm for dreaming up people-oriented uses that would – or not - recall the original purpose of showing cattle and the new technologies of farming at the turn of the century.

“With two flip charts and lots of paper and pens, in two days, we have got people imagining wonderful futures for these buildings,” commented Heritage Ottawa past-President David Flemming. “Just imagine if the City had used its considerably greater resources to ask citizens of Ottawa for their ideas a year ago, before the developers set out their plans and requirements.”

Heritage Ottawa has not taken a position on the design of the Lansdowne Park redevelopment. Ottawa’s biggest volunteer organisation for the protection and promotion of built heritage has argued that preservation of heritage is both commercially and culturally sensible.

Any future design should respect the location of Lansdowne Park adjacent to the world heritage-designated Rideau Canal and to the original purpose of the park for public use. Heritage Ottawa strongly opposes the removal of the Horticulture Building to a different location in the Park because that would be a violation of principles of heritage preservation, and would pose a severe risk to the fabric of the building and destroy the design concept of the architect, Francis Sullivan.