Re: Bank Street businesses look to city for help, Oct. 10
As a recent arrival in downtown Ottawa, I am appalled at the carnage caused by the construction on Bank Street – work which has seemingly turned a swath of a major city into a no-go area for anyone who prefers their clothes, hair and lungs free of thick dust. And then to read in Centretown News that the beleaguered and under-siege shopkeepers can expect no help (financial or otherwise) from the city left me shaking my head in disbelief.
The only aspect of your report more staggering than Coun. (Diane) Holmes’s shoulder-shrugging ambivalence to the shopkeepers’ plight was the storeowners do not appear to have considered collectively withholding all lease and utility payments until the entire mess has been fixed or, at the very least, sought legal redress and compensation through the courts – not that any lawyers are going to be overjoyed at the prospect of a site visit to an area now more redolent of a third-world dustbowl than a thoroughfare in what is, supposedly, a major capital city.
Nigel Reid,
MacLaren Street