The City of Ottawa has purchased a Stittsville park for $1, after believing it had owned the park for decades. Coun. Glen Gower started looking into upgrading the east side of Amberway Park on Savage Drive in 2021 using “Cash in Lieu of Parkland” funds. However, he discovered that while the city was using the land as a park, it didn’t own the property. “According to the land registry, the land at 14 Savage Drive was still owned by William Albert Savage, the owner when the Plan of Subdivision for the original development was registered with the Township of Goulbourn in 1958,” Gower said in his newsletter to his constituents. “There were no taxes being paid on the property (it wasn’t even on the tax roll), and the park had been maintained by Goulbourn Township (and later the City of Ottawa) for as long as anyone can remember.” Savage died in 1970 and his wife Iva May Blackman died in 2013, according to Gower. The councillor says the City of Ottawa’s legal department obtained their will and identified one of their grandchildren living in Nova Scotia as an heir. In July, Gower received an email from a city lawyer that the city completed a transaction for the park at 14 Savage Drive and the city is now the registered owner. “In the end, the City of Ottawa acquired the land from George Albert Savage, the heir living in Nova Scotia, for a nominal fee of $1, avoiding a long and expensive court process,” Gower said. “The City also had to pay a land transfer tax to the province in the amount of $4,353.” Gower says the city’s purchase of the land corrected an “administrative error dating back nearly seven decades.” “Now that Ottawa legally owns the park, we can get on with the upgrades,” Gower said. “We’ll be reaching out to the Amberway community in the coming weeks to get that conversation started.” A new play structure was built on the west side of the park in 2019.
