Gloucester, Ontario
Gloucester has not been a municipality since 1 January 2001 — Canada's own names authority classifies it as an unincorporated place and gives that date — and the City of Ottawa now governs, assesses and bills every parcel in it. What survives of Gloucester as a property jurisdiction is its ground, and the striking fact about that ground is how much of it belongs to Canada: testing every federal parcel's registered coordinate against the City's own former-municipality boundary returns 565 federal properties covering 12,410.57 hectares, 41.25 per cent of the former city, of which the National Capital Commission alone holds 9,616 hectares. Gloucester is where Ottawa's Greenbelt is widest, where CSIS, CFS Leitrim and CFB Ottawa South sit, and where Canada's largest single office floor plate outside downtown is Crown-owned rather than rented.
9 buildings · 6 with an owner established · 11 sources · 9 tier A · prepared 2026-10-03
Gloucester is not a municipality and has not been one since the amalgamation that created the present City of Ottawa. Natural Resources Canada's geographical names database records "Gloucester" in Carleton County with the concise code UNP — an unincorporated place — a generic code of 121, "an unincorporated populated place that may have definable limits", and a decision date of 1 January 2001; the City of Ottawa's own Former Municipalities layer draws its boundary as one of eleven pre-2001 municipalities. The City of Ottawa governs it, MPAC assesses it and Ottawa bills it, and Ottawa files one Financial Information Return for the whole amalgamated city with no district breakdown in it. Ownership itself follows Ontario's rule, which is that the register is public but not open: ServiceOntario states that the land registry "contains the official records of property ownership and other legal interests such as mortgages, transfers and leases", that it "covers more than 7.4 million parcels of land in the province", that the services "are only available online", and that on OnLand "You can do a self-search for a fee". That fee is $37.10 per parcel register under Bulletin 2026-04, effective 2 November 2026; there is no bulk extract at any price, Teraview is restricted to licensed users, MPAC's values sit behind three log-in-only products and are still pegged to 1 January 2016, and Ontario publishes no price-paid file. In Gloucester the register that does name owners, for free and parcel by parcel, is federal — and it covers two-fifths of the district.
The marquee buildings
The towers that set the tone of the core, and who holds them. A price is the price a document states, on the date it states — not an estimate of what the building is worth now.
| Building | Use | Owner | Owner type | Last price paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canadian Security Intelligence Service National Headquarters 1941 Ogilvie Road, Ottawa (Gloucester) 80,993 m² of floor space on 15.90 ha |
Office | Government of Canada (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) The Directory of Federal Real Property records property 02885, "National Headquarters", at 1941 Ogilvie Rd., primary use Office, interest type Crown Owned, one building, 80,992.9 m² of floor space on 15.8955 ha. It is the single largest floor plate of any federal property inside the former City of Gloucester and larger than any other in the district by a factor of more than two over the next Crown-owned office. The register names the custodian department and the interest type; it does not give a construction cost or a value, and no Ontario source publishes either. |
Government | —A |
| CFB Ottawa South (Uplands) Uplands, Ottawa (Gloucester) 49,538 m² in 273 buildings on 153.42 ha |
Institutional | Government of Canada (National Defence) Directory of Federal Real Property: "CFB Ottawa South", municipality Ottawa, interest type Crown Owned, 273 buildings, 49,537.7 m² of floor space on 153.4193 ha — the largest building count of any federal property in the district. Beside it the same register carries a separate National Defence property called "CFB Ottawa" held as Lease or Licence, 155.44 ha and 18,358 m² in 8 buildings, plus three further defence licences over hangars, apron and parking: on that land Canada is a tenant, not the owner, and the register says so explicitly by interest type. |
Government | —A |
| Canadian Forces Station Leitrim Ottawa (Gloucester) — DFRP coordinate 45.3464, -75.6407 15,683 m² in 16 buildings on 232.17 ha |
Institutional | Government of Canada (National Defence) Directory of Federal Real Property: "CFS Leitrim", interest type Crown Owned, 16 buildings, 15,683.4 m² of floor space on 232.1724 ha. It is the second-largest Crown-owned land holding in the district after the airport lands and the largest that is neither park nor runway. The register gives land area, floor area, building count, custodian and interest; it gives no value, and Ontario publishes no assessed value for it because federal property is assessed only through payments in lieu. |
Government | —A |
| RCMP Technical and Protective Operations Facility 1426 St. Joseph Boulevard, Ottawa (Gloucester) 27,641 m² in 13 buildings on 173.99 ha |
