Through the Heritage Building Revitalization Plan, the city can offer financial incentives to property owners who revitalize heritage buildings in the city's redevelopment plan.

This program has been developed and extended to ensure the proper maintenance of heritage buildings in Ottawa until 2024.

In a memo to council members, Kurt Carey, Director of Heritage and Urban Design for the City of Ottawa, provided an update on the Community Improvement Plan (CIP), which encourages heritage restoration, revitalization, and reuse of heritage buildings.

Back in July 2016, the city announced the creation of heritage issue task forces, a group composed of city staff and stakeholders. The primary goal of the task force was to develop tools to prevent the demolition of heritage buildings due to neglect and to ensure assistance is provided to eligible property owners.

The task force recommended a three-year pilot program for the Heritage CIP, which offers a grant equivalent to 75 percent of the additional tax resulting from the project, over 10 years.

Carey stated: "Through the CIP, the city can offer financial incentives to property owners who commit to restoring the heritage features of buildings in this redevelopment plan, and help achieve improved building engineering, site design, and landscaping."

Property owners will receive a maximum assistance of $500,000, or the total revitalization costs per project, whichever does not exceed that amount.

Carey added that there has been significant interest in the program, especially in recent months, with four applications received, and two more expected to be submitted in the coming months.

As part of the original program approval, the council requested staff to report on the pilot results in the fourth quarter of 2022, and for Planning, Real Estate, and Economic Development to start the review in 2023.

To keep pace with this vision, the pilot program will be extended for an additional year until January 2024.

Edited by: Dima Abu Khair