Somerset House owners are still unable to get a building permit from the city to begin re-construction.
Plans to restore Somerset House heritage building – which partially collapsed in late 2007 – are crumbling as owners temporarily abandon attempts to get a building permit.
“We’re tired of throwing money at the wall,” says Hugh Kennedy, the general manager of TKS Holdings Inc, which owns the building. “We deal with one thing and they (the city) just come back with something else. After awhile you just give up.”
The City of Ottawa required owners to get a new permit after the collapse.
The city closed the intersection at Bank and Somerset streets for eight weeks and decided the building should be torn down.
A court order reversed the decision days before demolition began, and owners applied for permission to turn the building into a new restaurant and office space.
Ottawa’s review system for building permits generally takes five to 25 days.
This case is still ongoing – after almost a full year.
In an exchange of letters described as “adversarial” by the building’s owners and “a tennis match” by the city, proposals have been offered and rejected, scrutinized and countered.
Kennedy says TKS Holdings Inc is tired of spinning its tires and will wait to try again until the air is cleared by a pending lawsuit.
The company is suing the city over several issues, including alleged damage caused by city-employed engineers who demolished part of the building to get inside for a structural assessment.
A second lawsuit pitting the city against the company is also pending.
The city’s chief building official, Arlene Gregoire, is on holidays this month, but acting director of building permit approvals, Peter Black, has sifted through the “one-inch-thick” stack of letters in the Somerset House file.
Black says the city hasn’t issued a building permit because the proposed plans don’t include special wall reinforcements that strengthen buildings during earthquakes. The reinforcements are required under the newest Ontario Building Code draft.
“It’s basically a matter of them being able to prove their argument. And they really haven’t done that at this point in time,” says Black.
Derek Crain, the architect in charge of the renovations, calls the city’s opposition unreasonable.
“If we forced the 2006 building code on all the heritage buildings in Ottawa, we would end up tearing them all down – including the parliament buildings,” he says.
The building code currently includes a clause that allows for creative interpretation of the rules if strict adherence interferes with a building’s heritage elements. Crain says in this case a renovation according to the earthquake rule would detract from the building’s windows and doors – some of its remaining heritage elements. But the city’s engineers say it’s possible to reinforce Somerset House’s walls without damaging the historic features.
Coordinator of heritage planning for the city Stuart Lazear agrees the clause for preserving heritage buildings could be a way to solve things, but that it’s ultimately about interpretation between sides: “engineer to engineer.”
The provincial Building and Development Branch says there is an independent building commission for appeals if an applicant feels his or her case isn’t being treated fairly.
Hugh Kennedy says he might consider that option.
But he adds he's not eager to add to the “way way more” than $100,000 price tag the building permit application process has already cost.
Lawyers involved with the case expect the lawsuits to proceed in 2010.