CBC News has analyzed land parcel properties for the new suburb, which is set to be added into the city's rural southeast urban boundary, and found the Algonquins of Ontario Realty Corporation is not the biggest landowner on the block.
But the huge tract also made headlines nearly 50 years ago in a different debate over how the region would grow, before hundreds of thousands of people lived beyond the Greenbelt. In the 1970s, the former Ontario Housing Corporation along with the National Capital Commission had pieced together land parcels and dreamed of building a model city near Carlsbad Springs. Instead, a place designated on a map as South Rideau became Barrhaven.
The Carlsbad Springs lands sat publicly owned but undeveloped for years.
In January 2020, land registry records show the Algonquins of Ontario Realty Corporation purchased three dozen properties from the Ontario government outright for $16.9 million.
Several developers who own land in the South March area were set to have their high-scoring properties brought into the new urban boundary, only to be rejected by councillors.