The Inflammable Dominion

On February 4, 1961, the elder statesman of Ottawa’s United Church community was destroyed by fire. The fire, reputedly the result of an unfortunate meeting between an electric heater and stacks of dry paper, resulted in $500,000 in damage. When it became clear that Ottawa’s developers were not interested in blending the ecclesiastical with the commercial (as they would later be with St. Andrew’s), Dominion United’s congregation and the nearby Chalmers voted to merge. If you’re attending the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, this should ring a bell.

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On February 4, 1961, the elder statesman of Ottawa’s United Church community was destroyed by fire. The fire, reputedly the result of an unfortunate meeting between an electric heater and stacks of dry paper, resulted in $500,000 in damage. When it became clear that Ottawa’s developers were not interested in blending the ecclesiastical with the commercial (as they would later be with St. Andrew’s), Dominion United’s congregation and the nearby Chalmers voted to merge. If you’re attending the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, this should ring a bell.

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Raccoons in the Penthouse

Originally known as the Laurentian Towers, the Suites of Somerset has seen its share of action. Image: July 2014.

With the significant number of apartment towers that were constructed around Ottawa during the 1960s and 1970s, it would be easy to forget that for every two constructed, there is probably one that didn’t make it off the drawing board. In spite of a strong market for them, combined with an unprecedented level of institutional and governmental support, an announced project could – and often did – find itself cancelled after it was announced and a permit issued.

The Laurentian Towers, now known as the Suites of Somerset, almost didn’t make it. At some point previous to the passage of the new city-wide zoning in 1963, Phil Nesrallah and his brother (generally identified as the Nesrallah Bros, though the Journal did not identify him. I am uncertain about their relationship with the owners of the Nesrallah IGA nearby) successfully filed for a building permit to construct an apartment of 70 units and at a value of $510,000. During this period, when a developer filed for a building permit, it more often than not meant that they had already gone ahead and thoughtfully dug a hole and maybe even poured a little concrete.

For a lot with a building permit issued – especially in 1965 – it was awfully silent. Source: geoOttawa, 1965 Aerial Images.

This is not what happened, however. The building permit was issued and …nothing happened. No holes, no hardhats, no cranes, and no hammers. Nothing. By the end of 1966 (which was more than two years after the passage of the city’s new zoning bylaw), it was reported by the Journal’s Charles Lynch that they had deferred construction. It should be mentioned that because the MadDonald Manor received an extension that September, it was only fair that the fully private developers with outstanding buildings received the same treatment.

The following year, Nesrallah submitted a much larger plan for something of a mixed use complex – commercial, office, and of course, the apartment. This new plan was much more ambitious, not to mention potentially useful in a neighbourhood like Hintonburg. There was only one thing standing in the way: the city’s zoning bylaw. At first, the city’s Board of Control had rejected the proposal, in spite of Council’s approval.

Although this might appear to be setting up a narrative which pits the desires of a real estate developer against the city, that’s not where the battle took place. Interestingly, it was Nesrallah who appears to have become caught up in the centre of tensions between City Council and the Board of Control. Although it’s clear that Nesrallah wanted to see his new vision through, the fight moved beyond and erupted into a war of words between Council and the Board of Control.

As what exists today is substantially what had been proposed after 1967, it appears that City Council was the ultimate victor (the Board of Control met its end 10 years later). Following the back-and-forth, Nesrallah submitted another – slightly amended proposal – at the end of 1969 and the complex was constructed and open for business by early 1972. The apartment was operated as an apartment-hotel, which was a popular measure at the time to capture more of the market while conveniently not being subject to the same regulatory machinery of the rental housing market. He additionally constructed a small 5,000 square foot commercial building adjacent and reserved the top floor for offices.

It looms over Hintonburg today. Perhaps Cyril Sneer looks over the city, searching for ways to earn a little coin. Now that the W.C. and D. Kemp Edwards’ yards aren’t nearby, he’ll have to think outside the lumbering box. Image: July 2014.

