By Jeremy Chenier
Despite earlier reports, the National Capital Commission says the former U.S. embassy will stay where it is and Metcalfe Street is not going to become a 90-metre wide promenade in front of Parliament Hill.
“We’re not moving the old U.S. embassy,” says Diane Dupuis, a spokesperson for the NCC.
“We’re not going ahead with the 90-metre Metcalfe.”
Dupuis says the NCC doesn’t yet have a plan for the area surrounding Metcalfe and Sparks streets near Parliament Hill and won’t have one for at least another year.
She says the commission is currently developing a concept plan to cover the area near the Hill over the next 50 years.
She says the plan will be based on what residents, businesses and other levels of government have said they want for the area.
The NCC wants to create an area where people “can live, can work and can play.”
To accomplish this, Dupuis says the NCC wants to put both residential and commercial buildings on Sparks Street, improve transit and create more open spaces.
One of the ways to create these open spaces would be to move or destroy buildings, some of which may have a heritage designation.
Although the plan is far from complete it is already facing criticism from some city officials and local businesses.
There exists a general concern that a new plan will have remnants of an idea presented last fall, including the idea of widening Metcalfe to 90 metres and tearing down or relocating heritage buildings, including the former U.S. embassy.
Mayor Jim Watson disagrees with some of the most fundamental assumptions made by the NCC.
“We’re trying to get more people to live and work downtown. You don’t do that by creating plazas and large open spaces,” he says.
The mayor also says he’s unhappy that he only found out about the NCC’s ideas through the media.
This sentiment is shared by Somerset city Coun. Elisabeth Arnold.
“We had hoped very much that after the last Metcalfe street fiasco that the NCC would include us in developing any future plans,” says Arnold.
In light of the confusion about plans for the U.S. embassy and Metcalfe street, Arnold says the NCC will also be invited to the next city planning committee meeting to “tell us publicly what they are going to do.”
But Dupuis says the NCC will include the city before the plan is finalized.
She says the NCC will hold consultations with the public and with other levels of government early in the new year and again in fall of 2000.
Some say the uncertainty surrounding the future of the area is hurting business on Sparks Street
Jack Cook, the owner of Canada’s Four Corners on Sparks Street, says people have been talking about making changes to Metcalfe since Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister.
“We’ve never been at rest here really. It’s been continual uncertainty . . . so naturally it affects business,” he says.
Currently, any Sparks Street merchant who is leasing property in a building owned by Public Works cannot get a new lease for more than two years.
The limit was imposed at the request of the NCC, although Dupuis says the NCC only asked for a five-year limit.
According to Cook, this leaves current business people feeling insecure and he says no new business will open when they may have to shut their doors two years later.
But Dupuis says the limit is necessary. The NCC wants to ensure no businesses are in the buildings for an extended period should the new plan have a different use for the space.
In spite of this, the management at Sparks Street mall is generally supportive of the NCC.
Sharon McKenna, the mall’s manager, says the NCC plan is intended to bring more people and more money to the area.
“If it’s going to help us, we’re for it,” she says.
“What the NCC is trying to do is make the downtown better and more attractive to tourists and better business, which is what, I’m assuming, everybody wants in the downtown area.”