Hunt Club is a community in River Ward, in the south end of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The area is named after the prestigious Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club, which has been part of the area since 1876. Hunt Club Road and many local businesses were also named after the golf course.
Hunt Club is located just north of the Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport and to the east of the Rideau River. The Hunt Club Community Organization defines the boundaries as the Rideau River to the west, the CP Prescott rail line now used by the O-Train Trillium Line to the east, the CN Albion line and Via Rail Beachburg Subdivision to the north, and the boundary of the old City of Ottawa (about half a block south of Hunt Club Road) to the south. The population of the area is about 14,000.
16% of its area is publicly accessible green space. It has 7 city parks: Cahill, McCarthy, Owl, Paul Landry, Riverwood, Uplands, and Uplands Riverside. In addition, many of its residents live in townhouse co-ops and condos that have their own community centers and recreational facilities, and some are members of the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club with access to their 87 ha green space. It has three times the green space as the Ottawa average, including the Sawmill Creek wetlands and Rideau River shoreline.
It has a widely mixed demographic in age groups, ethnocultural backgrounds, socio-economic levels and family set ups. It includes single dwellings, semi-detached and townhouse units, apartment buildings, retirement homes, and an exceptional number of co-ops and condos that offer rent-to-income housing and village-like living. Its housing ranges from million dollar mansions to three Ottawa Community Housing projects.
It has the second largest complex of Asian markets and services in Ottawa. A summer Asian cultural festival offers unrivalled access to many Asian foods.
Hunt Club was originally settled by Europeans in the early nineteenth century. It was originally part of Gloucester Township. In 1950 the still largely rural area was annexed to the city of Ottawa. Development of the area got underway in the 1970s, and that is when most of the current housing dates from. It was designed as a bedroom community with little commercial area.
One of the more prominent, and controversial areas, of the neighbourhood is the large Hunt Club Woods area. This region next to the CN rail lines was purchased by the National Capital Commission in 1953 with plans of turning it into part of a major ring road around Ottawa. These plans never materialized and the area has been an undeveloped mix of farm land, open meadows, and forests ever since. The NCC hopes to sell their considerable holdings to developers, and have the area turned into a new subdivision. Residents and greenspace advocates have fought this, hoping to preserve much of the area as open land.
