Market Plan Puts New Meaning In Stupid

One of the stupidest ideas to come out of Ottawa City Hall recently … and that’s quite an accomplishment … is the plan to evict 17 tenants from the ByWard Market building because it is politically expedient.

You see the market is a mess of drugs, crime, violence and almost every problem faced by modern man. So Ottawa City Council needs to look as though it is doing something, even when it is the wrong thing.

Council wants to renovate the market building at a cost of $40 million unnecessary dollars and turn it into an event centre for which there is no demand for events.

In the puny minds of the deep thinkers at city hall, the idea is when voters before the Oct. 26 municipal election ask what’s being done to improve the market, politicians can point to the renovation of the market building.

What problem does this solve? Crime? Drugs? Violence? Almost every malady known to modern man? No it solves a re-election problem for the mayor and councillors. And the reno might give homeless people a new and improved street corner on which to sleep.

The problems of the market are people problems and they are not solved in the developer-centric minds of politicians with development. Instead, this $40 million sets civilization, as we know it, in the market backwards. City hall turns a people place into an empty building for 90-per-cent of the time. And we’re paying for this. Ottawans are being bribed with their own money to accomplish something stupid.

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Almost all tenants in the market building, 16 of them in one structure, are fighting back against the stupidity and they are right. But fighting city hall, especially when there are ill-gotten votes to be had, is difficult. The city hall plan is costing the community millions of dollars, businesses, taxes and jobs. All this to turn the building into an empty shell.

Worse than this, if it is possible, is that the market building was already renovated between 1996 and 1998 and that project was honoured at the 1998 Ottawa Architectural Conservation Awards. So the city plan destroys an award-winning project. Nice work. Short memories at city hall when political expediency is at stake.

The merchants joining together to fight city hall are right. City hall is wrong.

City hall should back down from this ridiculous project.

Ken Gray is the editor of The Bulldog.

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