Plans for construction of a national Stanley Cup monument in Ottawa are on hold until the end of this year.
Although both the city and the National Capital Commission support the idea, plans to redesign the area of the proposed site have stalled any progress.
The city is doing a traffic study on the intersection of Rideau and Sussex, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.
Lord Stanley Memorial Monument Inc., a group that came up with the idea for the national monument, says it hoped the monument would be installed this summer, but now completion has been pushed back to 2017.
“We`re getting a bit anxious,” says Paul Kitchen, a hockey historian and member of Lord Stanley Memorial Monument Inc. “We would like to see some progress.”
While Kitchen says the group hoped the process would move quicker, he adds that there is excellent co-operation between the city and the commission.
“So we’re not throwing our hands up or anything like that,” says Kitchen.
Commission member Denise LeBlanc says that since both the city and the commission own parts of the land, the process can become more complex.
“At this point, the study has to be concluded before anything else can move forward,” says LeBlanc. “In the process of designing a commemoration, what is really important is that the artist designs it for the site and location they are working with.”
Since the next step in creating the monument is a design competition, the potential artists would need to know how the site looks before beginning their sketches.
Kitchen says his group will leave the design to the artists, only offering some basic guidelines as to what they’re looking for.
“As long as the artists are clear that we don’t want something crazy abstract that no one can understand,” says Kitchen. “We want it to be significant to hockey fans, to those interested in history, and if you’re neither, it should still be aesthetically pleasing.”
Even though selecting Rideau and Sussex as the location may have prolonged the process, Kitchen says he hasn’t considered a different spot. He says he believes the monument should be in a prominent location downtown.