2008-09-15

Not such a great year at Bank & Somerset...




















Employees regroup after arriving Monday morning to find the building that housed their business was badly damaged by fire overnight.

The four-storey commercial structure is on the northeast corner of Bank and Somerset, across the street from Somerset House. Nearly a year ago, the intersection was blocked after the partial collapse of that building during renovations. The blockage during subsequent legal ping-pong between the city and the former hotel's owner, about whether to save it or raze it, played out for months before reno work restarted in spring.

Bank Street businesses then spent the summer in the midst of a major street reconstruction that remains to be finished.

Just me, or is Ottawa's approach to downtown redevelopment a little ad-hoc...?

4 comments:

aandjblog said...

just awful. That building has some bad karma.

Wandering Coyote said...

Oh, those city planners never got anything right there! Hmph!

Woodsy said...

Advice: If you are going to pick up a bit of the broken glass from this building for a friend who likes to create art with broken glass, don't do it in front of the officers investigating the fire!

coyote said...

Oh, Woodsy! Tampering with the evidence...!