Institutional | Government of Canada (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) Directory of Federal Real Property: "Technical and Protective Operations Facility (TPOF)", 1426 St. Joseph Blvd, primary use Law Enforcement and Corrections, interest type Crown Owned, 13 buildings, 27,641.4 m² on 173.9906 ha. The RCMP holds three further Gloucester properties, two of them leases — a 500 m² warehouse at 1475 Star Top Rd and a hangar site at 325 Comet Private — so the register also shows where the force rents rather than owns. |
Government | —A |
| Environment and Climate Change Canada — 335 River Road 335 River Road, Ottawa, ON K1V 1C7 (Gloucester) 27,235 m² in 11 buildings on 7.37 ha |
Institutional | Government of Canada (Environment and Climate Change Canada) Directory of Federal Real Property: property named "335 River Road", primary use Research and Technological Development, interest type Crown Owned, 11 buildings, 27,235 m² of floor space on 7.3694 ha. The same address appears a second time in the register as a Public Services and Procurement Canada "Managed Land" entry held under Lease or Licence, 278 m² — the two rows together show one department owning the campus and another occupying part of it under agreement. |
Government | —A |
| Mer Bleue Natural Lands Ridge Road, Anderson Road, Dolman Ridge Road and Chartier Chemin, Ottawa (Gloucester) 2,494.1 ha across the parcels the register names Mer Bleue |
Land | National Capital Commission Summed from the Directory of Federal Real Property: the parcels the register titles "Mer Bleue Natural Lands" and whose coordinates fall inside the former City of Gloucester total 2,494.1 ha, the largest being 1,087.4 ha on Ridge Rd. The NCC's Gloucester holding as a whole is far larger — 537 properties and 9,616.14 ha — and also includes Pine Grove Natural Lands (1,090.1 ha), Eastern Farm (1,131.4 ha and 108.2 ha), Green's Creek (568.8 ha) and the Pineview Golf Course at 1471 Blair Rd (106.1 ha, two buildings). All are Crown Owned in the register's own interest-type field. |
Government | —A |
| Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Ottawa (Rideau Carleton) 4837 Albion Road, Ottawa (Gloucester) |
Mixed use | Not established a paid title search would answer it Hard Rock's own release states it was selected by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation as service provider for the Ottawa Area Gaming Bundle 1 and that "The Hard Rock Casino Ottawa partnership consists of HR LP Investor Inc. (owned by Hard Rock International) and RCR Investor Inc. (owned by Rideau Carleton Raceway Holdings Limited)". That establishes who operates and who invests; it does not state who holds title to 4837 Albion Road, and no opened source does. An OLG gaming-bundle contract is service provision, not ownership, so the owner stays blank at $37.10 a parcel. The site's coordinate falls inside the former City of Gloucester. |
Private company | —A |
| Blair Place — 1410 and 1430 Blair Place 1410 and 1430 Blair Place, Ottawa (Gloucester) 5,100 m² occupied by Canada |
Office | Not established a paid title search would answer it The Directory of Federal Real Property carries "Blair Place Site", 1410, 1430 Blair Place, custodian Public Services and Procurement Canada, primary use Office, 5,100 m² of floor space, one building — and interest type "Lease or Licence". The register therefore proves the inverse of ownership: Canada occupies the building and does not own it, and the landlord is behind an Ontario parcel register at $37.10 per PIN. This is the second-largest federal lease in the district after a National Defence licence at the airport. |
Private company | —A |
| Queensway Corporate Campus — 4200 Labelle Street 4200 Labelle Street, Ottawa (Gloucester) 5,480 m² occupied by Canada |
Office | Not established a paid title search would answer it Directory of Federal Real Property: "Queensway Corporate Campus Site", 4200 Labelle Street, custodian Public Services and Procurement Canada, Office, 5,480 m² in one building, interest type Lease or Licence — the largest federal office lease inside the former City of Gloucester. National Defence holds a separate 1.2 ha licence at the same campus, recorded as "Queensway Corporate Campus - Labelle Building". Canada is the tenant in both rows; the owner is not in any open register and costs $37.10 a parcel to establish. |
Private company | —A |
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
Nothing in Ontario's published finances is Gloucester-sized. The Financial Information Return is filed by the municipality, and the municipality is the City of Ottawa: there is no Gloucester return and no sub-municipal breakdown inside Ottawa's, so every assessment and levy figure below labelled Ottawa-wide is a ceiling for the district and NOT a measurement of it. What is genuinely district-specific is public land, and in Gloucester that is most of the story. The federal figures were produced by downloading the Directory of Federal Real Property in full and testing every parcel's own registered latitude and longitude against the City of Ottawa's Former Municipalities polygon for Gloucester — the register labels all of these parcels "Ottawa", so a municipality-name match would have found none of them. Parcels are credited whole to the district their registered coordinate falls in; the airport lands, whose coordinate falls inside Gloucester, also appear in the Ottawa record and are not claimed here as a Gloucester building.