Normally, this is where I’d introduce the architect and wrap it all up. I didn’t actually locate a citation and the events that took place in the penthouse offices are so much more interesting.

Update: It’s a Woolfson. Most of the time when it was constructed during the 1950s-1970s and I don’t know who designed it, Woolfson is a good guess. 

Some of the events were notable, but mundane, some were exciting and creative, and some were downright scandalous. I’ll get the mundane out of the way first: the offices of the eighteenth floor were used through 1974-75 to conduct the Marin Commission, which investigated public complaints into the RCMP.

The Commission of Inquiry Relating to Public Complaints, Internal Discipline and Grievance Procedure within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Just rolls off the tongue. Source: PCO/Archived Commissions of Inquiry.

Once the Marin Commission was done with the space, the office penthouse played host to a much different client. Ottawa had long been home to a rather healthy animation industry. One of the largest and most successful at the time was Atkinson Film Arts, which had just finished of the acclaimed Little Brown Burro, a Christmas movie, in 1977.

While it hasn’t become a Christmas classic on the same plane as Frosty or the Grinch, it certainly was a capital point of pride during the late 1970s. Source: Ottawa Journal, December 13, 1977.

The company was flying high and by 1979, they became the penthouse’s tenant. From that room with a view atop the Hintonburg skyline, Atkinson’s legion of animators brought the first season of The Raccoons to life, the B-17 scene of Ivan Reitman’s Heavy Metal, and a number of other Canadian favourites. Atkinson’s star appeared to soar rather quickly, but a number of poor decisions made in the early 1980s would prove fatal to the venture by the end of the decade.

Hard at work atop Hintonburg. Source: Ottawa Journal, April 21, 1979

As Atkinson experienced its decline and fall, ownership of the Laurentian Towers was set for a change. Phil Nesrallah, looking to change gears, sold the building to Thomas Assaly Jr, son of Thomas Sr., who was head of the second-largest construction firm in the city. Thomas Jr., looking to follow in his father’s footsteps and get into the real estate and development business himself, engaged in a highly-leveraged purchase of the building in the summer of 1986. He wasn’t really alone in the tactic and it would be an understatement to say that many of Ottawa’s successful developers at the time found such tenuous leaps into the real estate market (both at home and abroad) attractive at the time.

Unlike his father, Assaly Jr. was something of a loose cannon. Just as it had become increasingly difficult for him to afford the mortgage payments on the complex, his decisions became increasingly irrational and erratic.

In 1987, reports had been made public that the 29 year old Assaly was alleged to have pulled a gun on Robert McLeod, Philip Nesrallah’s mortgage broker, who had met with him to levy a $50,000 penalty for non-payment on what was Assaly Jr’s fourth mortgage on the property. It was the act that may have been a breaking point: in addition to the realization that real estate success was not going to come easily (he was involved in a bit of a controversy over an apartment in Lowertown on Clarence at the same time), he had to face his brother’s death from muscular dystrophy that same season.

In April, the Citizen reported:

Lawyers for Thomas Assaly Jr . were back in court Wednesday to fight off a foreclosure attempt on the Laurentian Apartment Hotel where Assaly allegedly pointed a gun at a mortgage broker last week.

Assaly, 29, is charged with extortion and pointing a gun at the head of Robert McLeod while forcing him to sign a document absolving Assaly of a $50,000 mortgage penalty.

The Laurentian foreclosure application was filed by Philip Nesrallah and other members of his family who want the 17-storey building on Bayswater Avenue returned to them for non-payment of mortgage payments.

William Neville, representing the Nesrallahs, told an Ontario Supreme Court hearing that Assaly was $40,000 in arrears on a $1-million third mortgage and $30,000 in default on a $317,000 fourth mortgage held by the Nesrallahs.

In addition, Neville said, Assaly was $60,000 in arrears on the building’s municipal taxes and $100,000 in arrears on a $3-million first mortgage that was due to be paid off on Wednesday.

The first mortgage and a second mortgage for an unknown amount are held by commercial lenders.

