About This Site

Who I Am

My name is Tomasz Dubiel. I live directly across the street from the proposed 340 Parkdale development with my wife and son. I'm not a planner or a policy expert — just a neighbour with an interest.

This site is independent. It has no affiliation with the City of Ottawa, the developer, or any community group. Everything here is my own (with a heavy lean on LLMs) reading of publicly available documents — I've tried to be accurate, but I'm working things out as I go. If something looks wrong, please get in touch.

Where I Stand

I want to be upfront about this, because I don't want the site to come across as a straightforward opposition campaign.

I support density near transit. I broadly support this development. Personally, I find the height a bit much — but that's just my feelings around not wanting to live in the shadow of this proposed colossus, not a planning argument. And the redesign that came out of the Urban Design Review Panel process looks genuinely great. I'm glad it happened.

More broadly: any housing is better than no housing. Ottawa has a real supply problem, and I'm not interested in being part of the reason nothing gets built.

What I Actually Care About

My concerns are pretty specific:

• Holding the line on transit-oriented development. The city's own plans set clear expectations for what growth near Tunney's Pasture should look like. I want to make sure those commitments are actually reflected in how this project gets approved.
• Keeping the neighbourhood liveable for families. Five three-bedroom units out of 465 is very hard to square with a 1.7% vacancy rate in that segment of the rental market. I don't think anyone's plan is to push families out of walkable, transit-connected neighbourhoods — but that's the direction this points.
• Not making the affordability situation worse. A large development right beside an LRT station is exactly the kind of opportunity to do something better than the default. I'd like to see that opportunity taken seriously.

What This Site Is For

I built this because I spent a lot of time tracking down documents, cross-referencing policy, and figuring out what questions were even worth asking. If you're a neighbour who wants to engage — whether that's submitting comments, writing to the councillor, or just understanding what's going on — hopefully this saves you some of that time.

Get in touch: 340parkdaleneighbours@gmail.com