Who owns the town
At this scale the significant owner is rarely a trust or a fund: it is one or two local holding companies, a family in its second or third generation, and often the land around the town rather than the buildings in it.
At the scale of a former municipality inside Ottawa the concentration question has an unusually clean answer, because the biggest holder files a public inventory and the rest do not. Two-fifths of Gloucester is federal and three-tenths of it is the National Capital Commission alone.
| Name | Type | Holdings |
|---|---|---|
| National Capital Commission 537 properties in the Directory of Federal Real Property whose registered coordinates fall inside the Gloucester boundary. The NCC's about-us page describes it as the federal Crown corporation responsible for the National Capital Region's public lands; the hectares here come from the register, not from the corporation. |
Government | 9,616.14 ha — 31.96% of the former cityA |
| Government of Canada, all other custodians The balance of the 12,410.57 ha federal total: Transport Canada's airport lands (1,894.1 ha), National Defence (385.6 ha owned plus 159.6 ha under licence), the RCMP (178.2 ha), Natural Resources Canada (76.9 ha), CSIS (15.9 ha), Environment and Climate Change Canada (7.4 ha) and the smaller PSPC, CATSA and Crown-Indigenous Relations rows. |
Government | 2,794.43 ha across 28 propertiesA |
| Every private holder in Gloucester There is no concentration measure available for the other 58.75 per cent of the district. Ontario publishes no assessment roll, no price-paid file and no bulk ownership extract; the parcel register is $37.10 per PIN and cannot be read in quantity at any price. This record states that plainly rather than substituting a guess. |
Private company | not establishedA |
Who builds the houses
New-home building in this market: the volume, and the firms behind it. Ownership of a builder matters as much as its volume — a private-equity platform and a family firm behave differently.
Gloucester's new houses are built by the same Ottawa firms that build the rest of the city — Minto, Claridge, Caivan, Tamarack, Richcraft — and almost all of them are registered downtown or in Nepean, so a search of Ontario's builder register by city address undercounts the district badly. Two things can honestly be said from the register. First, seven licensees give Gloucester itself as their address, and one of them, Longwood Building Corporation, is a substantial builder in its own right. Second, Ontario licenses a separate company for each subdivision, so a licensee carrying a Gloucester community in its name is a direct count of homes in that community in a way no municipal statistic is. The caveat this record repeats in every Ontario entry still applies, and applies hardest here: the directory gives the licensee's REGISTERED address, not where the homes were built — Mattamy's Mer Bleue company is registered at 66 Wellington Street West in Toronto. Figures are "Total Possessions": freehold and condominium homes actually handed to a buyer, cumulative 2016–2026 and province-wide.
