Westboro residents fear for crumbling monastery saddled with back taxes

A historic nunnery is up for sale after a creditor pushed an Ashcroft Homes subsidiary into receivership, raising worries and hopes about the fate of a heritage property the city says is already unsafe.

The Sisters of the Visitation convent near the southwest corner of Richmond Road and Island Park Drive dates back to the 1910s, though parts of it were constructed before Confederation. It housed an order of cloistered nuns for a century, until the property was sold to Ashcroft Homes in 2009 for $12.7 million.

Ashcroft built a condo development to the north of the convent. In 2018, city council approved plans to build another nine-storey apartment building linked to the historic convent, which would be retained and preserved.

But that never happened, and the convent has been sitting boarded up and vacant for years. In the meantime, $723,567 of tax arrears have built up on the property, which also has about $140,000 worth of liens for money owed to a contractor.

According to Stuart Huxley, the interim city solicitor, the city has deemed the building unsafe and issued an order requiring the owner to retain a certified engineer to assess it and provide recommendations for repairs. Huxley said the building is suffering from "significant structural cracks" to its foundation.

The building owner has appealed the city's order, Huxley said.

"The building is a treasure in our community," said Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper. "It is absolutely irresponsible that the building has been allowed to degrade to this point where there are fundamental questions around its structural integrity."

Lorne Cutler, president of the Hampton Iona Community Group, called the convent "a unique, peaceful oasis in the middle of Westboro."

Heather Mitchell, chair of the Westboro Community Association's heritage committee, called the situation "appalling."

"This is a very important piece of heritage and I think lots of people care about it, but nobody seems to be able to do anything to protect it and advance it. I find that really problematic," she said.

"I'm very worried that it's going to deteriorate and I think there's a lot of people that feel the same way. It's a big, beautiful building. It needs a lot of care."

A cloistered order

The oldest part of the convent was originally built as a Gothic Revival-style mansion around 1865, and known as the Elms.

At that time, Richmond Road was lined with the estates of country gentlemen, and the Elms housed a series of prominent Ottawa businessmen and politicians. The third was Senator James Skead and the fourth was George Holland, who briefly co-owned the Ottawa Citizen with his brother.

The Holland brothers later became the publishers of the Senate Hansard, a record of Parliamentary debates, and screened the first motion pictures in Ottawa using the Edison's Kinetoscope.

The Sisters of the Visitation, a cloistered order founded in 1610, bought the property in 1910. It was to be their last new monastery in North America. They preserved the Elms but added an extensive addition for their cloistered order. It was built around a central courtyard and included a chapel.

David Jeanes, a former president of Heritage Ottawa, once gave tours of the convent. He explained just how seriously the nuns took their monastic existence.

"The nuns never had any direct face-to-face contact with the outside world," he said. "They stayed inside behind a high wall."

Though the chapel opened to the public for church services, the nuns themselves remained hidden behind a screen. They even screened themselves from visiting family, he said, and took deliveries using a revolving cabinet that Jeanes compared to a Lazy Susan.

But the number of nuns declined from a few dozen to about eight. After the property sold in 2009, the remaining nuns joined another order in Pembroke, Ont.

City council granted the convent heritage designation in 2010, around the time Ashcroft unveiled a three-phase plan to redevelop the site.

The first phase, a line of three nine-storey condo buildings along Richmond Road, was completed about 10 years ago.

The second phase aimed to transform the convent into a mixed-use building with 161 housing units and restaurant space, though its southwest wing would be demolished to make way for a new nine-storey residential tower.

The third phase foresaw a seniors residence and a low-rise residential building at the extreme south of the property. It appears that Ashcroft later flipped the order of the phases, as its website now refers to that part of the plan as phase 2.

Jeanes was optimistic that the designation and redevelopment would preserve the convent. No longer.

"At the moment, yes, I would say I'm pessimistic," he said.

Councillor fears collapse

Ashcroft Homes did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The receiver, MNP, said it was unable to comment beyond the documents it has filed with the court.

Those documents reveal that the Ashcroft subsidiary known as Ashcroft Homes – 108 Richmond Road did not keep up with interest on a $7 million loan from Royal Bank of Canada. As a result, RBC applied last year to push it into receivership.

Ashcroft subsidiaries all over the city are in receivership due to outstanding debt. RBC is also looking to collect on an $80 million loan relating to the expansive Eastboro development in the east end. Several other subsidiaries, including the owners of multiple Ashcroft seniors residences, are also under receivership for millions in outstanding loans to a different group of lenders.

The convent sits on a 4.23 acre site. The receiver put it all up for sale. The listing has no set price and bids are due by May 28.

Leiper hopes that whoever buys the property will follow through on the council-approved plans to develop and preserve the building.

"Until the site is properly developed, there is a real risk that the the convent building may ultimately collapse to some degree or another," he said.

But he acknowledged that the tax arrears will be a challenge for any buyer. Mitchell is frightened that the property might just sit on the market. Even if it sells, there's no guarantee that development will happen quickly.

"I'm terrified that it will just sit here and we'll have demolition by attrition," she said, "That it will be allowed to disintegrate and at some point it will be unsafe and the new owner will say, 'I can't work with this, you're going to have to let me off the hook. I'm going to have to destroy it.'"