Bank Street cafe owner Javaid Malik complained about benches near his business.
Public benches at the corner of Bank and Cooper streets have been removed after complaints from city residents and businesses that the benches are a magnet for homeless people and drug dealers.
Some benches have been redesigned with an arm in the middle to keep homeless people from sleeping on them. But the benches – located on the northwest and southeast corner near the Tim Horton’s – are used as a meeting place for people from nearby rooming houses, shelters, and youth centres.
Last year, complaints resulted in the removal of a particular park bench located in front of Café Supreme at 270 Bank St.
However, the city’s quick fix for complaints isn’t doing much to solve the issue, says Const. Nathan Hoedeman of the Centretown community police centre.
The city denies receiving any complaints about the benches.
“Police officers can have whatever opinions they want,” says Rob Ludlow, city spokesperson. “But they don’t speak for the street furniture and planning committee for Bank Street.”
City officials say the benches were removed for easier winter maintenance and snow removal for the plows, and that the benches will return to the street corner in spring.
But café owner Javaid Malik says he called the city numerous times and wrote a letter to complain because the bench was attracting “characters out of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.”
“The only people using these benches are crack heads and homeless people who sit here and harass me, telling me to ‘F-off’ and scaring my customers,” he says. “If they had respect, I would have no problem with the bench being there.”
Malik’s business lost $106,000 because of the construction from Somerset to Gladstone and he says the bench only contributed to the loss. The city responded by removing the bench and replacing it with a bike rack.
The more recent resurfacing of Bank Street gave city officials the impetus to set up benches on the corner once again, but complaints quickly led to their removal.
Alvin Roy, owner of 7th Heaven Futon, also complained to the city four months ago about a bench that was put in front of his store at 259 Bank St.
“There were bums sitting on the bench who were fighting and smoking and leaving garbage,” he says. “I was ready to remove the bench myself.”
Roy complained that the bench was attracting the wrong people and stopping potential customers from window shopping at his store. He says city officials visited the store three times before the decision was made to remove the bench.
“Rather than spending money on reinstalling and removing benches, it’s time that money should be put toward promoting use of urban and public spaces, reminding people that it’s safe to do so,” Hoedeman says.
“If you were to see these people you would think that they are obviously not working, just there, hanging out all day and not spending money at the businesses,” he adds.
Residents and business owners worry that if the benches return, they will create a perception of the neighborhood as undesirable and unsafe.
“It seems to me that if you are going to have an attractive and vital urban street, benches are part of it,” says downtown Ottawa resident Eric Darwin. "But you don’t want the benches to become a focus of 'Hey, if you want meth, go to the third bench from the corner,'” he says.
But Hoedeman says police rarely bust drug dealers at public benches.
“If a person set up to deal drugs from a specific park bench location, it would be pretty dumb,” he says, adding there are too many witnesses, people on cell phones and businesses with windows on Bank Street that would quickly spot criminal behavior.
Hoedeman says that in a complaint-driven society, the city’s reaction has been to just remove the benches rather than taking the time to look into the issue further.
“I guess people were thinking, ‘well, if good people aren’t using them, let’s just get rid of them,’” he says. “But what happens to the 80-year-old lady who wants to take a break because she’s been walking up and down Bank Street, and there’s no bench because we keep getting rid of them?”
Furthermore, removing benches from one area won’t stop people from relocating to a new one, he says.