Neville said the Nesrallahs wanted possession of the building to protect their equity until it could be resold and the financial ramifications of the sale to Assaly sorted out.

Richard Bosada, acting for Assaly, said returning the building to the Nesrallahs was not necessary as Assaly, with consent of the first mortgagee, had placed the building in the hands of a receiver on Tuesday.

Bosada said Assaly was not opposed to the receiver overseeing the sale of the building. Neville said the Nesrallahs want the sale monitored by a court appointed official.

The hearing was adjourned until today to allow both sides time to work out a mutually acceptable out-of-court agreement.

The Nesrallah petition was filed before last week’s alleged incident at the apartment hotel, where Assaly has an office.

The apartment hotel was built by the Nesrallahs in the early 1970s and sold to Assaly in June for between $6 and $8 million, a figure that reportedly is also in dispute.

Source: Ottawa Citizen, April 2, 1987, B3 (Dennis Foley)

By the mid-1990s, his “roaring twenties” had come to an end and he had settled down at the helm of Les Suites Hotel.

Some of the stories from the top floor would mirror somewhat what was happening on the lower floors. General malaise, violence, drug deals, and the occasional shooting, the Laurentian Towers came to develop a reputation that was at the least self-defeating when it comes to maximizing the return on investment. A change of ownership in the early 1990s did little to improve things in the short-term. Nevertheless, as the years progressed, the Laurentian Towers (renamed the Suites of Somerset by 1992) has cleaned up and quieted down. Really, sort of a reflection of what has become of Hintonburg altogether.

Robert Magee’s Farm and (Lincoln) Field(s) of Dreams (Lincoln Fields Shopping Centre, 1972)

Lincoln Fields, in its current glory. Source: Google Maps (July 27, 2014)
Lincoln Fields, in its current glory. Source: Google Maps (July 27, 2014)

If you’ve been following this blog and the things I’ve written elsewhere, you’re no doubt familiar with my own interest in the rapid development of Ottawa since the Second World War. In spite of my own unshakable preference for Centretown living and complete rejection of a life dependent on driving (or even public transit), there are two midcentury developed areas of the city which hold a special spot in my mind. One of them is the Prince of Wales complex at Hog’s Back, the site of my first off-campus apartment in 2001.

Continue reading Robert Magee’s Farm and (Lincoln) Field(s) of Dreams (Lincoln Fields Shopping Centre, 1972)

The Battle of Public Literacy and Public Finance

The view from Laurier and Metcalfe. Image: May 2014.
The view from Laurier and Metcalfe. Image: May 2014.

For a city that truly values literacy, it has always been a curious thing to me that Ottawa has something of a strange ambivalence when it comes to the construction and funding of public libraries. To be certain, the Ottawa Public Library system is most certainly something to be proud of. Well-run and generally balanced across the entire city, the network is well-used and highly popular.
At the same time, we’ve retained many of the old “ratepayers’ objections” to any adequate outlays right to this day. Our dedication to literacy is never exceeded by our dedication to thrift. Of course, the definition and operation of the two terms are now and have always been, highly subjective and will be used accordingly by everyone who ventures into the issue.

Nevertheless, I was looking through the May 19, 1954 edition of the Ottawa Journal and happened across this gem:

The_Ottawa_Journal_Wed__May_19__1954_
“That Crowded Library, Old, Old Story.” Click for full size. Source: Ottawa Journal, May 19, 1954.

Essentially, the original 1906 Carnegie Ottawa Public Library was considered too small almost as soon as the doors opened. When you consider that it was too small and crowded for at least 40 years before this article was written – and another 20 until the version we have today was completed, you’d think the desire to not repeat past mistakes would be strong.

It has been called the ugliest building in Ottawa, a text-book example of “brutalist” architecture. Perhaps it is even the “least beautiful, least functional” building of its kind in Canada.

Mayor Bob Chiarelli calls it simply, and tactfully, taking care not even to insult a building: “inadequate in most every way.”

Welcome to the main branch of the Ottawa Public Library.