| Name | Type | Total possessions (cumulative, Ontario) |
|---|---|---|
| Longwood Building Corporation (Longwood Homes) 423 freehold and no condominium, account B28451, licensed since 26 August 1999, registered at 1010 Polytek Street in the Sheffield industrial area of Gloucester, umbrella "Longwood Homes". The largest licensee in Ontario's builder directory whose registered address is Gloucester. |
Private company | 423A |
| Caivan (Orleans Village) Limited 447 freehold + 89 condominium, account B46920, umbrella Caivan Communities, registered at 3713 Borrisokane Road. A project company for an east-end community on the Gloucester–Cumberland side of the city; the registered address is in Nepean, which is exactly the trap this section warns about. |
Private company | 536A |
| Mattamy (Mer Bleue 2) Limited 217 freehold and no condominium, account B47262, umbrella Mattamy Homes, registered at 66 Wellington Street West, Toronto. Named for Mer Bleue Road at the district's eastern edge; the name is a naming convention, not a boundary, and the register does not say which side of the former Gloucester line the homes stand on. |
Private company | 217A |
| Caivan (Mer Bleue) Inc. 123 freehold and no condominium, account B60999, umbrella Caivan Communities, registered at 2934 Baseline Road, Ottawa. Same caveat as the Mattamy entry. |
Private company | 123A |
| Kubaka Homes Inc. 6 freehold, account B60486, licensed 13 August 2021, registered at 850 Feather Moss Way, Gloucester. A custom builder; included to show the real size distribution of the licensees that actually sit in the district. |
Private company | 6A |
| D. & A. Marchand Investments Inc. and Premiere Construction Ltd. 5 freehold possessions apiece, accounts B35899 and B35846, both licensed 7 September 2005, registered at 1347 Maxime Street and 1010 Polytek Street in Gloucester. Three further Gloucester-registered licensees — 773873 Ontario Limited, 958798 Ontario Inc. and 12553503 Canada Inc. — are licensed but the register returns no possession count for them. |
Private company | 5 eachA |
| City of Ottawa — all builders The only official count that covers Gloucester at all, and it covers the whole city: Ontario's housing supply progress table records 7,871 homes for Ottawa in 2024 against a 12,583 target, 62.55 per cent, status "Not met", and 28,641 since 2022 against a ten-year target of 151,000. No Gloucester share is published. |
Government | 7,871 in 2024A |
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
Gloucester's commercial ownership is unusual in Canada because the largest holders of floor space in it are departments of the federal government, and they publish their own holdings. Of the 369,339 m² of federal floor space inside the district, 333,029 m² is Crown Owned and 36,310 m² is held under Lease or Licence — the second number being, in effect, a published list of buildings whose private landlords Ontario will not name for less than $37.10 a parcel. No private landlord in the district publishes a Gloucester-only portfolio figure that could be opened.
| Name | Type | Floor area / land |
|---|---|---|
| National Capital Commission Directory of Federal Real Property, parcels matched by coordinate to the Gloucester former-municipality polygon. Overwhelmingly land rather than buildings: Mer Bleue, Pine Grove, Green's Creek and Eastern Farm, plus the Pineview Golf Course and a scatter of houses and outbuildings on Ramsayville, Russell and Ridge Roads. |
Government | 537 properties, 9,616.14 ha, 25,572 m² of floor spaceA |
| Government of Canada (National Defence) Same dataset: CFB Ottawa South at Uplands (49,538 m², 273 buildings, 153.42 ha) and CFS Leitrim (15,683 m², 16 buildings, 232.17 ha) are owned; "CFB Ottawa" (18,358 m², 155.44 ha), a hangar and apron, a hangar and parking, and the Labelle building at the Queensway Corporate Campus are leases or licences. |
Government | 65,221 m² Crown-owned on 385.59 ha, plus 18,358 m² and 159.6 ha under lease or licenceA |
| Canadian Security Intelligence Service A single Crown-owned building at 1941 Ogilvie Road, and the largest single floor area of any property in this record. |
Government | 80,993 m² on 15.90 haA |
| Royal Canadian Mounted Police The Technical and Protective Operations Facility at 1426 St. Joseph Blvd (27,641 m², 13 buildings, 173.99 ha) and the Long Island Campground site at 415 Nicolls Island Rd (1,210 m², 23 buildings, 4.2 ha) are owned; a 500 m² warehouse at 1475 Star Top Rd and a hangar at 325 Comet Private are leased. |
Government | 28,851 m² Crown-owned on 178.2 ha, plus two leasesA |
| Government of Canada as tenant — landlords not established The register's Lease or Licence rows are a published list of buildings Canada occupies but does not own: 4200 Labelle Street (5,480 m²), 1410 and 1430 Blair Place (5,100 m²), 1165 Kenaston Street (4,262 m²), 1100 Polytek Street (1,741 m²), 1475 Star Top Rd (500 m²), two sites at 1000 Airport Parkway (413 and 178 m²) and 335 River Road (278 m²), alongside the four National Defence military licences. Not one landlord is named in any open source; each would cost $37.10 per PIN. |
Government | 36,310 m² leased or licensed across 13 Gloucester propertiesA |
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- The registered owner of 4837 Albion Road, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Ottawa and Rideau Carleton Raceway site. Hard Rock's own release names the operating partnership and the two investor companies behind it but says nothing about title, and an OLG service-provider contract is not ownership.
