Plagued by years of delay and concerns about high costs, the restoration of a 19th-century facade on a Sparks Street commercial building may be approved by city council’s built heritage sub-committee. The sub-committee will meet to decide the façade’s fate on Oct. 10.
The NCC-owned building, located at 108-116 Sparks St., is just west of Metcalfe beside Scotiabank. Its decaying exterior features large Queen Anne-style windows covered in chain-link mesh, peeling yellow paint and boarded up windows of once lively storefronts. The windows design, called Oriel, is characterized by a bent box shape that projects away from the building.
“There aren’t many left from that era,” says David Jeanes, vice-president of Heritage Ottawa. The building was built between 1870 and 1875, with the current facade constructed in the 1890s.
“Preserving that will help to preserve the feel of the street as one of Ottawa’s most important commercial streets,” he says. He compared it to a stretch Rideau Street across from the downtown Rideau Centre, where “there’s a whole line of late-Victorian commercial buildings which have been heritage designated and preserved.”
The Sparks Street restoration is one part of the “Canlands A” redevelopment by Ottawa-based Ashcroft Homes, which began when Ashcroft signed a 66-year lease on the property in 2008. Plans include a new 18-storey luxury hotel and condo facing Queen Street. Restoration of the 108-116 building was a central requirement in contract negotiations between the NCC and Ashcroft. The idea is that shops, long absent from the building, will return and flourish, maintaining the historic character of Sparks Street.
Most recently, applications to the city for alterations to the Canlands A property have been consistently delayed. A report was submitted to the sub-committee by Ashcroft on July 3, was postponed at the July 11 meeting, and then again at the Sept. 5 meeting.
This time will be different, says Les Gagne, executive director of the Sparks Street Mall Authority.
“I think the city will do everything they need to get that done,” he says. But Gagne claims the facade will not be saved either way.
Gagne says he believes that after delaying the project two years, the NCC will end up changing its mind, and Ashcroft will not be required to maintain it because it has become “not savable.”
City heritage planner Sally Coutts said in an email that “Ashcroft and the NCC have discussed changes to the project,” but she did not know the result.
However, Cedric Pelletier, a spokesman for the NCC, says that the NCC expects to go ahead with the original plan: preserving the facade.
“Right now the NCC has continuous dialogue with Ashcroft on how best to achieve the preservation objectives,” he ssays.
Jeanes says he has also heard rumours that the NCC might waive the requirement, but says it would be “most unfortunate, because in my opinion the façade is very important.”
“At the end of the day, it needs to get done,” Gagne insists. “A building needs to get built, we have a rundown facade on Canada’s most beautiful and historic street.”
“Do I think we should be spending millions to restore buildings rather than simply start from scratch? I think a building needs to be built soon. I think that’s more important,” he says.
Gagne says he is excited for the project, part of Sparks Street’s revitalization, because of the added pedestrian traffic to the street from Queen Street through the hotel, especially when the light rail transit route is completed in the coming years.
Jeanes says the mall has “already been compromised” by new office towers too large and overwhelming, such as the Thomas D’Arcy McGee building, RBC’s Ottawa headquarters. This restoration is worthwhile because it could be the last in the near future, he adds.
The building at 108-116 Sparks Street has a rich history that includes being the former home of E.R. Fisher Menswear, the Ottawa clothier established in 1905. It also housed Centre Theatre, once the largest cinema in Ottawa. Jack Snow Jeweller was also in the building. In 1955, Pedro the stuffed panda was stolen from Jack Snow in a staged heist and became the prize for the winner of the Panda Game, the annual football game between University of Ottawa and Carleton University.