It’s an embarrassment, really, there is no other word that can properly describe Ottawa’s main library. Located at 120 Metcalfe St., it is a near-windowless, multi-tiered, pillar-obstructed, earth- tone-painted, soul-deadening monstrosity that has all the warmth and charm of a warehouse.

In addition to that (maybe it’s a blessing) it’s too small.

Ottawa’s main library opened in 1974, to service a city of 300,000. Even before amalgamation, the 80,000-square-foot building had become too small. Now, the main branch is expected to service a city of more than 700,000. The only saving grace in all this — the only way a problem is averted — is that the main branch is so damn ugly, not many people want to go there.

“When we started researching it, we discovered the branch was built in an architectural style called “brutalism,” remembers Barbara Clubb, chief librarian for the Ottawa Public Library. “In this particular case, at least, there is truth in advertising.”

Ottawa has, according to Ms. Clubb, the “least beautiful, least functional” main library in Canada. (That’s polite librarian talk, by the way, for “ugly and useless.”)

[emphasis mine] Ron Corbett, Ottawa Citizen, January 24, 2001, Page D1

Strong words, of course, and ones that were somewhat unfair to its architect, George E. Bemi (though I’ve personally not warmed up to the Brutalist aesthetic). In an interview with Maria Cook, it became clear that the same thread ran through his project as well: funding. Like the music teacher, library funding is often among the earlier ones to go when the greater economy becomes less certain. It always seems to feel like a frill, luxury, or option.

“Some would say the library started off too small,” says Ms. Clubb. “Everything gets kind of squished. Within a couple of years, they had to move a bunch of services out into this tower over the building.”

Trevor Boddy, a former Carleton University architecture professor and now a Vancouver-based architectural critic and historian, agrees.

Originally from Edmonton, Mr. Boddy recalls that his home town built a “much bigger, much better” library as a 1967 Centennial project. “Ottawa was always kind of undersized and lacking in vision.”

“I think the criticism is fair in the sense it’s too small now,” says Mr. Bemi. “We always knew that computers were going to come along, but we underestimated the amount of it. We feel the computer areas are too small and need space.”

And although Mr. Bemi did make the building accessible — people with wheelchairs enter a side door onto the first level and then use the elevator — it was always considered a weakness, especially since the circulation desk could only be reached by climbing stairs.

Critics have pointed to the one-way escalator and single elevator for people and freight. These were not his fault, says Mr. Bemi, but the result of a tight budget. “We would have probably put in a two- way escalator, but there wasn’t money for that sort of thing.”

[emphasis mine] Maria Cook, Ottawa Citizen, May 6, 2002, Page D1

And so it goes. Discussions have come and gone and will come and go again at a later date. I suspect that we can predict with astonishing precision just how the discussions will progress.

I’ve come to appreciate the bunker of knowledge. I just hope that the replacement that gets built in 30 years is a befitting a temple of learning.

Update: Yup

But Harder, a long-time advocate for public libraries, believes the $70-million price tag is a non-starter.

“I’m just not sure that’s the wisest expenditure of taxpayer dollars in this location,” said Harder. She points out that in 20 years, the ownership of the entire property at Laurier and Metcalfe will revert back to the city, at which time the city could sell the land or redevelop it in another way.

Harder is right. At $70 million — and likely more, as this is a basic estimate that can be off by as much as 30 per cent — this city must start a serious discussion about the possibility of building a new library.

Consider the new central library in Halifax scheduled to open later this year (and already named by CNN as one of 2014′s most “eye-popping”new buildings): the cost for the new building is about $58 million. Although at 108,000 square-feet, the East Coast library is slightly smaller than the 130,000 we’re looking for here in Ottawa, the build-from-scratch project is also costing significantly less than the estimate to rebuild ours.

There are those who will balk at the idea of a possible private partnership to build a new library. That’s a discussion worth having. But it’s more important that we do something about the eyesore that is the downtown central library. And Monday is the day to re-start that debate.

[emphasis mine] Joanne Chianello, Ottawa Citizen, July 7, 2014.