By Anne Diokno
Stanley Devine wants to open a new kind of bar on Elgin Street, but the City of Ottawa won’t let him.
Devine is the owner of Dunn’s Famous Deli on Elgin, not far from the Ottawa courthouse. He says the second floor above his restaurant, which is vacant and has its own entrance, would be ideal for a bar catering to the people at the courthouse.
“I got the idea of making a club for lawyers, judges and upstanding citizens upstairs,” he says. “It would be a cigar lounge, very elegant, a place for nice people to meet after work or for entertaining business colleagues.”
But the floor above his restaurant is zoned for office or residential space. Devine requested an amendment to the zoning bylaw to one which would allow a bar.
The city told Devine to submit a report to support his request. He enlisted the aid of the DELCAN Corporation of Engineers and spent more than $5,000 on a planning report.
“They sent us back a letter saying they were refusing it,” Devine says. “We did everything we were supposed to.”
Gordon Harrison, an Ottawa city planner, says the refusal was based on several points.
Devine’s bar required 17 spaces and he could only provide eight. He requested a cash-in-lieu payment which means he would pay the city for every missing space, but the request was denied.
“Also, this type of bar would not be servicing the needs of the residential community in the central area,” Harrison says. “It would be attracting people from other regions. A bar, with its late-night traffic, attracts noise.”
Devine says solutions to all these issues were presented in the DELCAN report. It explained there was sufficient parking after 4 p.m. in nearby parking lots.
“Our clientele would be using city parking lots and generating money for Ottawa,” he says, adding that his customers won’t be a noise problem.
“I’m not targeting a young market. My bar would be geared towards an older crowd. No teenage rave parties — they can go to the market for that,” he says.
Catherine Boucher, the executive director of the Centretown Citizen’s Ottawa Corporation, says the organization objected to the proposed bylaw amendment.
She says Elgin Street has an enormous amount of bars considering its length. Boucher also says this isn’t the first bar proposal they’ve turned down.
“We want people living in Centre-town, and to do so we have to make it liveable,” she says. “He’s asking for an exception and we’re saying ‘no,’ even if it means there won’t be a bar for lawyers to smoke their fancy cigars.”
Boucher adds commercial and residential interests must be balanced.
“If he had been opening a hardware store, we would have approved his request for cash-in-lieu of parking because Elgin Street needs a hardware store, but not another bar,” she says.
Devine says all the clubs are grouped together on the other end of Elgin, but from Somerset Street to Wellington Street there are no clubs.
He doesn’t see why a club at his end of Elgin would upset the balance of commercial and residential.
Devine says he’ll now rent the second floor as office space for a fraction of the money it could be generating as a bar.
He says he’s disappointed with Ottawa’s decision.
“I really believe the city doesn’t help out small businesses. I’ve already spent $5,000 I couldn’t afford,” he says. “I followed their rules, but they didn’t give me a chance.”