An artist’s rendition shows what the Chinatown gateway might look like when completed.
It should be easier to spot Ottawa’s Chinatown by this time next year. That’s when a gateway marking the area should be nearly complete.
The Somerset Street Chinatown Business Improvement Area is sponsoring the project and plans to build the gateway in Centretown, at Somerset Street West and Cambridge Street North. They hope to begin construction by the end of this year and have it finished by summer 2009.
Larry Lee, the co-chair of the BIA’s gateway committee, said he hopes the gateway will draw more people to the area.
“We want to give local business a higher profile and make Chinatown more visible,” Lee said.
Some of the materials used in the construction of the gateway are likely to be imported from China itself, he said. The Chinese government plans to supply the project with ceramic tiles and other ornamental decorations once the final design is completed, which should be in the next few months.
Lee said that having material from China makes the gateway more authentic.
“It is Chinatown after all,” he said.
The committee has been consulting with Dr. David Chuenyan Lai, who worked on the construction of Canada’s first Chinatown gateway in Victoria, and has since been involved in the construction of gateways across the country.
He said the gateway committee will have to make sure the materials it receives from China will be able to survive Ottawa’s winters.
Lai said that the tiles on Victoria’s gateway had to be replaced after the city’s cold weather peeled off their glaze coating.
“That’s what I warned them about,” he said. “It’s not as big of a deal in China where labour costs are cheap and the repair could be done by anyone, but in Canada it could cause problems.”
Ottawa already has a gateway on Preston Street marking its Little Italy, and Lai said that the construction of the gateway in Chinatown will be a testament to the city’s multiculturalism.
Lee said the cost of the entire project will likely be $500,000 to $600,000. Right now, the BIA is responsible for all of the project’s funding.
Katie Ng, a gateway committee fundraiser, said that donations from corporate sponsors will likely cover about 75 per cent of the project’s costs, with community contributions making up the rest.
She said the committee plans to seek funding from the province and hopes the city might contribute, but that the current plan is based largely on public donations.
“We are really depending on our community support,” she said.
The gateway will be built at the same location that the cancelled Millennium Garden was supposed to occupy. That project, which would have established a small garden at the site to commemorate the area’s Chinese community, was scrapped in 2004.
Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes, said that the gateway will have a bigger impact than the Millennium Garden would have had. She also said it hasn’t been bogged down by the kind of problems which plagued the garden project.
“Everyone’s behind it and it’s going to make a great statement,” she said. “Both culturally and in helping the financial viability of the area.”