Hintonburg's 11 metre cap covers 83% of N4B, not all of it

I said every address was H(11). I was wrong.

On September 2 I wrote that Hintonburg's zoning changed in 2020, not 2026, and that the residential streets came out of the new map as N4B with an H(11) height suffix. I tested four streets and generalized from them. That was sloppy. This week I counted every address instead, and most of the neighbourhood is H(11), but a real minority is not.

What I counted

The City's Ottawa Neighbourhood Study boundary for Hintonburg and Mechanicsville holds 2,211 primary addresses in the municipal address file. Those are street addresses, not units and not lots. I placed each one inside the Zoning By-law 2026-50 map and read the full label, suffix and exception number included. Below I name streets and never house numbers.

The City's boundary includes Mechanicsville, so it will not match how you draw the neighbourhood. And I counted addresses because I have no lot layer I can use, so I cannot tell you one lot size.

The split

N4B covers 1,594 of the 2,211 addresses, or 72.1%. Here is how those 1,594 divide:

• 1,326 carry H(11). That is 83.2% of N4B and 60.0% of every address in the neighbourhood.
• 59 carry H(24) under site exception 841, which is 3.7% of N4B.
• 209 have no height suffix at all. That is 13.1% of N4B and 9.5% of everything.

Check it: 1,326 plus 59 plus 209 is 1,594. The rest of the neighbourhood is corridor and mainstreet (CM1 and MS1, 409 addresses), the hub zones near Bayview (H2, 126), N5B (38), and 44 institutional, park and mixed use addresses.

What no suffix means

The height row in Table 801A reads 11 metres and three storeys for N1, N2 and N3. For N4 it reads 14.5 metres. So an N4B lot without H(11) on it is not held to 11. It gets the table, which is 3.5 metres more, a building envelope 32% taller (14.5 divided by 11 is 1.32).

I re-read the table on the City's site this morning. The unit row is tagged OLT-26-000364, meaning it is under appeal, and N4 prints n/a there anyway. The height row carries no tag. I read the table and not each site exception, so an exception number on a lot can still change the answer.

Where the 209 are

The ten streets with the most: Carruthers Ave 42, Hinchey Ave 35, Forward Ave 27, Armstrong St 20, Wigston Priv 10, Barnsley Priv 10, Lyndale Ave 8, Stonehurst Ave 8, Pinhey St 8 and Stirling Ave 5. That is 173 of the 209 (42 plus 35 plus 27 plus 20 plus 10 plus 10 plus 8 plus 8 plus 8 plus 5).

It is not a street by street pattern. Armstrong, Pinhey and Stirling each have dozens of H(11) addresses as well, and one of my September test addresses on Hinchey came back H(11) while 35 other Hinchey addresses did not. Two lots on the same block can carry different ceilings. I have not worked out why the City drew it this way, and I will not guess.

The H(24) group is smaller and easier to place: Hintonburg Pl has 32 addresses and Bayswater Ave 27. Bayswater is mixed. It also has 78 addresses at H(11). At 24 metres the ceiling is 2.2 times the 11 metre streets (24 divided by 11).

Why it matters for pricing

A two storey infill semi does not care about 14.5 metres. A builder or a buyer pricing land for a multi unit project does, and in September I told you to read the suffix before paying for "N4 potential". That advice stands, and now it has a number on it: about one N4B address in eight has no suffix, and about one in twenty seven has H(24).

Also, 14.5 is a ceiling. Setbacks, lot width and the unit rules from 2020 decide what fits under it, as I walked through in the Hintonburg neighbourhood guide. The unit cap fight at the tribunal, covered in the fourplex appeal post, does not reach N4 either way.

What I would do

If you own here, find your full zone label on GeoOttawa before you decide to list or hold. Do not assume H(11). If yours has no suffix, ask a planner what 14.5 metres is worth on your lot before you set a price, and do not promise a buyer height you have not confirmed in writing.

If you are buying for the land, get the label and the exception text, then a planner's read. The map letters are where the answer starts.

I sell houses. I do not give zoning, legal or tax advice, so confirm any of this with a planner or a lawyer before you act. This is also a snapshot of the City's map layer on October 28. If the City edits it, these counts move.

If you own in Hintonburg or Mechanicsville and want to know which label your address carries before you list, call me at 613-262-6545 or email fil@613realtor.ca and I will pull it up while we talk. You can also browse Hintonburg first.