Walk the paved path that runs along the west edge of the Kilborn Allotment Gardens on a Saturday morning in late summer and you'll pass more than 400 plots of tomatoes, squash, beans and flowers, tended by gardeners who come from every corner of the city. Kids on bikes cut through. Someone's watering can clanks against a fence post. It reads like any other patch of city green space that's been there forever.
It hasn't been. The ground under those garden rows sits inside a corridor the City of Ottawa has held in reserve for a four-lane freeway since the 1960s. That road was never built. It also hasn't been cancelled. Understanding the difference between those two things explains a lot about how this stretch of Alta Vista actually functions day to day, and why it looks the way it does.
The Land Nobody Rezoned
The Alta Vista Transportation Corridor, known locally as the AVTC, was first floated as part of a southeast freeway plan and has sat on the city's official plan for the better part of six decades. The route was drawn to run from Walkley Road near Conroy, north through Alta Vista, across the Rideau River, and up to the Nicholas Street on-ramp at Highway 417.
One piece of it actually got built. The Hospital Link Road, connecting the Ottawa Hospital's General Campus to Riverside Drive, went in and has been operational since 2019 at a cost of roughly $55 million. Use of it since construction has been described by local officials as minimal.
The rest of the corridor stayed exactly what it was before any of this started: open land, informally used, formally undeveloped.
What The 2025 Plan Actually Changed
Last year's update to the city's Transportation Master Plan split the AVTC into two separate questions, and the answers landed differently on each side of the Rideau River.
| AVTC Segment | 2025 Status | What It Means For The Land |
|---|---|---|
| Northern (Hurdman Station to the Nicholas Street/417 interchange) | Recommended for removal from the Official Plan's road network | Will not cross the river or run through Old Ottawa East's Lees Field |
| Southern (Walkley Road to the Hospital Link Road, through Alta Vista) | Stays on the books, designated a Transit Priority Corridor, no funding attached | Continues as greenspace and garden with no resolution date |
Ward Councillor Marty Carr's public Q&A on the corridor lays out what the southern designation actually buys the city: the land stays available for eventual transit, emergency vehicle access, or as pressure relief for Alta Vista Drive and St. Laurent Boulevard, but there's currently no money behind any of it. Her own read on the timeline puts construction unlikely before 2046, which is the reasoning she gives for keeping the segment in the plan rather than pushing to have it rezoned as parkland outright. Rezoning it removes the option. Leaving it undesignated keeps the land open to development pressure the moment someone decides the freeway idea is dead for good.
So the corridor isn't protected. It's parked.
Living Inside The Corridor
That distinction shows up in small ways if you use the land regularly. A loop trail connecting Riverview, Balena, Coronation and Hurdman Parks threads through this same reserved right-of-way, and reviewers on AllTrails describe exactly what you'd expect from land nobody has budgeted to maintain as a formal trail: sections that are paved, sections that are just grass, patches that turn to mud in early spring, markers that are easy to lose. It's a real green corridor. It's also nobody's official park, which means nobody's official trail crew is out there fixing the parts that wash out.
What the land does support, consistently, is informal daily use: dog walking, birding, pickup games, and the kind of casual exercise loop that doesn't need a sign to work. Ward-level advocacy pages tracking the corridor point to exactly this pattern from Alta Vista up through Pleasant Park and into Old Ottawa East, describing residents using the reserved land year-round for precisely the activities you'd expect from a park, on ground that was never designated as one.
The Garden That Isn't Supposed To Be Here
The clearest example of this sits at Kilborn Avenue, bordered by Pleasant Park Road, Delmar Drive and Haig Drive. The Kilborn Allotment Gardens are administered by the city through the Dempsey Community Centre, run on a seasonal lease from May through October, with plots rented out at set fees and a waitlist gardeners can join by email. Full-size plots run roughly 900 to 1,250 square feet. A paved path along the west side of the gardens, built in 2011, gives passers-by a direct route past the rows.
In 2022, a group of gardeners formed the Jardiniers Kilborn Gardeners specifically to advocate for keeping food production going on this ground. That timing isn't a coincidence. It follows directly from the corridor's unresolved status: as long as this land could still become a road someday, the gardeners who'd spent years building soil and community here had reason to organize and make the case for staying.
None of this changes the underlying zoning. The garden operates every season the same way it always has, on land the city still technically holds for a transportation project it isn't funding and hasn't cancelled.
Four Minutes Away, A Different Kind Of Preservation
For contrast, drive over to 2100 Cabot Street and you'll find the opposite arrangement entirely. Billings Estate National Historic Site sits on eight acres along the Rideau River and holds the oldest wood-framed house in Ottawa, built between 1827 and 1829 by Braddish Billings for his wife, Lamira Dow, who reportedly wasn't fond of his original home on the same stretch of riverbank. The grounds include one of the city's oldest community cemeteries, where members of the Evans, Brouse and Firth families are buried.
Unlike the AVTC land, Billings Estate is fully designated, funded, and programmed. Through October 11, 2026, the estate is running an exhibition called Beyond the Brim: Tales Told Through the Hats We Wore, pulling headwear and stories from the City of Ottawa's museum collection along with pieces contributed by local heritage groups and residents. It's a small, specific, seasonal reason to make the trip before the site closes for regular visits at the end of October.
The estate and the corridor sit close enough together that you could walk from one to the other, and they represent two entirely different answers to the same question: what happens to land the city decides matters. One gets a heritage designation, a maintenance budget, and a rotating exhibition calendar. The other gets left alone long enough for a community garden to take root, a walking loop to wear itself into the grass, and a resident group to form around defending it, all without anyone officially calling it a park.
That's the piece worth knowing if you spend your weekends on this stretch of Alta Vista. The green space you're using, whether it's the Kilborn rows or the Riverview-to-Hurdman loop, isn't there because the city planned it that way. It's there because a 1960s road plan stalled out, and everyone else quietly filled in the gap while the paperwork caught up.
If you're curious how this history intersects with home values and lot lines in Alta Vista and Playfair Park, our neighborhood guide has more on the streets and housing stock nearby. And whenever you're ready to talk specifics about your own property in this part of the city, the Zak Green Team is glad to help you request a personalized market valuation.