- The landlords of the thirteen Gloucester buildings Canada leases, including 4200 Labelle Street, 1410 and 1430 Blair Place, 1165 Kenaston Street and 1100 Polytek Street. The federal register proves Canada does not own them and names no counterparty.
- Any assessed value for any Gloucester parcel, and therefore any highest-assessed-parcel figure. MPAC publishes no roll, its lookup is CAPTCHA-gated and the 2026 tax year still runs on 1 January 2016 values.
- Any per-sale price with an address anywhere in Ontario. Consideration appears on the registered transfer instrument only, per parcel, at the fee in s2.
- A Gloucester-only assessment, levy or housing-completions figure of any kind. The City of Ottawa files one Financial Information Return and the province sets one housing target for the whole city; nothing in either is broken out by former municipality.
- The owners of the district's shopping centres and office parks on Ogilvie, Innes, Cyrville and St. Laurent. ottawa.ca is unreadable to a script, no Ontario roll exists, and no opened filing names them.
- The text of the City of Ottawa Act, 1999, which dissolved the City of Gloucester. ontario.ca/laws serves a JavaScript shell and canlii.org refuses scripts, so the 1 January 2001 date rests on Natural Resources Canada's names database and the City's own boundary layer rather than on a statute that was opened.
- Whether any sitting member of Ottawa City Council holds property in Gloucester relevant to a council decision. No conflict-of-interest registry was reachable; nothing was established and nothing is alleged.
Sources
- Land Registry — "the official records of property ownership and other legal interests", "more than 7.4 million parcels", services "only available online", "You can do a self-search for a fee" — ServiceOntario (Government of Ontario) · openA
- Bulletin No. 2026-04, Land Services Fee Changes effective November 2, 2026 — Schedule I: copy of parcel register including first page $9.70 + $24.25 + $3.15 = $37.10; adjacent parcel register per PIN $13.15 (Teraview only); additional page $2.56; inactive parcel register $1.36 — Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, Land Registry Services Branch · openA
- Directory of Federal Real Property — full XML dataset (custodian, interest type, land area, floor area, building count, parcel coordinates) — Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat · openA
- Former Municipalities / Anciennes municipalités — ArcGIS feature layer naming the eleven pre-2001 municipalities and drawing the Gloucester boundary used throughout this record — City of Ottawa · openA
- The Assessment Cycle — "Property assessments for the 2026 property tax year will continue to be based on fully phased-in January 1, 2016 current values." — Municipal Property Assessment Corporation · openA
- Canadian Geographical Names Database — "Gloucester", Carleton, concise code UNP (unincorporated place), generic 121, decision date 2001-01-01 — Natural Resources Canada · openA
- Financial Information Return, multi-year bulk data — City of Ottawa 2025, Schedule 26 taxable assessment by class and Schedule 22 levies — Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Ontario) · openA
- Ontario Builder Directory — licensee records and possession counts (api/builders, api/buildersummary) — Home Construction Regulatory Authority · openA
- Hard Rock International and Rideau Carleton Raceway Announce Hard Rock Casino Ottawa — "The Hard Rock Casino Ottawa partnership consists of HR LP Investor Inc. (owned by Hard Rock International) and RCR Investor Inc. (owned by Rideau Carleton Raceway Holdings Limited)" — Hard Rock International · openA
- Greenbelt / Ceinture de verdure — ArcGIS feature layer, 8 features, 20,205 ha — City of Ottawa · openA
- Ontario's housing supply: January – December 2024 — Ottawa 151,000 / 28,641 / 12,583 / 7,871 / 62.55% / Not met — Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Ontario) · openA