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After a challenging approval process, work is underway on the first phase of a new development on Baseline Road that will eventually see three highrise towers built on the site of a former strip mall that contained the original Lone Star Texas Grill.
After a challenging approval process, work is underway on the first phase of a new development on Baseline Road that will eventually see three highrise towers built on the site of a former strip mall that contained the original Lone Star Texas Grill. “It’s been hard, but it’s hard work worth doing,” Ottawa developer Joey Theberge told OBJ last week. “We’re excited about the location, excited about the community.” Theberge, who owns Theberge Homes, filed a revised proposal in 2023 to build two 24-storey highrises and one 30-storey tower with more than 1,000 residential units at 780 Baseline Rd. The first phase of the project, which includes one of the 24-storey highrises, was approved by the city’s planning and housing committee in November 2023, with the remainder of the development receiving the greenlight in January 2024.Now, Theberge said his team is “four storeys deep” in the excavation process, with phase one of the project expected to be completed in about two years. “No more hoops to go through anymore (with phase one). Zoning is approved and done,” Theberge said. “Now it’s just going to be a regular building site. A nice, fairly quick process.”Theberge purchased the site at 780 Baseline Rd. from the Leikin Group in 2021 for $16.5 million. Located on the corner of Baseline and Fisher Avenue, just south of the Central Experimental Farm, the site previously housed a 36,000-square-foot retail complex, the Fisher Heights Plaza, with tenants including the Ottawa-based Lone Star chain’s first Tex-Mex restaurant. However, it was the site's proximity to the government-owned experimental farm that raised challenges during the approval process with the city. Concerns that shadowing from the towers could have negative impacts on crops and research led to several changes to the initial proposal. For example, the committee approved an amendment in 2024 to increase the maximum podium height of the building, which reduced the overall height of the towers to minimize potential shadowing. Theberge said he intends to continue meeting with the officials from the farm to address further issues as planning continues. With the first tower now under construction, Theberge said he will be turning his attention to the next two phases of the project. The development will include 1,089 residential units and nearly 31,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space split between the three buildings. “Phase two, I’m going to say, will start in about 24 months, so about two years,” he said. “That will be a three-year project. Once that one gets halfway underway, we’ll go to phase three, which is the 30-storey tower.”He added that he’s getting the nearby community involved in the process of naming the three towers, with the help of the community association.“Something related to the farm,” he said of the naming theme. “It’s been talked about for years. It’s the closest thing around here and it’s a good landmark of the city.”Theberge said he has several other projects in the works across the city. A rendering of the new 18-storey residential development at 3030 St. Joseph Blvd. Image supplied by Theberge HomesExcavation is nearly complete at 3030 St. Joseph Blvd., where he’s building an 18-storey mixed-use tower that will include 202 residential units and ground-floor retail and commercial space. Theberge said cranes will be going up soon. Meanwhile, on Petrie Island in Orleans, he said a four-tower residential development has been approved at 1009 Trim Rd., with construction set to begin in 2027. In the long-term, Theberge said he’s working on site plans for a 15-acre site in Kanata, where he said he’s hoping to build 2,000 residential units. Theberge said he’s bullish on the current market for these kinds of large housing developments. “Ottawa is a very good rental market, very consistent and stable, unlike some other bigger cities in the country,” he said. “We have the government here, so it’s relatively ‘stable,’ though I use quotation marks right now. We don’t have to go up to crazy rents. We kind of stay within a five per cent buffer. I still think it’s a strong market.”
