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The plan calls for a mixed-use community that is “walkable, cycling-supportive, transit-oriented and built at human scale.” It will be more dense than the suburbs, but less dense than downtown, essentially a village only a few minutes from the core of the city.

Once adopted, the plan will be used as a “roadmap” for development, with some aspects entrenched in a secondary plan and zoning bylaw amendment. Canada Lands Company, a Crown corporation, will sell serviced blocks of land to developers, who will build homes, retail and office buildings according to Canada Lands’ requirements.

Many more specific details will be coming in the subdivision plan. Shovels will hit the ground to build infrastructure for the first phase of residential development on the southern edge of the property in the coming weeks, says Don Schultz, director of real estate at Canada Lands. He is hoping to have a draft plan for the first subdivision approval next month, with a request for proposals coming soon after.

Schultz hopes that Canada Lands will sell the first blocks of land to builders by the end of March. If all goes according to plan, the first residents will move in in 2017.

CFB Rockcliffe was a functioning airbase until 2004. This is a second attempt at devising a plan for the land. An earlier process ended in 2008 due to an Algonquin land claim for the site. That was settled and the land was transferred to the Canada Lands Company in 2011. A second process began in 2012.