By Matt LaForge
The Somerset Cinema’s new owner had better prepare for a fight, say city and heritage spokespeople.
Larry Hartman, owner of Hartman’s Your Independent Grocer, agreed last week to purchase the building for an undisclosed sum.
He plans to turn the cinema and the adjacent 22-unit McCord apartment building, which he already owns, into an expanded grocery store.
The move will double the size of his existing 20,000 sq, foot store.
The new Hartman’s would offer more parking and wider aisles as well as a range of non-grocery services including banking facilities, photo finishing, and a cooking school. Hartman says he estimates the project will cost $10 million and will be completed by the end of 2002.
The project promises to be met with resistance.
Both the cinema and McCord buildings have heritage status under the provincial Heritage Act, says Sally Coutts, a heritage planner with the City of Ottawa.
The city scrutinizes any application to change or demolish such buildings. Coutts says Hartman must demonstrate a respect for the heritage status of the buildings as well as provide new rental units to make up for the lost housing space.
Hartman, owner of the Bank Street grocery store since 1965, says he believes the city may not appreciate the need for a large supermarket accessible to Centretown residents without cars.
“We benefit the community by being here,” he says. “The store needs to grow.”
Hartman has said the building will retain its cinema façade.
“It’s really like public art when the front has nothing to do with the building behind it.”
Mark Glassford, architect
Local architect Mark Glassford says retaining the façade is definitely feasible. But he says the most realistic and cost effective method of doing so would involve tacking the facade onto the front of a completely altered building.
This approach is known to architects as “façade-ism” and Glassford says the word is somewhat derogatory to heritage activists who are concerned with the building as a whole.
“It’s really like public art when the front has nothing to do with the building behind it,” he explains.
Glassford holds out no hope for preserving the McCord apartments. He says the building would have to be demolished and rebuilt to accommodate a supermarket.
Hartman says he will give alternate Centretown housing to any tenants still residing in the building at construction time, including eight to ten units in a rooming house over his existing store.
“There won’t be anyone left in the street without a roof over their head,” he says.
That might not be enough for Carolyn Quinn, president of Heritage Ottawa. She says that with ownership of a heritage building comes a responsibility to acknowledge its importance to the locale.
“A big part of having heritage designations is maintaining a certain ambience and street-scape,” she says.
“The McCord apartments I am very concerned about. Those apartments that date back to the ‘20s and ‘30s have very interesting interior features that are not easily replaced.”
It would not be the first time that Hartman has encountered such resistance.
When he expanded his store to accommodate the old Bank of Montreal building on the corner of Somerset, he had to prop up the whole exterior and shield it with a steel cage while the inside was renovated, says Joe Liff, an architect who worked on the contract.
About five years ago, recalls then-Heritage Ottawa president Louisa Coates, Hartman had plans to level the McCord in favour of a parking lot. Coates says the project died in city council as it did not provide sufficient replacement housing.
Hartman says he will begin again on both fronts when he takes control of the Somerset building on Nov. 1.